West Coast/East Coast – ol’ skool
Connacht is the runt of the litter of Irish rugby. While there’s various dynamics at play between Leinster, Munster and Ulster, the attitude towards Connacht is that they’re everyone’s favourite underdog and that it’s a bitch of an away trip, to mix canine metaphors.
“It’s nothing short of a disgrace, Joe. A disgrace!”
The Irish radio-listening public can be pretty quick to call Joe on 1850 715 815 [“eighteen fifty, seven-one-five, eight-one-five”] and let rip on Whine Line about how most things in Ireland are “a disgrace” or “nothing short of a disgrace”; he might have had a few extra callers this week. Continue reading
Ah, the blame game sucks. Let’s play Hungry, Hungry Hippoes!
Sean O’Brien has put his hand up on behalf of his team mates and said that Ireland’s players have to take the blame. Although ‘compacts’ – agreements between parties that don’t really suit anybody – are all the rage across Europe these days, the Mole feels obliged to refuse Seanie’s offer. No dice, big man. Continue reading
Hey Kirwan, call yourself the best winger in the world?
The memories of end of season trips to the Southern Hemisphere have proven hard wired for Irish rugby supporters, with 1992 a particular reference point for the Mole. Perhaps in that light, I see shadows where none exist but the overseas’ view of Irish rugby 16 years into professionalism and six European Cups later still tends toward “great passion at the start; contain for one hour; run out of steam; pints of the black stuff”. Continue reading
Steve Hansen was right: New Zealand didn’t play that well in the Christchurch test. Some of that was forced on them by an aggressive, hard-nosed Irish performance, but they also made a number of unforced errors. Ireland didn’t perform cleverly or with the required level of concentration and aggression in a number of areas in the Auckland test [especially after the first half hour] and as a result handed New Zealand not just the result, but also the big performance. England caved in a similar way in Lansdowne Road in 2011, and let Ireland play close to their potential. Continue reading
Andy Dufresne and lovely Rita.
“Me? My lawyer fucked me. Everybody’s innocent in here. Didn’t you know that?”
As Declan Kidney said in the aftermath, you can only control what you can control. It’s no news that Nigel Owens comes down on the side of the hometown team more often than not; Ireland, Munster and Leinster have all profited by it before on their own patch. Continue reading
O’Connell and Heaslip: how’s about you do your job, and I do my job?
It’s strange to say that somebody who’s only winning his second cap could teach somebody who has been to three World Cups and two Lions Tours a thing or two, but one of the odd pleasures of this second test was not seeing Paul O’Connell carry static, one-out ball into contact and go to ground. Brodie Retallick didn’t get on the ball much: he just went around charging into rucks and bashing things. Continue reading
Ireland’s tempo and intensity was where it needed to be, but the team didn’t show much cutting edge out wide. There’s room for improvement as to how we play once we have the ball.
While this was a very good performance from Ireland, it’s not as though it can’t be improved upon. In some ways it was similar to the 15-6 win over Australia in RWC11 – you couldn’t fault the intensity of the players on the pitch, or the decisions made by the management in selection or substitution, but tactically there’s still quite a lot of ground for improvement. That’s encouraging. It’d be downright grim if you had played as well as you could possibly play and not beaten a team who weren’t at their best. Continue reading
David Harris celebrates with Dave Dennis; Adam Jones is gutted. Losing in the last minute has a taste all of its own, and both Welsh and Irish players reacquainted themselves with it at the weekend.
Of all the northern hemisphere teams touring southern hemisphere countries, Wales were the most confident. A number of factors were stacked in their favour: their players are well rested, due to the Welsh clubs’ lack of success in European competition [even those players based in France like Mike Phillips and James Hook had no involvement in the business end of the Top 14]; they had an almost entirely injury-free squad, with the notable exception of Big Bopper Jamie Roberts; and they were Grand Slam champions. They should have represented the Six Nations teams’ best chance of a series victory against an injury-ravaged Australia. Instead, they haven’t even been able to take the series to a third test. Continue reading
Irish captain Claire Molloy
If you didn’t know them you probably wouldn’t recognise them. If you checked out the clubs they play for, you might think that it was an Irish Squad from the late 1990s. But in a week where our senior national team are getting lessons in how the game can be played and our national soccer team are suffering even more ignominiously at a major championship, the Irish Womens’ Sevens Squad have been achieving the almost impossible. Continue reading
Digging Like a Demented Mole 