The IRISH RUGBY thread

Started by Donnellys Hollow, October 27, 2009, 05:26:16 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

6th sam

Quote from: seafoid on February 19, 2021, 07:12:36 AM
Quote from: Estimator on February 18, 2021, 06:36:18 PM
Caelan Doris out for the foreseeable future because of concussion symptoms.
Awful news

I read somewhere that he had 2 concussions last season

Awful , players invest so much over the years and then the game puts them at so much risk, they have to stop playing . Real challenge for rugby

Estimator

The France v Scotland game in doubt due to Covid.
If it does go ahead, France will be playing with a severely weakened side.
Ulster League Champions 2009

sid waddell

Quote from: Estimator on February 22, 2021, 03:54:15 PM
The France v Scotland game in doubt due to Covid.
If it does go ahead, France will be playing with a severely weakened side.
A bit like when they played Ireland in 2000

seafoid

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2021/02/22/rugbys-next-crisis-jackal-might-have-had-day/

Rugby's next crisis? How the day of the jackal might be over
Three Premiership breakdown gurus have their say on whether the way that players compete for the ball at the breakdown needs to change
ByCharles Richardson22 February 2021 • 7:00am

Zander Fagerson and Peter O'Mahony both received red cards at the ruck in the Six Nations - but were they doomed from the start? CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
The red cards do not cease. Over the past couple of weeks, matches at both international and domestic level have been significantly altered and affected by dismissals for players making contact to the head of opponents, with the most high-profile examples - Peter O'Mahony of Ireland and Zander Fagerson of Scotland - occurring at the breakdown.
Both of these notorious red cards occurred as O'Mahony or Fagerson attempted to shift the jackaler - the defensive man competing for the ball on his feet - away from the contact area. This practice is essential for quick, clean ball. Both of the guilty parties accidentally - crucially, with no intent - caught prone defenders in the head and both were dismissed.
Players, coaches, pundits and fans know that there is zero tolerance on contact to the head - and with good reason. There are livelihoods, brains and lives at stake. The million-dollar question, therefore, with the continual flurry of red cards, with intent no longer part of the equation, with zero tolerance on contact to the head, and with the necessity to generate quick ball, is how much longer the jackal can last in its current guise? Can rugby continue in its current state; can jackaling, the placing of one's head over the ball in order to snaffle it, co-exist with zero tolerance on contact to the head?
Jackaling itself is a skill that, when performed with the greatest success - by those such as David Pocock, George Smith, or Jack Willis among others - is made to look almost like an art form. Pilfering the ball has become such an established part of rugby that many is the player whose main - even solitary - strength would be jackaling.
The predicament, however, is how to legally shift them. When such a premium is placed on the swiftness of ball away from the contact area, and with so many dynamically moving parts at a ruck, with the jackal in its current state, surely there will always be occasional, accidental head contact in a rugby match? It is this quandary that has seen the development of the dreaded 'crocodile roll' technique, the contortionist clean-out that nearly obliterated the knee of England's Jack Willis against Italy.
Nick Easter is in charge of the breakdown and defence at Newcastle Falcons, and he describes the current situation as "very difficult"; Julian Salvi, a fine jackaler in his time with Brumbies, Leicester and Exeter, and now defence coach at the latter, admits "there's no easy way of going about it... a hard one... there's no easy answer"; Matt Everard, Wasps' breakdown specialist, adds that he doesn't "really know what to say about it... it's so tough, it really is".

