Big Bad Brad Carnegie Thorn: they don't get much All Blacker than this guy, the spiritual successor to Richard 'Tiny' White and Colin 'Pinetree' Meads.
There’s an absolutely cracking interview by Dexy’s in this morning’s Irish Times with Brad Thorn. Thorn probably doesn’t transcend rugby like Jonah Lomu did, but inside the sport he has earned as much respect and admiration as anybody who has played the game in the professional era. What a hero!
Heaslip dots down under the sticks in the 2010 quarter-final classic. Given that it's only a couple of weeks more than two years later, the two teams are dominated by the same players who took the field in that stormer of a game. That night it was Leinster who hung on by the slenderest of margins, even given home field advantage ... will it go the other way this time around?
The Clermont Auvergne vs Leinster semi-final pits two of the best teams to grace European competition in the last five years against each other in a winner-takes-all match. As Shane Horgan said on Sky Sports’ The Rugby Club last night, “This is a Heineken Cup semi-final. You don’t get anything for finishing within seven points.” Continue reading
Vern Cotter and Joe Schmidt know each other well and have worked together in the past. If they had a 'good cop/bad cop' routine, I'd imagine that Vern was the 'bad cop'.
One month ago, Vern Cotter took les Jaunards to the South West of France for a dress rehearsal of their Heineken Cup semi-final against Leinster. Continue reading
Fogs Jnr is out of Munster and off to Aurillac, the Jeremy Davidson-coached Pro D2 outfit. There's been a lot of movement in the Munster squad this season – and probably more to come – but this is a curious one.
Munster hooker Denis Fogarty is off to Aurillac at the end of the season. Aurillac currently play in the Pro D2 [France’s professional second division] and are coached by former Ulster, Ireland and Lions second row Jeremy Davidson. They’re not doing too well at the moment and are currently stuck in eleventh place of a sixteen team league, having won less than half their matches. Continue reading
Ivan Dineen’s blistering performance when allowed off the bench against the Scarlets was an enjoyable feature of a mistake-ridden game and hugely encouraging for fans of the player. To describe Dineen as a peripheral figure over the last two seasons is to do injustice to those peripheral figures in the Munster squad … in truth, with just one start in his Munster career [and that coming a full eighteen months ago] he had more or less slipped off the radar entirely. Continue reading
Mark McCafferty, Premership Rugby Chief Executive: he's "world class" alright ... a world class spoofer.
“The panel has come up with an incredibly impressive shortlist, which reflects the strength of Aviva Premiership Rugby,” said the Premiership Rugby chief executive, Mark McCafferty. “It’s great to see players who have emerged from our academies in what is undoubtedly a world-class list of players. It will be a tough job picking the winner, as clearly all six would be a worthy Aviva Premiership Rugby player of the season.” Continue reading
The Mole’s ‘Lock Of The Week’ is … Continue reading
There were quite a few people who picked Ulster to knock over Munster in the quarter-finals, even though it was played down in Thomond Park, where Munster had been invincible at the quarter-final stage for over a decade … but who were the geniuses that had Edinburgh over Toulouse? Continue reading
Sam Vesty has never struck me as a bad guy at all, so it’s a pity that he had to go and do this: Continue reading
It was like a Yalta conference for the late twentieth century. With Noel Edmonds as Stalin, obviously.
Classic tweet this morning from Mole favourite, Will Carling. Continue reading
Digging Like a Demented Mole 