No miracles passes here baby

Interesting comments from Gamblor in today’s Irish Times:

‘In leaving behind the bonus point, O’Gara said: “That’s the big difference between European and Test rugby: we were probably looking for a miracle pass here and there; I said to Paul inside there, you get flashes of genius in international rugby in one of three games.

“You just have to keep wearing teams down, keep holding on to the ball and going through it and then putting over a fella with just simple hands at the end of 15 or 16 phases, or else a penalty results. We’re probably looking to come up with big plays too frequently and we’ve just got to get back to basics and hold on to the ball and keep our error-rate down.”‘

O’Gara knows Test rugby and European rugby as well as anybody, and better than almost everybody; after all, he’s got 112 international caps and 97 Heineken Cup games to his name.

On the other hand, the Eagles are a largely amateur side. The idea that they should prove a sterner challenge than the Leicesters, Toulouses, Crusaders or Blue Bulls of the world club game merely because it’s ‘test rugby’ seems nonsensical.

Nor did the Mole see many attempted ‘miracle’ passes out there … he saw lots of drops that a confident team simply wouldn’t make, however.

Check out the rest of an interesting article here in the Irish Times.