From l-r: Julian Salvi, defence coach at Exeter; Nick Easter, breakdown coach at Newcastle; Matt Everard breakdown coach at Wasps CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
If three of English rugby's pre-eminent breakdown minds are so non-plussed, then does something need to be done? Is rugby at a crossroads? Easter thinks so.
"It's a bit like speeding," the former England No 8 says. "Everyone speeds, it's just sometimes you get caught every now and again. But it doesn't mean the ones who get caught are the only ones doing it. It's a little bit like that."
The analogy is prescient, but perhaps does not go far enough. It is more akin to being caught travelling at 40mph in a 30mph zone and receiving a lifetime ban from driving. Attacking players are being teased by the candy - that of stray heads around the ball at rucks - and rather than having a slap on the wrist when their fingers delve into the bowl, wrists are being cut off. The punishment, such is the proliferation of jackaling, does not seem appropriate for the often helpless criminal.
"What is the essence of rugby?" Easter adds. "The essence of the game is the contest - fair contest - for possession. O'Mahony and Fagerson's red cards were correct by the letter of the law, and with what we're trying to achieve at the moment.
"But do the laws need to be adjusted or do the current laws need to be enforced? Do we do away with the jackal and just have counter-rucking? Then you go back to the laws of the ruck in terms of heads and shoulders not being allowed to be lower than hips – which is not enforced now whatsoever – and it seems safer; there would be less contact with the head as there would be more space to get under the defensive opponent.
"The ruck is a very dynamic, quick action and at the minute it's not right. Whether that be player welfare or the sanction - and how costly it is. Something like [the O'Mahony/Fagerson incidents] are deemed as foul play, but not deliberate foul play, so maybe they should be sent off for 20 minutes and put on report? And then the ban can be reviewed after that, until we find a way of making the breakdown safer. But it will never be fool-proof.
"It happens so quickly – and they're doing almost everything correctly. Those guys might have hit 10 other rucks in exactly the same way, and in the 11th they have caught someone in the head after a split-second, last-minute movement where there's no chance [of avoidance] whatsoever. Slo-mo replays don't help at all, either. What could those guys have done differently? They couldn't have checked six inches before contact to figure out whether a head was in the way. By that point, they'll have lost the battle and the ball.
"Jackaling can continue as a skill, but you're not going to avoid accidental collisions with the head. Rugby is a collision game. It is the toughest team sport on the body. And there are so many different, varied contact areas. There are multiple physical challenges. We have to look to make it safer, but by retaining that element of the contest."
Often, however, as Salvi explains, when a man is sent off after flying into a ruck from afar, as with O'Mahony and Fagerson, the fault lies with the team-mates who arrived at the ruck beforehand.
"What we've seen [with O'Mahony and Fagerson] is that the initial cleaner has not done his job properly or has been a bit slow, which then gives the jackaler the opportunity to try and pilfer the ball – and the guys who are very good are able to almost ride that first storm," Salvi says. "Then the secondary support – like O'Mahony and Fagerson – are arriving, perhaps not as quickly as they might have liked, and it's an open shot. They're the ones you have to be most wary of, when there has been a three or four second breakdown already and someone comes in to try and resolve the issue that wasn't dealt with initially.
"It is a timing thing. It is easy for me to say, but if Hoggy (Stuart Hogg, Exeter's full-back) had done his initial job a bit better - not that you want your 15 to be at the breakdown that often - then Fagerson probably wouldn't have felt like he would have had to go into the breakdown as hard as he did.
"There is a little bit of sympathy. I have been in that position, too, where I've had to do an extra bit of work because a back hasn't done his job properly, and I'm trying to create clean ball.
"But there has to be a better understanding from players that, when a jackaler has created a three or four second breakdown, rushing in to clear them out five seconds later is probably not going to win you the ball back anyway."
Wasps have produced one of modern-day rugby's most impressive jackalers in the form of Willis. Everard is the man in charge of the breakdown in the West Midlands and, for him, like Salvi, it is all about pace, avoiding these lengthy pile-ups.
"For some context, what we focus on at Wasps is winning the 'race' to the ball [after a player has been tackled]," he says. "It's a race over the ball between the jackaler and the supporting attacker, on both sides of the ball.
"As a supporting attacker, if you win that race over the ball, then you win the cleanout. Where possible as a support player, you want to avoid a contest over the ball that involves removing a threat.
"There are a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, the obvious one, is the speed of the ball. If you arrive quickly and you don't have to clear anyone out, then the ball should be pretty quick; secondly, it preserves energy – arriving quickly and low to the ground, as tiring as that might feel, is far more efficient than actually having to shift a body off the ball; thirdly, it takes the referee out the game in terms of them making holding-on decisions. 'Speed and height', that's what we push so much.
"If they had arrived first then those red cards wouldn't have happened."
One solution, Easter believes, would be to enforce the immediate release of the ball on the floor. If the ball-carrier were to release the ball as soon as they were tackled - as the law dictates - then the duration of the ruck, and therefore the jackal, would be shorter. Rucks would be over and done with by the time the likes of O'Mahony and Fagerson got the cavalry charge up and running. It would result in a quicker game, too.
"When you look at the ruck, you have to look at the tackle law at the moment," Easter says. "Does the ball-carrier release the ball immediately in the tackle when he's felled? The answer, probably, is no. That means the jackaler is in that position for longer, therefore there is a greater risk to his health and well-being.
"But, if the ball-carrier released the ball immediately, and the jackaler got hold of it, they would be in and out of there, and suddenly the clearers would be arriving too late and you get that fluid game and turnover ball back again.
Salvi agrees in theory - "a quick release could do it, it's just about how you manage it" - but highlights that isolated ball-carriers would currently prefer to concede a holding-on penalty than give up the ball to a jackaler. Conceding a penalty, despite the loss of territory, allows defences to regroup and organise themselves; the sense of unknown that comes with conceding a turnover is far less preferable.
This was showcased when New Zealand's Super Rugby Aotearoa began last autumn. There was an almost fanatical emphasis from referees on holding-on penalties, and ball-carriers had far less time to release the ball before they were penalised. Defending jackalers were prioritised over attacking ruckers and, temporarily, chaos ensued as teams attempted to come to terms with the referees' lack of leniency towards the ball-carrier on the ground. Because the referees were so quick on the whistle, however, there were seldom any turnovers - just penalties.
"[In last year's Super Rugby Aotearoa] you did not get much turnover ball," Easter adds. "Turnover ball makes it a much more free-flowing and entertaining game. It is the best ball to attack from as it's against an unstructured defence. These quick holding-on penalties were great from a defensive point of view, but then the game has to stop at the whistle and you have to kick to touch. And then it becomes structured again."
And Easter adds the most damning indictment on the current mess: "I'm just pleased I'm not playing the game at the moment."
When former, recently-retired internationals – who have stuck with the elite game via coaching – consider themselves lucky that they are no longer players, then this is an imbroglio that World Rugby simply cannot ignore.
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

