|
By:
How about this
O Gara's kicking game Sexton's defence and Humphries running Leave it at that |
|
By:
Ward's Hairy Chest
Dean's or Campbell's Tackling |
|
By:
Tried to find out Mike Gibson's weight , no luck so far , but turned up a couple of interesting comments re him .
Peter Bill ( dont know him from Adam ) but he makes sense , picked his Lions "Dream Team " prior to the ( poor) 2009 Lions Tour . Surprisingly he has 6 Irish in his 15 which is : 1. Fran Cotton 2. Bryn Meredith 3. Ray McLoughlin 4. Martin Johnson 5. Willie John McBride 6. Lawrence Dallaglio 7. Fergus Slattery 8. Mervyn Davies 9. Gareth Edwards 10. Jack Kyle 11. Tony O'Reilly 12. Mike Gibson 13. Jeff Butterfield 14. Ken Jones 15. JPR Williams Not necessarily my team , but only contentious in about 4 or 5 positions . He said he had no goal kicker on the team , if so you wanted to select Barry John for Kyle , which I would agree on , not just for the goal kicking . "He had to include Gibson , one of the most brilliant all-round rugby players the world has seen for the last 50 years . Gibson was a genius , for Cambridge University , Ireland and the Lions ". On the Lions Tour of 1971/72 , the Kiwis said Gibson was the greatest rugby player they had ever seen . Colin Meads said that Gibson,on his own , foiled approximately 80% of their attacking moves . ( Barry John and Gareth Edwards were also on that team / tour ) . |
|
By:
either hoping 3s is too big on us! Sod history, sod the paucity of options; sod the stultifying Ialian semi farce (at times). Win. Dont care how. Win!
|
|
By:
peter bills is a rugby correspondent
To me he favours the players from the amateur era where rugby was much different to what the modern game is. I think there is a dearth of good scrum halves We have a truly world class 15 in kearney Heaslip is still learning but he is a fine player with potential to be a one of the best POC is world class Rog stats are there for all to see and they dont lie BOD proves his effectiveness time and again This current line up is the best team we have ever had i think |
|
By:
Agree Macrocky with you that current squad is the best we have ever had . Fewer weak links in the squad than ever in the past . BOD had the potential to be really mega , but the All Black treatment put paid to that in my view . He has come back well , but just lost a little edge when that took place . Hard to get back to a stellar platform .
Kearney is world class , hope he betters last weeks performance , may have been our least effective player . Overall last week was terrible , lets hope it was lying doggo instructions . Looking forward to tomorrow , but more in hope than in certainty . |
|
By:
You saw Kyle pay did you Kelly.
Well done on being at least 80 years old, still having your mentals and being capable of usuing internet forums. |
|
By:
Did actually , Redroar , and I am not 80 . Check his dates . Was not present in 1949 ( I think ) when Ireland clinched their Triple crown in Ravenhill , but still remember the roar when Ireland scored ( we lived within hearing distance of Ravenhill ) .
Have to head off now , we oldies need our sleep . |
|
By:
Carter / Hernandez / Giteau / Wilko -- all big tackling outhalves. There's nowhere to hide now, 7s can only do so much. In 25 odd years, I've never been so confident on the eve of a game in Paris... If he's wearing green tomorrow, I don't care what size / shape or number he is - lets do it!
|
|
By:
really fancy ireland minus 5
|
|
By:
I predict Stephen Ferris man of the match and next Irish rugby great.His moment has arrived.
|
|
By:
on winning margin ire under 12.5 at 4.3....
|
|
By:
Ddont share a lot of the Irish optimism re outcome . I think it will be a rough , tough , match and the French are quite cynical in these situations .
Dont think Ferris or O'Gara will survive 80 minutes , them apart it may come down to substitutes performing well on either side . Not a match to wager heavily on . Lets hope we do well . This is the big one . |
|
By:
Dont think Parra wil survive 80 mins either :p
I think it'll be tight anyway and have had a speculative punt on Ire at the prices ;) |
|
By:
More than a little ironic parra calling us **s after what happened in this very stadium a few months ago !
|
|
By:
Shambles so far
|
|
By:
Agreed BJG .
|
|
By:
Ok - I'll settle for someone to knock parra about a bit - midnight in a Stasi cell style
|
|
By:
embarassing
|
|
By:
O COnnell wud want to stop appearing in the backline - makes a balls of it every time - very rarely breaks the gainline
|
|
By:
A perfect 10 from france, they were brilliant in defence against scotland, scotland never looked like scoring a try and there were brilliant today.
However the game turned on the yellow card imo, 3 games now in the 6 nations and they have been pivotal, wales got a yellow before halftime against england and it cost them 14 points. Scotland had the game won today and yellows later they lost the game in the last minute. Today cian healys yellow cost us 10 + french confidence . i lost count of the irish players that knocked the ball on--knock ons meant lost ball and we never had control of the ball. Fair dues to france they only gave ROG 2 penalty chances one of which tomas o leary spurned |
|
By:
Agree Macrocky , France were excellent . But I think we made it easy for them by making so many fundamental mistakes which cost us dear .
Individually our players made huge efforts , but collectively those efforts came to naught , our try incorporated a forward pass I am sure . Gordon D'Arcy was the only one who threatened danger consistently , and as for the slow recycling of ball , it never leads to progress against a well marshalled defence . Need a new approach on that one in my view . We will still beat or run close our Triple Crown adversaries , but I think we need to use the rest of the season to consolidate for World Cup . France are up and away with the Six Nations . |
|
By:
v.poor effort,probably wouldn't have beaten france even w/o errors
|
|
By:
France are good when they get their tails up, every man and his dog knows that. Ireland had a chance to make it 3-3 with Healy in the bin, but a mental abberation from our hooker resulted in France going 10-0 up, which, in turn, spurred on the crowd and gave France the impetus to go for the jugular.
