Tag Archives: Leicester Tigers

The Man Who Fell To Earth

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Jeremy Staunton: not only could he have been a contender, he should have been a champion. How Irish rugby failed one of the most talented players of his generation is still beyond me.

The Mole read an anecdote about Jeremy Staunton on a message board about four or five months ago, and it has stuck with him since: an Irish rugby fan was at Welford Road with his English Tigers fan mate for a Premiership game, and Staunton was introduced off the bench relatively early in the match. “Great, Staunton,” the Tigers fans said to his mate, “no more tries.” Continue reading →

Murphy Saves Flood Plain

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Big moment for Tobes, and he let himself down. The Mole was thinking that the reintroduction of himself, Tuilagi and Lawes would give England a bit of pop in their upcoming showdown against Wales, but you'd be mad now to go with the Leicester fly-half after he didn't make himself known to the bottle-inspectors in the Saffacens vs Tigers endgame.

For all the occasions that sports commentators use hyperbole to describe moments of individual drama, probably less than 1% are truly accurate. However, the game just completed in the English Aviva Premiership contained one of those moments. Continue reading →

Heineken Cup Pool 4

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IT’S THE GROUP OF DEATH! It’s scarcely credible that this phrase has taken hold in rugby and managed to survive in commentary. It doesn’t have any notable lineage [for example, it’s not old naval slang or public school code], it’s an enormous overstatement – nobody calls failure to qualify from another group a death, so why should this be a ‘group’ of death? – and it’s really quite crass.

It’s the sort of modern over-statement that doesn’t sit well with rugby, where the method of scoring is still called a ‘try’, and you still have positions like tighthead prop and second five-eighth. If rugby were to adopt the sort of language from which GROUP OF DEATH! has managed to cross over, we’d have Right Scrum Masters, Megaboot Generals and VICTORY TOUCHDOWNS! Continue reading →