The choke tackle: comes in both green and red for all you colour-blind rugby fans
While the Munster vs Treviso game wasn’t a ‘must-see’ by any definition, there were some intriguing elements to it. That should be qualified to ‘intriguing elements for Irish fans’, because the interest came more in the selection than the action. Continue reading
Clint Newland having the last laugh
Poor old Clint Newland has recently been repeatedly brought up as a byword for the sort of useless NIQ players that the selfish old provinces foist on the IRFU. Continue reading
The Mole remembers the first time he saw Martin Johnson play. It was in Donnybrook in 1993 in the A international. Johnson had already been capped that season and would go on to play two of the Lions’ tests against New Zealand a few months later. There was already talk that he was one to watch but what sticks in the Mole’s mind was seeing the full England team walk past on their way to the stand. They were all in their civvies with no tracksuits and certainly no iPods. Continue reading
C86 was an NME mix tape that catalogued the emerging British music scene in 1986. 'C' stood for cassette, and 86 ....
The Mole was second-guessing himself over the holiday season. Was it The Fear? Partially. It was also the feeling that he can be a little bit too harsh on certain elements of the Munster set-up. Continue reading
Teichmann and Jones reliving their Tarf and Crescent days
Acting In their best interest?
The Mole expected to see the ill wind of protectionism blow in 2011 but didn’t think that it would happen in the market for tighthead props. Continue reading
Lady Luck! She wears green! She hates Connacht! The irony.
Almost with a sense of perversity, it must be pointed out that the Irish run cannot continue forever. Perhaps Ulster have not yet had the proverbial “rub of the green” in the Heineken Cup this season – and Connacht certainly haven’t – but neither Munster nor Leinster can claim that to be the case. Continue reading
Not intended as a slight on McGahan, but he's down a lot of backs.
If you’re down your entire first choice back three in Howlett/Earls/Jones – one of whom is a Hall of Fame calibre player, one of whom is a confirmed international try-scorer, and the other of whom is a great broken field runner – and you don’t have particularly good centers, what’s the point in playing to your weaknesses? Continue reading
Andrew Bishop - the key to the Ospreys' line-speed and defense against Munster
The Ospreys’ quick line-speed in defense severely hampered Munster’s attack for the greater part of the match. Sean Holley and Scott Johnson have done an extremely good job with the region over the last six months; they’ve shed some seriously talented but somewhat egotistical players in Mike Phillips, James Hook and Lee Byrne, and in the recent past have been operating with a number of important players unavailable due to injury. Continue reading
The RFU, the grandaddy of them all, is in a mess. This is hardly news to anybody that has been keeping up with recent happenings in the rugby world, and the Mole has been enjoying the excellent coverage provided by the various hacks at the Torygraph, the Grauniad and the London Independent. Amongst the journos, there seems to be a genuine despair at how badly wrong things have gone, and a belief that their readers are both concerned with and willing to follow what amounts to the breakdown of a bureaucracy. Continue reading
Digging Like a Demented Mole 