sid waddell

I don't know what jackaling is

I would have a better idea of what a tracker mortgage is


screenexile

I can understand the uproar about Fergusons red card and clear out but O'Mahonys was blatant targeting and there were no mitigations for him at all why is he being absolved in that article??

Capt Pat

#9652
I suppose the ref was technically right to send the 2 players off but I don't like to see games decided by decisions like this. It is a physical mans game after all.

Yellow cards would have sufficed and been a sufficient deterrent to others.

lenny

Quote from: Capt Pat on February 23, 2021, 07:33:50 PM
I suppose the ref was technically right to send the 2 players off but I don't like to see games decided by decisions like this. It is a physical mans game after all.

Yellow cards would have sufficed and been a sufficient deterrent to others.

A rugby match is generally ruined when a player gets a red card, especially early on. There's probably room for another in between card where a player gets 20 minutes in the sinbin.

johnnycool

Quote from: Capt Pat on February 23, 2021, 07:33:50 PM
I suppose the ref was technically right to send the 2 players off but I don't like to see games decided by decisions like this. It is a physical mans game after all.

Yellow cards would have sufficed and been a sufficient deterrent to others.

There were a raft of red cards in the English premiership over the weekend for head contacts.

Won't take long for the coaches to change how the players are coached how to clear out without going so high.

The reds are a good thing long term

tiempo

Quote from: johnnycool on February 24, 2021, 09:48:39 AM
Quote from: Capt Pat on February 23, 2021, 07:33:50 PM
I suppose the ref was technically right to send the 2 players off but I don't like to see games decided by decisions like this. It is a physical mans game after all.