Everyone is allowed an off day at the office now and then, but Jerry Flannery is an utter disgrace to the jersey. I don't know how he could look anyone in the eye in the dressing room after that performance. |
|
By:
To be fair flannery deserves a holiday , that was as bad a foul as i have seen , if the shoe was on the other foot we would be citing id say
|
|
By:
it was f**cking freezing there.i would say it was a factor in handling errors. do any irish rugby players were gloves or did quinlan end that ?
BTW did anyone read stephen jones in ST today?. Levat MOM 9/10 when we made sh** of their lineout. |
|
By:
People are saying the turning point was Darcy's near miss. Lucky the ball bounced his way, unlucky goalpost got in the way.
I thought the most decisive moment of the match was the penalty reversal for Flannery's lunge. Instead of Ireland having a lineout in the French 22 the opposite happened. As a result instead of playing down the sinbin clock in possession in their territory we were defending scrum after scrum on our own line which eventually led to the french scoring 7 points. Yellow cards at this level are crucifying. Some commentators say Healy saved seven points. You could say he handed The initiative to the French. Whereas the game had been pretty even until then with both sides having their moments, once the sinbin occured all the momentum and initiative was with the French. |
|
By:
As a Munster fan I sometimes might express a one eyed opinion of the various merits of the mighty men of munster, but Tomas O Leary stretched my loyalty on Saturday. It was so frustrating to watch him at the base of any ruck looking up to check if the French defence had realigned before he looked to play the ball. Rarely did he look to play quick ball which obviously asks more of any defence.
His decision making in the run up to halftime was poor. Deep in injury time under the posts take points. I've no problem with a sideline penalty being put to touch but O'Leary's try against italy has obviously given him a misguided sense of unstopability (new word). The slow ball he gave to the backs left the backs at times looking bereft of ideas . In a scrum you have 6v6 in open play but with the slow service provided by O'Leary and Ireland's over committal of players to win the ball it was often 7 v 11 in open field with obvious consequences |
|
By:
spot on yummy, he would make any outhalf look bad , they have no space to move
I have never been a fan of his, his box kicks are very poor, what happened the outhalf getting to kick for touch Unfortunately reddan is no better but he deserves his chance because tomas has played so poor, we need to find a really good scrumhalf for the next world cup |
|
By:
when to take a ball from a ruck or maul is probably the most important decision a scrum half has to take during a game. The quicker a 9 takes the ball the more confident a player has to be in his own decision making. As you say Macrocky both O'Leary and Reddan are very alike in this respect.
I wouldn't fancy any team to score off 1st phase against comparative opposition where as I said equal numbers of attackers and defenders face each other with relative space. The best way of unsettling defences is by not allowing them reset. Healy's yellow card is a perfect example of this.The defence had not reset and had to commit a game changing foul instead. |
|
By:
I wouldn't fancy any team to score off 1st phase against comparative opposition where as I said equal numbers of attackers and defenders face each other with relative space.
There are of course certain advantages with 1st phase ball. From lineouts u get 20 clear metres in which to play, from scrums 10 metres plus the length of the scrum. No forwards cluttering the pitch, plus a one man advanatge given that the opposing FB lies deep. Its a 2 man advanatge if the blindside winger decides not to track his opposite number because of the position on the pitch, i.e he prefers to remain and defend a dangerous blind side. |
|
By:
To my eye we havent had a top class scrum half for a very long time , stringer/ reddan or o leary have never cut it.
o leary is slow passing, his passes are soft and they are telegraphed, what happened the dummy to catch a guy offside, cheap penalties are invaluable |
|
By:
itcanbedone
How many tries to you see off first phase in a game involving 2 comparable sides? Watch the 6 nations , the remainder of the Heineken cup, schools cup , aib league and come back to me. Just watching the highlights now . The Irish try was the try of the match. It came from a series of phases all of which were quick ball. When the French ball was slowed down they generally looked to kick whereas we turned slow ball into slower ball , didn't cross the gain line off slow ball and ended up taking tackles on their terms, i.e.on the backfoot Watch Wallace's try again and again ...............quick ball=go forward=unset defence |
|
By:
Itcanbedone
Teams practice set piece defence ad nauseum. Unlike in broken play you actually know where everyone is be it a scrum or lineout. Unlike soccer where a large percentage of scores come from set pieces , I would wager that less than 5% of tries in professional rugby come from set piece plays. The extra yardage created by moving the offside line at a scrum back 5 yards gives teams more space to run into but actually makes it harder to outflank sides |
|
By:
Not trying to claim that 1st phase ball is better than quick ruck ball when defences are stretched. Its not. But it does present significant opportuniy. There are plenty of tries scored off 1st phase ball for reasons outlined.
|
|
By:
When
|
|
By:
19 tries this 6 nations I think
How many first phase off a set piece |
|
By:
From what I have seen this season , the only scrum half in Ireland playing a different type of game is Boss . Nationality apart , presumably he is eligible . If so who views him as not worth a try in a full international ? Italy would have been the match .
|
|
By:
11:44 Tánaiste due to meet O'Leary
Jaesus he wasn't that bad |