Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Dying Days Of The Diddymen

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The Leinster second-string backline head out to training. They’re very keen on playing on tightly-mown surfaces, both so that their flashy skills and quick feet are in evidence and so that they can actually see each other. It’d be like patrolling in Vietnam if they had to play in a meadow. Because they’re all midgets, y’see?

There’s nothing inherently noble or right about having a small backline, rather than one composed of enormous, planet-boshing mutants. When old-timers quote the gospel that rugby is a sport for all shapes and sizes, they conveniently forget that a good big ‘un will always beat a good little ‘un.  Continue reading →

Our Friends From The North Pt.1 – Chris Henry’s Coming To Dinner

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Chris Henry predicts the number of minutes he’ll get off the bench for Ireland next season.

What looks like having been the sole dog day of the summer fell a month to the day after Ireland’s dismal 60-0 drubbing. Continue reading →

The Big 46 [Sic] Pt.2 – Then Everything Is Wrapped Up In A Neat Little Package

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The idea that test matches are a neat block of matches played at one level, with Heineken Cup games forming another distinct grouping a step down from that in intensity, speed, skill levels, physicality, time allowed in possession and tactical appreciation – and Pro12 matches a discrete block a further notch down from those Heineken Cup games – is one to which The Mole doesn’t subscribe. Continue reading →

Losing Your Linchpin

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Sure, there are a lot of moving parts in a team and they all have to do their job, but some are more vital than others.

Many moons ago, when the Mole was a nipper and student transport offered only two options – the heel-toe express or the push bike – to get to training or school or any of the other ‘priorities’ of our young lives, he learned all about the linchpin. Uniquely shaped [square at the top and tapering smoothly within its two inches to a round threaded base], the linchpin connected the crank-arm of the pedal through the centre of the big cogs of the front chain ring to the joint of the frame where the seat tube met the down tube. It seemed insignificant in the overall use of a bicycle: it wasn’t a wheel which covered the ground, and it wasn’t a pedal which took the weight. But without a linchpin, the bike wouldn’t go. You couldn’t apply power and you couldn’t cover ground. Continue reading →

Match Preview: Ireland vs New Zealand @ Hamilton

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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 →

Match Reaction #3: Another One For The Reel Of Infamy

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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 →

Irish Women Know No Limits

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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 →

Match Reaction: New Zealand 42 – 10 Ireland

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Israel Dagg didn’t bag a hat-trick of tries, but he was just as damaging to Irish hopes. His much-anticipated match-up with Rob Kearney was a blow-out.

Ireland started their three test series against New Zealand with enterprise and verve, but the All Blacks were able to stand up well to the twenty-five minute onslaught, bought a lead with a couple of long-range Dan Carter penalties and then utterly took over, wrapping up the game before half-time. Continue reading →

U Mad Bro?

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It’s only a matter of time before the word ‘embattled’ becomes synonymous with Irish coach Declan Kidney. He’s coming off the back of Ireland’s least successful Six Nations since the 2008 edition that caused Eddie O’Sullivan to hand in his resignation. Bringing an outgunned squad down to New Zealand for an end of season [well, end of the Northern Hemisphere season] three test tour against the world champion All Blacks is hard enough, but when you take into account the injury problems that are already mounting up – Paul O’Connell, Tommy Bowe, Stephen Ferris, Luke Fitzgerald, Tom Court and Isaac Boss are all out and would certainly have made the flight were they fit, and Munster’s Felix Jones would probably have travelled – then it looks like a ‘Tour From Hell’ scenario. Continue reading →

Hard Core Welsh

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The current Ospreys backline aren’t exactly “no-stats superstars” – Shane Williams has scored 58 international tries and Dan Biggar has kicked 300 points this season – but they’re a long way from the Galacticos of Phillips, Hook, Henson and Byrne.

Looking ahead to the upcoming Pro12 Grand Final between Leinster and the Ospreys, a quick review of the Ospreys’ Heineken Cup pool games is very educational.  Continue reading →