Yellow cards would have sufficed and been a sufficient deterrent to others.

There were a raft of red cards in the English premiership over the weekend for head contacts.

Won't take long for the coaches to change how the players are coached how to clear out without going so high.

The reds are a good thing long term

Correct, and it would soon sort out the gobby lads in Gaelic and groundball too, would love to see a ref in the self styled best league in the world hand out 6 reds for verbal abuse, guaranteed the week after there wouldn't be a peep


Capt Pat

Halpin will always be remembered for giving the New Zealand team the fingers after scoring the try in the 1995 world cup.

trailer

https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2021/0210/1196259-sex-abuse/

Hard to understand that this was overlooked in the 90s when the Church was in throws of abuse scandals.

seafoid

Quote from: mouview on February 24, 2021, 12:05:39 PM
https://www.rte.ie/sport/rugby/2021/0224/1198995-former-ireland-prop-gary-halpin-dies-aged-55/

Sudden death seemingly...

Former Ireland prop Gary Halpin dies aged 55
Kilkenny native also represented Ireland at hammer throw and is remembered for try against All Blacks
about an hour ago

John O'Sullivan

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/international/former-ireland-prop-gary-halpin-dies-aged-55-1.4493829

Gary Halpin, who won 11 caps for Ireland, has died aged 55. The Kilkenny-born tighthead prop is best remembered for his try-scoring gesture in a 1995 Rugby World Cup pool match against New Zealand, turning to the All Blacks, he offered a double middle-finger salute.

Gerry Murphy's Ireland team had the temerity to score the first try of the match in 1995, a move straight from the training ground as scrumhalf Michael Bradley tapped a free-kick and gave it to the onrushing Halpin about six metres from the New Zealand line. The tighthead prop thundered through the attempted tackles of Jamie Joseph and Mike Brewer to crash over.

In an interview many years later, Halpin offered some context to his reaction. "(New Zealander hooker) Sean Fitzpatrick had been winding us up, calling us Paddies. And I couldn't really believe I'd actually scored a try.

"It was a rather stupid thing to do, being a teacher and all. And it's kind of embarrassing because I've gone on to meet a lot of those All Blacks since, Zinzan Brooke from my time at Harlequins, his brother Robin, and Jamie Joseph.

"But I dined out on it like a lord. That was when I discovered that South Africans hated the Kiwis more than anyone. I loved telling the story; you'd embellish it a bit every time, just to get bought another beer.

RWC moments: Gary Halpin's try-scoring salute

"I sidestepped Lomu three times in that game, the only problem was he was the one carrying the ball at that stage. It's Sean Fitzpatrick, every time I see him I want to give him the finger. He is a great player and all that. It was a rush of blood to the head. In that competition these guys were sold to us as unstoppable and they proved to be right to that last hurdle."


A free spirit and a great character with a wonderful sense of humour, Halpin represented Blackrock College, Wanderers, Leinster, London Irish and Harlequins during his career.

Educated at Rockwell College, Halpin was a dual international sportsman, playing schools rugby for Ireland while at Rockwell College, before accepting a scholarship to Manhattan College. He won the 35lb weight throw at the 1988 NCAA Division 1 indoor collegiate championships and earned All American status for his throwing on four occasions.

Upon returning to Ireland in 1989, he joined Wanderers, toured North America with the Irish senior squad, and the following year made his debut against England at Twickenham. He won his 11th and final cap of a five-year international career in a 1995 World Cup quarter-final defeat to France.

He spent two decades teaching in England at St George's College, Weybridge and the Oratory School outside Reading. His pupils were intrigued to know that Halpin featured in Jonah Lomu Rugby, Playstation's first ever rugby game.

He admitted: "Interestingly, and the kids showed this to me, one of the hardest things in the game is to try and get me to score a try. They've had various competitions to try and get me over the line. If they manage it, and they had the proof on replay, I gave them a present."

Halpin subsequently returned to Ireland to take up a position as Head of Boarding at Cistercian College, Roscrea. Irish rugby has lost one of its great characters. Sincere condolences to his family and friends. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU