Squad due to be announced on Tuesday. You would imagine the bulk of the squad will be Welsh. I think O'Connell will be captain, Gatland has never picked a back as his captain in any job, so that's not a good sign for O'Driscoll. Robshaw and Warburton should both be ruled out as contenders in my opinion as neither is guaranteed a place in the test team as they have to compete with each other and Justin Tipuric for the no. 7 shirt.
Of the Irish, O'Connell, O'Driscoll, Sexton, Best, Kearney, Healy and O'Brien are probably guaranteed a spot on the tour. Zebo, O'Mahony, Ross, Ryan, Bowe and Gilroy have all probably got an outside chance of making it. Anybody think Tommy O'Donnell could make it. I think he's in with a chance having made Robshaw look a very ordinary player in the Heineken Cup quarter final.
There has to be serious doubts over Warburtons captaincy credentials after what happened during the 6 nations and as u say he isn't even a guaranteed starter. I think Bowe will go as for my money he is still the best winger available. Him, Heaslip will also go, probably Murray and the other Irish players u named as certs is probably as many as we can hope for. After today's display I just wonder has Wilko done enough to get in? Really think Owen Farrell is overrated anyway. As long as Dylan Hartley and Chris Ashton aren't on the plane then Gatland can pick who he wants!!
Sexton, Kearney, BOD, Farmer O'Brien and POC should be test starters. Heslip, Best and Bowe in with a shout depending on health and form and their relative chances would be in that order of likelihood too.
I do enjoy the Lions tours, one of the few amalgamation teams in any sport that actually works.
O' Donnell has no chance of getting a spot on this tour. Maybe in four years he will get there.
Quote from: tyroneboi on April 28, 2013, 08:06:33 PM
There has to be serious doubts over Warburtons captaincy credentials after what happened during the 6 nations and as u say he isn't even a guaranteed starter. I think Bowe will go as for my money he is still the best winger available. Him, Heaslip will also go, probably Murray and the other Irish players u named as certs is probably as many as we can hope for. After today's display I just wonder has Wilko done enough to get in? Really think Owen Farrell is overrated anyway. As long as Dylan Hartley and Chris Ashton aren't on the plane then Gatland can pick who he wants!!
Wilkinson probably won't go as Toulon will probably be involved in the Top14 final and I read somewhere that Gatland wants to pick as little French-based players as possible. The French-based players I see going are Mike Phillips and Gethin Jenkins. Wilkinson should, but I doubt he will. Steffon Armitage is another who I don't think will be picked but should at least be considered. Also said in an article on ESPNscrum that there is set to be the fewest English players on the tour since a tour of South Africa in the 70's (not sure of the year).
Quote from: Syferus on April 28, 2013, 08:08:46 PM
Sexton, Kearney, BOD, Farmer O'Brien and POC should be test starters. Best and Bowe in with a shout depending on health and form.
I do enjoy the Lions tours, one of the few amalgamation teams in any sport that actually works.
Doubt it. Halfpenny is the form fullback atm.
Quote from: CorkMan on April 28, 2013, 08:14:13 PM
Quote from: Syferus on April 28, 2013, 08:08:46 PM
Sexton, Kearney, BOD, Farmer O'Brien and POC should be test starters. Best and Bowe in with a shout depending on health and form.
I do enjoy the Lions tours, one of the few amalgamation teams in any sport that actually works.
Doubt it. Halfpenny is the form fullback atm.
It's between the two and Gatland will probably lean towards his own man but Kearney has barely put a foot wrong this season, he rose above the muck in the Six Nations too and was probably our best player. Objectively he should be the pick, at least in my opinion.
Agreed.Halfpenny had been streets ahead of Kearney for the past two seasons.
Quote from: galwayman on April 28, 2013, 08:24:38 PM
Agreed.Halfpenny had been streets ahead of Kearney for the past two seasons.
+1
Kearney was nowhere near the same form of the 2009 Lions Tour season.
Quote from: Syferus on April 28, 2013, 08:19:23 PM
Quote from: CorkMan on April 28, 2013, 08:14:13 PM
Quote from: Syferus on April 28, 2013, 08:08:46 PM
Sexton, Kearney, BOD, Farmer O'Brien and POC should be test starters. Best and Bowe in with a shout depending on health and form.
I do enjoy the Lions tours, one of the few amalgamation teams in any sport that actually works.
Doubt it. Halfpenny is the form fullback atm.
It's between the two and Gatland will probably lean towards his own man but Kearney has barely put a foot wrong this season, he rose above the muck in the Six Nations too and was probably our best player. Objectively he should be the pick, at least in my opinion.
If Halfpenny does make the test team, you can't say it's just because he's Gatlands own man. While Kearney is his main contender, Halfpenny is head and shoulders above every other fullback in the northern hemispere. He's up there with Israel Dagg as the best fullback in the world.
I think its closer between Kearney and Halfpenny than you boys are making out. Halfpenny is an unbelieveable kicker and is probably in the top 4 or 5 in the world at it but for me Kearney offers more going forward. I think it will be a 50/50 call depending on how they go in the warm up games - Halfpenny is edging it at the moment! I also would throw Hogg into the full back equation - he is rapid! I wouldnt be surprised to see 2 out of that 3 starting in the test team. I'm looking forward to the Lions - i fancy them to edge it 2-1.
Quote from: Syferus on April 28, 2013, 08:08:46 PM
I do enjoy the Lions tours, one of the few amalgamation teams in any sport that actually works.
I am a fan of the Lions too but just as an alternative opinion this article may be worth a read
http://www.irishpost.co.uk/sport/british-and-irish-lions-are-an-embarassment
Quote from: SBH1983 on April 28, 2013, 09:40:40 PM
Quote from: Syferus on April 28, 2013, 08:08:46 PM
I do enjoy the Lions tours, one of the few amalgamation teams in any sport that actually works.
I am a fan of the Lions too but just as an alternative opinion this article may be worth a read
http://www.irishpost.co.uk/sport/british-and-irish-lions-are-an-embarassment
I severely doubt that photo was taken after the 3rd test in 2009 and for that reason I refuse to read the article!
Quote from: SBH1983 on April 28, 2013, 09:40:40 PM
Quote from: Syferus on April 28, 2013, 08:08:46 PM
I do enjoy the Lions tours, one of the few amalgamation teams in any sport that actually works.
I am a fan of the Lions too but just as an alternative opinion this article may be worth a read
http://www.irishpost.co.uk/sport/british-and-irish-lions-are-an-embarassment
Acts the bollix, then quotes Thatcher, f**king p***k.
Quote from: trileacman on April 28, 2013, 09:49:04 PM
Quote from: SBH1983 on April 28, 2013, 09:40:40 PM
Quote from: Syferus on April 28, 2013, 08:08:46 PM
I do enjoy the Lions tours, one of the few amalgamation teams in any sport that actually works.
I am a fan of the Lions too but just as an alternative opinion this article may be worth a read
http://www.irishpost.co.uk/sport/british-and-irish-lions-are-an-embarassment
Acts the bollix, then quotes Thatcher, f**king p***k.
It's really just a troll article based around a single, isolated fact - that lots more people play rugby in Ireland and Britain than the nations the Lions play. No mention (or just trying to gloss over it) of these being teams assembled a few weeks before the first test and always playing away from home or the thousand other factors playing into the opposition's hands.
It's fun not to have to detest English and Welsh players for a few weeks every four years.
Quote from: trileacman on April 28, 2013, 09:49:04 PM
Quote from: SBH1983 on April 28, 2013, 09:40:40 PM
Quote from: Syferus on April 28, 2013, 08:08:46 PM
I do enjoy the Lions tours, one of the few amalgamation teams in any sport that actually works.
I am a fan of the Lions too but just as an alternative opinion this article may be worth a read
http://www.irishpost.co.uk/sport/british-and-irish-lions-are-an-embarassment
Acts the bollix, then quotes Thatcher, f**king p***k.
Interesting statistics relating to playing numbers for combined home unions vs NZ, SA and Australia.
I think Zebo will be on the plane, Gatland has seen him preform well several times and he has that edge that Gatland looks out for.
Heaslip won't make it on the plane. Sean O'Brien will, not sure if he'll make the 1st fifteen. Healy will travel and should be one of the 1st names on the teamsheet. Best possibly but I see nothing in his game that marks him superior to any of 10 other options. O'Connell and BOD will likely travel, BOD has stiff competition for a centres place, O'Connell less so and should be in the 1st fifteen.
Kearny will likely travel but is easily a step down from the level of Halfpenny, neither are linebreakers in attack like Hogg is. Actually the more I think about it the more I can see Hogg travelling and not Kearney, addresses the token Scot issue whilst it still offers something different from full-back. Wonder will Euan Murray be selected, he travelled the last time (didn't he?) despite refusing to play Sundays. Dan Cole has tight-head secured in my opinion.
Scrum-half will be Phillips, with Murray and Youngs shooting off for the last spot, could really be either player, two talented but inconsistent players. Farrell and Sexton at 10. Who'll be third choice flyhalf? Biggar? Would love to see Tim Visser playing in a top class backline but in reality he had a poor 6 nations and there is no room for all the "maybe this guy could work" talent (Bowe, Zebo, Visser, North, Ashton). Who are nailed on as being the wingers? Cuthbert and who?
Laidlaw could be going, decent cover at 10 and 9. Nowhere near good enough to make the team but he's a utility back in a restricted squad.
Likely Starting team
1: Healy
2: Best???
3: Cole or Jones. Cole in my book.
4: POC
5: Launchbury
6: Warburton
7: Robshaw
8:Faletau
9: Phillips
10: Farrell
11: Cuthbert
12: Roberts
13: Tuliagi
14: Zebo
15: Halfpenny
Farrell at 10?Hmm I dunno about that.
I think he is a bit overrated to be honest.
Sexton is the 10 baring injury.
Likewise there is no way on Earth BOD doesn't start. He's exactly the sort of player you want going into a bear pit like Australia's back yard. Still absolutely amazing, he's probably the best passer on the planet and his skill in defence is well documented. I'd look for the Lions to replicate the success they had in 2009 with a wrecking ball and a smaller playmaker in the centre and I'd really like to see BOD and Roberts resume their partnership.
BOD is in the frame to be Captain of the Lions, like he was in 05. So he would be a definite starter.
The player numbers thing is a stupid argument.
England distorts the picture completely and his analogy of Leitrim and Mayo is as idiotic as comparing Cork v Kilkenny in hurling on purely playing numbers, or senior clubs, or 131 car registrations or whatever.
How does playing the numbers argument add up in golf with 2 Ulster bies in the top 10? Or 6 majors in the last 5 years from this island?
Quote from: galwayman on April 28, 2013, 10:43:51 PM
Farrell at 10?Hmm I dunno about that.
I think he is a bit overrated to be honest.
I agree but his dad is picking the team so I can't see him being left out. Farrell is an English poster boy and it will be a predominately English media focusing on the tour.
Quote from: Syferus on April 28, 2013, 10:45:27 PM
Sexton is the 10 baring injury.
Likewise there is no way on Earth BOD doesn't start. He's exactly the sort of player you want going into a bear pit like Australia's back yard. Still absolutely amazing, he's probably the best passer on the planet and his skill in defence is well documented. I'd look for the Lions to replicate the success they had in 2009 with a wrecking ball and a smaller playmaker in the centre and I'd really like to see BOD and Roberts resume their partnership.
I would pick Sexton but I don't think Gatland will, especially pressurised by an English presence in the backroom team and in the media.
Quote from: trileacman on April 29, 2013, 12:00:13 AM
Quote from: Syferus on April 28, 2013, 10:45:27 PM
Sexton is the 10 baring injury.
Likewise there is no way on Earth BOD doesn't start. He's exactly the sort of player you want going into a bear pit like Australia's back yard. Still absolutely amazing, he's probably the best passer on the planet and his skill in defence is well documented. I'd look for the Lions to replicate the success they had in 2009 with a wrecking ball and a smaller playmaker in the centre and I'd really like to see BOD and Roberts resume their partnership.
I would pick Sexton but I don't think Gatland will, especially pressurised by an English presence in the backroom team and in the media.
I just can't see it with Gatland there. Sexton suits the sort of game he had Wales playing and on top of it he's more than good enough from the tee and the boot. Farrell is way too green to throw into the 10 jersey in a Lions tour test, you'd be asking him to marshall a team of veterans not a bunch of plucky youngsters. Most recent tours have always leant towards experienced heads, particularly at out-half. It'd be an unholy shame if Sexton missed out because of politics.
Sexton will go. The warm up games will decide if he starts but he has to be in the box seat at the moment.
BOD & POC will also go and decent warm up game performances could see them start.
Healy, Heaslip, Kearney & O'Brien are too good to leave behind.
After that, Bowe is good enough but might not have played enough recently, Zebo & Murray might travel and who knows if they gets a good run in warm up games, Best will possibly travel and I would pick Ryan but I doubt if Gatland will.
Will Wilkinson go?
I can't bring myself to give a shite about the (British, as they inevitably get called by 99% of fans and commentators) Lions but, for what it's worth, I think Madigan should go. He's as good as any and better than nearly all out-halves I've seen this year and the best place kicker around.
The British (and token Paddies) Loins Tour.
What is the big deal with this?
Some of the teams that make up the British Loins can beat the Aussies on their own. It seems like this amalgamation makes them weaker.
Quote from: nrico2006 on April 29, 2013, 09:05:33 AM
Will Wilkinson go?
He has timed his run perfectly. Some performance at the weekend.
Quote from: Premier Emperor on April 29, 2013, 10:39:04 AM
The British (and token Paddies) Loins Tour.
What is the big deal with this?
Some of the teams that make up the British Loins can beat the Aussies on their own. It seems like this amalgamation makes them weaker.
You know the shite ye have on the signs into your county? That sort of thing. Tradition.
The British and Irish Lions was a big deal back when the game was amateur. 40 lads from the 4 Countries heading away for 6 weeks to play Rugby against the top sides was a big deal back then.
With the professional era it doesn't seem as significant and looks to be more of a sponsorship junket. For those involved though they still see it as a relatively big deal and it does attract interest from supporters and the players seem to take it as a great honour to be chosen to go on the tour so I don't really see why people get all bent out of shape about it.
I'm looking forward to this tour and I think they have a real chance of beating an Aussie team in transition but you never know with these things.
But even if they do, so what? Who can get excited about an amalgam team beating a single nation? It'd be like Meath vs. Limerick-Clare-Tipperary-Waterford. I might be interested in watching how Meath would play, if I came across it channel-hopping. But who'd bother shouting for LCTW?
Quote from: Hardy on April 29, 2013, 12:03:20 PM
But even if they do, so what? Who can get excited about an amalgam team beating a single nation? It's be like Meath vs. Limerick-Clare-Tipperary-Waterford. I might be interested in watching how Meath would play, if I came across it channel-hopping. But who'd bother shouting for LCTW?
If you don't like it why bother posting?
Quote from: screenexile on April 29, 2013, 11:52:15 AM
The British and Irish Lions was a big deal back when the game was amateur. 40 lads from the 4 Countries heading away for 6 weeks to play Rugby against the top sides was a big deal back then.
With the professional era it doesn't seem as significant and looks to be more of a sponsorship junket. For those involved though they still see it as a relatively big deal and it does attract interest from supporters and the players seem to take it as a great honour to be chosen to go on the tour so I don't really see why people get all bent out of shape about it.
I'm looking forward to this tour and I think they have a real chance of beating an Aussie team in transition but you never know with these things.
It's partly professionalism that has taken the sheen off it, but more to do with professional prizes. Winning a WC or a Heineken Cup is within the grasp of anyone going on a Lions Tour. Winning both is a possibility for some. So while it's still a great honour to be selected, there's bigger draws around, for players and their followers.
Quote from: trileacman on April 29, 2013, 12:26:32 PM
Quote from: Hardy on April 29, 2013, 12:03:20 PM
But even if they do, so what? Who can get excited about an amalgam team beating a single nation? It's be like Meath vs. Limerick-Clare-Tipperary-Waterford. I might be interested in watching how Meath would play, if I came across it channel-hopping. But who'd bother shouting for LCTW?
If you don't like it why bother posting?
Gosh, I don't know. Maybe to say I don't like it? If that was what I wanted to say (which it wasn't). If that's OK with you.
Quote from: Hardy on April 29, 2013, 12:36:45 PM
Quote from: trileacman on April 29, 2013, 12:26:32 PM
Quote from: Hardy on April 29, 2013, 12:03:20 PM
But even if they do, so what? Who can get excited about an amalgam team beating a single nation? It's be like Meath vs. Limerick-Clare-Tipperary-Waterford. I might be interested in watching how Meath would play, if I came across it channel-hopping. But who'd bother shouting for LCTW?
If you don't like it why bother posting?
Gosh, I don't know. Maybe to say I don't like it? If that was what I wanted to say (which it wasn't). If that's OK with you.
You came in to have a good whine. Why bother?
Re the Lions, its the infrequency that keeps it going. Most players will rarely play against the same test side for the Lions more than once with a few exceptions like BOD. For the test teams - NZ, SA and the Aussies - those players will have the factor that they don't want to be done over by the touring side in the one test series they play against them. Its a huge challenge for them to be able to beat the 4 nations combined. When the individual nations tour down under, its not often they are competitive over the test series, the Lions will generally always be that.
I still think the players see it as a huge honour and massive recognition of their career.
Quote from: Bingo on April 29, 2013, 12:54:46 PM
Re the Lions, its the infrequency that keeps it going. Most players will rarely play against the same test side for the Lions more than once with a few exceptions like BOD. For the test teams - NZ, SA and the Aussies - those players will have the factor that they don't want to be done over by the touring side in the one test series they play against them. Its a huge challenge for them to be able to beat the 4 nations combined. When the individual nations tour down under, its not often they are competitive over the test series, the Lions will generally always be that.
I still think the players see it as a huge honour and massive recognition of their career.
What sort of money would the players be on for this tour, since we are in the professional era. Id say a few of them are also thinking exposure and bank balances.
Quote from: NAG1 on April 29, 2013, 01:00:31 PM
Quote from: Bingo on April 29, 2013, 12:54:46 PM
Re the Lions, its the infrequency that keeps it going. Most players will rarely play against the same test side for the Lions more than once with a few exceptions like BOD. For the test teams - NZ, SA and the Aussies - those players will have the factor that they don't want to be done over by the touring side in the one test series they play against them. Its a huge challenge for them to be able to beat the 4 nations combined. When the individual nations tour down under, its not often they are competitive over the test series, the Lions will generally always be that.
I still think the players see it as a huge honour and massive recognition of their career.
What sort of money would the players be on for this tour, since we are in the professional era. Id say a few of them are also thinking exposure and bank balances.
Don't know but could you name any Irish players who will be travelling because of the "exposure and bank balances."?
Quote from: trileacman on April 29, 2013, 02:43:36 PM
Quote from: NAG1 on April 29, 2013, 01:00:31 PM
Quote from: Bingo on April 29, 2013, 12:54:46 PM
Re the Lions, its the infrequency that keeps it going. Most players will rarely play against the same test side for the Lions more than once with a few exceptions like BOD. For the test teams - NZ, SA and the Aussies - those players will have the factor that they don't want to be done over by the touring side in the one test series they play against them. Its a huge challenge for them to be able to beat the 4 nations combined. When the individual nations tour down under, its not often they are competitive over the test series, the Lions will generally always be that.
I still think the players see it as a huge honour and massive recognition of their career.
What sort of money would the players be on for this tour, since we are in the professional era. Id say a few of them are also thinking exposure and bank balances.
Don't know but could you name any Irish players who will be travelling because of the "exposure and bank balances."?
I wasn't referring to any of the Irish players specifically but I am pretty sure that Johnny Sexton will know the value of the tour to himself. Also I didnt say it was a bad thing, the players should be making money off this is big business and loads of other people will be making big bucks off the back of it.
I'd imagine been a Lion and touring was a bigger deal financially in the ameteur days as it really raised the profile and give players a real media presence plus from a business point of view it probably helped their actual careers.
I don't think the french clubs where the money seems to be will give a dam if they are lions or not, Sexton was signed on a big deal before the Lions came into the equation. In fact, they probably resent the Lions tour to a certain extent as it seems that it goes against some players in terms of their availability.
Quote from: Hardy on April 29, 2013, 12:03:20 PM
But even if they do, so what? Who can get excited about an amalgam team beating a single nation? It'd be like Meath vs. Limerick-Clare-Tipperary-Waterford. I might be interested in watching how Meath would play, if I came across it channel-hopping. But who'd bother shouting for LCTW?
Rugger bugger's get excited. It's not that mysterious, is it?
Quote from: trileacman on April 29, 2013, 12:45:11 PM
Quote from: Hardy on April 29, 2013, 12:36:45 PM
Quote from: trileacman on April 29, 2013, 12:26:32 PM
Quote from: Hardy on April 29, 2013, 12:03:20 PM
But even if they do, so what? Who can get excited about an amalgam team beating a single nation? It's be like Meath vs. Limerick-Clare-Tipperary-Waterford. I might be interested in watching how Meath would play, if I came across it channel-hopping. But who'd bother shouting for LCTW?
If you don't like it why bother posting?
Gosh, I don't know. Maybe to say I don't like it? If that was what I wanted to say (which it wasn't). If that's OK with you.
You came in to have a good whine. Why bother?
Ah I think it's clear enough who's doing the whining here.
Quote from: NAG1 on April 29, 2013, 01:00:31 PM
Quote from: Bingo on April 29, 2013, 12:54:46 PM
Re the Lions, its the infrequency that keeps it going. Most players will rarely play against the same test side for the Lions more than once with a few exceptions like BOD. For the test teams - NZ, SA and the Aussies - those players will have the factor that they don't want to be done over by the touring side in the one test series they play against them. Its a huge challenge for them to be able to beat the 4 nations combined. When the individual nations tour down under, its not often they are competitive over the test series, the Lions will generally always be that.
I still think the players see it as a huge honour and massive recognition of their career.
What sort of money would the players be on for this tour, since we are in the professional era. Id say a few of them are also thinking exposure and bank balances.
It's reckoned to be worth 50k a man.
So that's what it cost Alan Quinlan when he went rooting for Leo Cullen's eye before the last tour.
Quote from: Hardy on April 29, 2013, 12:03:20 PM
But who'd bother shouting for LCTW?
All of Westmeath for a start.........
/Jim.
I was waiting for "the rest of the country" OK.
Quote from: Bord na Mona man on April 29, 2013, 04:09:58 PM
It's reckoned to be worth 50k a man.
So that's what it cost Alan Quinlan when he went rooting for Leo Cullen's eye before the last tour.
I blame the fans.
If ye have nothing to do from end of may to start of july and have a spare 14000 pound then why not get yer ass to hong kong and australia and take in the ten games. Some price!!
Quote from: theticklemister on April 29, 2013, 04:53:06 PM
If ye have nothing to do from end of may to start of july and have a spare 14000 pound then why not get yer ass to hong kong and australia and take in the ten games. Some price!!
Meath lads fit the bill.
Would expect the following Irish players named on squad, Healy, Best, Ross, O'Connell, O'Brien, Heaslip, Sexton, O'Driscoll, Bowe and Kearney and the ones in bold to make the test team.
I totally zoned out on Healy before. Very few props can do what he does. It's amazing that after years of our scrum being a liability that we now have two front-rowers within touching distance of the Lions test team.
Quote from: Count 10 on April 29, 2013, 07:17:41 PM
Would expect the following Irish players named on squad, Healy, Best, Ross, O'Connell, O'Brien, Heaslip, Sexton, O'Driscoll, Bowe and Kearney and the ones in bold to make the test team.
Ross will make it into the Chicago youth choir before he gets on the Lions panel. 7 Irish in the first 15 would make us the biggest team contributors against 3 sides who ranked above us in the 6 nations.
9 Irish going.
No Zebo and Sam Warbuton is the captain.
No Rory Best
Lions squad for the tour to Australia:
Backs: Leigh Halfpenny (Wales), Stuart Hogg (Scotland), Rob Kearney (Ireland), Tommy Bowe (Ireland), Alex Cuthbert (Wales), Sean Maitland (Scotland), George North (Wales), Jonathan Davies (Wales), Brian O'Driscoll (Ireland), Jamie Roberts (Wales), Manu Tuilagi (England), Owen Farrell (England), Jonathan Sexton (Ireland), Conor Murray (Ireland), Mike Phillips (Wales), Ben Youngs (England).
Forwards: Dan Cole (England), Cian Healy (Ireland), Gethin Jenkins (Wales), Adam Jones (Wales), Matt Stevens (England), Mako Vunipola (England), Dylan Hartley (England), Richard Hibbard (Wales), Tom Youngs (England), Ian Evans (Wales), Richie Gray (Scotland), Alun-Wyn Jones (Wales), Paul O'Connell (Ireland), Geoff Parling (England), Tom Croft (England), Toby Faletau (Wales), Jamie Heaslip (Ireland), Dan Lydiate (Wales), Sean O'Brien (Ireland), Justin Tipuric (Wales), Sam Warburton (Wales, captain)
Quote from: Rossie11 on April 30, 2013, 11:16:08 AM
No Rory Best
Saying as the ability to throw the ball in at the line out is a key component of this position and RB cant do that consistently then he was always going to struggle.
Best will be flying out a couple of weeks afterwards when one of the hookers get injured.
O'Driscoll's 4th Tour call up.
Some record.
Warburton will do well just to justify selection, but he has to start now. Bad decision by Gatland there but it is hard to argue with the rest from an Irish pov. Zebo had more competition in his position than Murray so that is why the latter went.
Quote from: Bord na Mona man on April 30, 2013, 11:23:47 AM
Best will be flying out a couple of weeks afterwards when one of the hookers get injured.
Exactly there is always four or five players who don't even make it on to the plane with at least another three who don't make it to the test matches so Best is in with a good shout of going yet. Taking two out halves is a bit of a risk and I'd say someone like Wilkinson , Hook or Dan Biggar will be in the squad before they head down under.
From a selfish Munster point of view I'm glad Zebo didn't make it. Munster need to hit the ground running next year again and with O'Gara calling time they need people like Zebo, O'Mahoney, O'Donnell, Ryan, Murray, Earls, Jones, Kilcoyne, to be fresh and rested. A tough tour down in Australia is not going to be conducive to getting the likes of O'Connell a long run of games next year.
Feel sorry for Zebo. I'd rate him higher than Maitland and North. I also think he'd be better as 3rd choice fullback than Hogg. I would have had Cuthbert-Halpenny-Bowe as my test team, but Zebo as sub.
I think Donnacha Ryan played himself off the tour by playing when injured during the 6N.
I don't think Rory Best particularly deserved to go. But he deserved it more than Dylan Hartley.
Of course there'll be changes between now and the time they get on the plane, and more again when they're over there.
I can't understand the criticism Heaslip gets. I fully expect him to show during the tour that he's head and shoulders above Faletau and to start the first test.
Quote from: Hound on April 30, 2013, 11:43:59 AM
Feel sorry for Zebo. I'd rate him higher than Maitland and North. I also think he'd be better as 3rd choice fullback than Hogg. I would have had Cuthbert-Halpenny-Bowe as my test team, but Zebo as sub.
I think Donnacha Ryan played himself off the tour by playing when injured during the 6N.
I don't think Rory Best particularly deserved to go. But he deserved it more than Dylan Hartley.
Of course there'll be changes between now and the time they get on the plane, and more again when they're over there.
I can't understand the criticism Heaslip gets. I fully expect him to show during the tour that he's head and shoulders above Faletau and to start the first test.
I think it is his style. He looks very relaxed as against the more bullocking style of other forwards. But he gets through more work, more tackles than most and he gets crucial tries and rarely takes a step back even when the scrum is overrun. I wouldn't have him as Captain though but I agree and think he will start the first test. The other 6 Nations teams know how good he is.
Agree with that. He's probably more finesse than a bullock. I think he has suffered, perception wise, by being made Irish Captain. It was a bad 6N and he was the man with that poison chalice, especially the manner in which he got it.
I think he'd make hay if he was just left play his own game.
Quote from: Crete Boom on April 30, 2013, 11:33:33 AM
Quote from: Bord na Mona man on April 30, 2013, 11:23:47 AM
Best will be flying out a couple of weeks afterwards when one of the hookers get injured.
Exactly there is always four or five players who don't even make it on to the plane with at least another three who don't make it to the test matches so Best is in with a good shout of going yet. Taking two out halves is a bit of a risk and I'd say someone like Wilkinson , Hook or Dan Biggar will be in the squad before they head down under.
Gatland was just interviewed on sky and he said that Wilkinson wasn't available due to commitments with Toulon .. He had called him yesterday to check his availability ..
Quote from: Declan on April 30, 2013, 11:19:30 AM
Lions squad for the tour to Australia:
Backs: Leigh Halfpenny (Wales), Stuart Hogg (Scotland), Rob Kearney (Ireland), Tommy Bowe (Ireland), Alex Cuthbert (Wales), Sean Maitland (Scotland), George North (Wales), Jonathan Davies (Wales), Brian O'Driscoll (Ireland), Jamie Roberts (Wales), Manu Tuilagi (England), Owen Farrell (England), Jonathan Sexton (Ireland), Conor Murray (Ireland), Mike Phillips (Wales), Ben Youngs (England).
Forwards: Dan Cole (England), Cian Healy (Ireland), Gethin Jenkins (Wales), Adam Jones (Wales), Matt Stevens (England), Mako Vunipola (England), Dylan Hartley (England), Richard Hibbard (Wales), Tom Youngs (England), Ian Evans (Wales), Richie Gray (Scotland), Alun-Wyn Jones (Wales), Paul O'Connell (Ireland), Geoff Parling (England), Tom Croft (England), Toby Faletau (Wales), Jamie Heaslip (Ireland), Dan Lydiate (Wales), Sean O'Brien (Ireland), Justin Tipuric (Wales), Sam Warburton (Wales, captain)
Taking 3 English props and 2 hookers is a joke....the Italian scrum screwed them, as for Richie Gray ::)...ruck inspector!!
Murray a surprise
Quote from: Count 10 on April 30, 2013, 12:57:18 PM
Quote from: Declan on April 30, 2013, 11:19:30 AM
Lions squad for the tour to Australia:
Backs: Leigh Halfpenny (Wales), Stuart Hogg (Scotland), Rob Kearney (Ireland), Tommy Bowe (Ireland), Alex Cuthbert (Wales), Sean Maitland (Scotland), George North (Wales), Jonathan Davies (Wales), Brian O'Driscoll (Ireland), Jamie Roberts (Wales), Manu Tuilagi (England), Owen Farrell (England), Jonathan Sexton (Ireland), Conor Murray (Ireland), Mike Phillips (Wales), Ben Youngs (England).
Forwards: Dan Cole (England), Cian Healy (Ireland), Gethin Jenkins (Wales), Adam Jones (Wales), Matt Stevens (England), Mako Vunipola (England), Dylan Hartley (England), Richard Hibbard (Wales), Tom Youngs (England), Ian Evans (Wales), Richie Gray (Scotland), Alun-Wyn Jones (Wales), Paul O'Connell (Ireland), Geoff Parling (England), Tom Croft (England), Toby Faletau (Wales), Jamie Heaslip (Ireland), Dan Lydiate (Wales), Sean O'Brien (Ireland), Justin Tipuric (Wales), Sam Warburton (Wales, captain)
Taking 3 English props and 2 hookers is a joke....the Italian scrum screwed them, as for Richie Gray ::)...ruck inspector!!
Murray a surprise
Pity they can't bring any of the Italian front row!
Picking my first 15, I'm struggling to see any Englishman starting. 10/11 Welsh and 4/5 Irish. A few English on the bench.
Good picture from Munster training session this morning
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BJF6mYbCAAEpc2U.jpg:large)
Big DOC was hoping. Just a wee glint of hope in his eye........
Quote from: theticklemister on April 30, 2013, 02:59:30 PM
Big DOC was hoping. Just a wee glint of hope in his eye........
Even big DOC knows that ship had sailed.
Quote from: Hound on April 30, 2013, 11:43:59 AM
Feel sorry for Zebo. I'd rate him higher than Maitland and North. I also think he'd be better as 3rd choice fullback than Hogg. I would have had Cuthbert-Halpenny-Bowe as my test team, but Zebo as sub.
I think Donnacha Ryan played himself off the tour by playing when injured during the 6N.
I don't think Rory Best particularly deserved to go. But he deserved it more than Dylan Hartley.
Of course there'll be changes between now and the time they get on the plane, and more again when they're over there.
I can't understand the criticism Heaslip gets. I fully expect him to show during the tour that he's head and shoulders above Faletau and to start the first test.
Never heard worse!! Fully expect Hogg to light up the series. Class play with serious pace and vision.
He's the third string FB.
Dunno why Scotland don't play Hogg in the O'Driscoll role. Average full back but a serious player with ball in hand.
Were Lions squads much smaller back in the day? I seem to recall an awful stink about various people missing out in past tours, yet you'd want to be pretty low-rent to miss out on a squad with 37 places.
Quote from: deiseach on May 01, 2013, 11:24:02 AM
Were Lions squads much smaller back in the day? I seem to recall an awful stink about various people missing out in past tours, yet you'd want to be pretty low-rent to miss out on a squad with 37 places.
I think it was as low as 30 in the amateur days and 37 in the last few years.
The exception being when Woodward brought 45 in 2005 and probably twice that in backroom staff.
I'd say in some of those 30 man squads, it was the England first XV by default.
Also, when Ireland was the poor relation of the I'd say we were the most outraged at the omissions.
1993 being the obvious one where Ireland beat England 17-3 in Lansdowne and the Lions squad being 17 English to 3 Irish.
I feel a bit sorry for Rory Best. Though he didn't have a good season he's still better than sc**bag Hartley.
I like the hype of the Lions tours but find it hard to support them. I can't stand the Scottish, English and Welsh rugby teams so it's not easy to suddenly join into a love in every four years.
Quote from: OakleafCounty on May 01, 2013, 03:16:00 PM
I feel a bit sorry for Rory Best. Though he didn't have a good season he's still better than sc**bag Hartley.
I like the hype of the Lions tours but find it hard to support them. I can't stand the Scottish, English and Welsh rugby teams so it's not easy to suddenly join into a love in every four years.
Why do you hate the Scottish and Welsh?
Did my undergrad in Wales. They love their rugby but their bias is unreal. On the Scrum V programme all they talk about was how great they are. At that time Ireland were beating them regularly and it was like the Irish upstarts had a nerve to compete with the Welsh kings.
Did my postgrad in Scotland. Rugby there is played by upper class snobby twats who are born with a silver spoon and look down on everyone else.
Quote from: screenexile on May 01, 2013, 03:19:12 PM
Why do you hate the Scottish and Welsh?
Quote from: screenexile on May 01, 2013, 03:19:12 PM
Quote from: OakleafCounty on May 01, 2013, 03:16:00 PM
I feel a bit sorry for Rory Best. Though he didn't have a good season he's still better than sc**bag Hartley.
I like the hype of the Lions tours but find it hard to support them. I can't stand the Scottish, English and Welsh rugby teams so it's not easy to suddenly join into a love in every four years.
Why do you hate the Scottish and Welsh?
If you've been following the Six Nations for any length of time and don't hate the Jocks and the Taffs, you haven't been doing it right. Hating them doesn't mean you can't hate the English more.
Quote from: AZOffaly on April 30, 2013, 11:40:56 AM
From a selfish Munster point of view I'm glad Zebo didn't make it. Munster need to hit the ground running next year again and with O'Gara calling time they need people like Zebo, O'Mahoney, O'Donnell, Ryan, Murray, Earls, Jones, Kilcoyne, to be fresh and rested. A tough tour down in Australia is not going to be conducive to getting the likes of O'Connell a long run of games next year.
Is Offaly not in Leinster? ???
Quote from: deiseach on May 01, 2013, 03:26:51 PM
Quote from: screenexile on May 01, 2013, 03:19:12 PM
Quote from: OakleafCounty on May 01, 2013, 03:16:00 PM
I feel a bit sorry for Rory Best. Though he didn't have a good season he's still better than sc**bag Hartley.
I like the hype of the Lions tours but find it hard to support them. I can't stand the Scottish, English and Welsh rugby teams so it's not easy to suddenly join into a love in every four years.
Why do you hate the Scottish and Welsh?
If you've been following the Six Nations for any length of time and don't hate the Jocks and the Taffs, you haven't been doing it right. Hating them doesn't mean you can't hate the English more.
I hate the Welsh more than I hate the English, but I don't get this dislike for the Scots. Fellow Celts, great anthem, take a good beating, hate the English, what's not to love?
Quote from: OakleafCounty on May 01, 2013, 03:26:29 PM
Did my postgrad in Scotland. Rugby there is played by upper class snobby t**ts who are born with a silver spoon and look down on everyone else.
Scottish rugby fans are the type who think the Highland clearances were a good thing.
Quote from: trileacman on May 01, 2013, 03:28:56 PM
I hate the Welsh more than I hate the English, but I don't get this dislike for the Scots. Fellow Celts, great anthem, take a good beating, hate the English, what's not to love?
Well, my formative rugby years were spent watching the likes of Roy Laidlaw, Finlay Calder, John Jeffrey and Doddie Weir stinking the place out with their pinch-the-lace-from-the-ball style of rugby, and that's even before you consider the plummy tones of 'AG Hastings'. As OakleafCounty notes, the Scots are actually far more up themselves than the English who at least are leavened out with a smattering of West Country bumpkins.
Was chatting to a lad home from Aus last weekend. He'd be a good lad with a strong dislike of the English (part time RA man as I call him), anyways, he says the Aussies would drive you mad in terms of cockiness and general sh*te they talk when it comes to everything and particularly sport.
So much so that he hopes the English stuff them in the Ashes and the Lions just tear them a new one. He in Rugby league country but even started playing club level AFL as it was a chance to get stuck into the Aussies and mock them that anyone can play their game. :D
He heading back down and hopes to get to a few of the games.
Quote from: Bingo on May 01, 2013, 03:38:11 PM
Was chatting to a lad home from Aus last weekend. He'd be a good lad with a strong dislike of the English (part time RA man as I call him), anyways, he says the Aussies would drive you mad in terms of cockiness and general sh*te they talk when it comes to everything and particularly sport.
So much so that he hopes the English stuff them in the Ashes and the Lions just tear them a new one. He in Rugby league country but even started playing club level AFL as it was a chance to get stuck into the Aussies and mock them that anyone can play their game. :D
He heading back down and hopes to get to a few of the games.
In fairness they haven't had much to be shouting about lately and when this Drug Scandal thing is unravelled god knows how many of their starlets will come crashing down with a bang.
Quote from: NAG1 on May 01, 2013, 03:49:27 PM
Quote from: Bingo on May 01, 2013, 03:38:11 PM
Was chatting to a lad home from Aus last weekend. He'd be a good lad with a strong dislike of the English (part time RA man as I call him), anyways, he says the Aussies would drive you mad in terms of cockiness and general sh*te they talk when it comes to everything and particularly sport.
So much so that he hopes the English stuff them in the Ashes and the Lions just tear them a new one. He in Rugby league country but even started playing club level AFL as it was a chance to get stuck into the Aussies and mock them that anyone can play their game. :D
He heading back down and hopes to get to a few of the games.
In fairness they haven't had much to be shouting about lately and when this Drug Scandal thing is unravelled god knows how many of their starlets will come crashing down with a bang.
Whats this NAG1??
Quote from: Walter Cronc on May 01, 2013, 03:50:24 PM
Quote from: NAG1 on May 01, 2013, 03:49:27 PM
Quote from: Bingo on May 01, 2013, 03:38:11 PM
Was chatting to a lad home from Aus last weekend. He'd be a good lad with a strong dislike of the English (part time RA man as I call him), anyways, he says the Aussies would drive you mad in terms of cockiness and general sh*te they talk when it comes to everything and particularly sport.
So much so that he hopes the English stuff them in the Ashes and the Lions just tear them a new one. He in Rugby league country but even started playing club level AFL as it was a chance to get stuck into the Aussies and mock them that anyone can play their game. :D
He heading back down and hopes to get to a few of the games.
In fairness they haven't had much to be shouting about lately and when this Drug Scandal thing is unravelled god knows how many of their starlets will come crashing down with a bang.
Whats this NAG1??
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2013/02/07/australia-sports-doping/1898005/
Interesting. James O'Connor, Kurtley Beale and Quade Cooper top of my list to be caught!!
Quote from: deiseach on May 01, 2013, 03:30:12 PM
Quote from: OakleafCounty on May 01, 2013, 03:26:29 PM
Did my postgrad in Scotland. Rugby there is played by upper class snobby t**ts who are born with a silver spoon and look down on everyone else.
Scottish rugby fans are the type who think the Highland clearances were a good thing.
Lol.
Dont know much about scottish club rugby....... I do now!
Interesting is right. Having read Greg Wood's article in the Guardian about the casual attitude in Australia (http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2013/apr/28/ascot-mahmood-al-zarooni-steroids) (among other countries, to be fair) to doping in horses, NAG1's link strikes a chord.
Quote from: Walter Cronc on May 01, 2013, 04:09:45 PM
Interesting. James O'Connor, Kurtley Beale and Quade Cooper top of my list to be caught!!
Harold Bishop is a f**king cert
Hijacking yet more threads lol. You City men know nathing about GAA or Rugger ;)
Quote from: Walter Cronc on May 01, 2013, 04:20:00 PM
Hijacking yet more threads lol. You City men know nathing about GAA or Rugger ;)
I'm glad I know f**k all about rugby, still more in the layman to be fair; but as an ex-county Scor quiz Doire representative I would hold my own!
I;m telling Enda Gormley ye follow that sport.
Keith Wood giving his view on Best not being selected http://t.co/MCjgHXuTQU
Quote from: screenexile on May 01, 2013, 03:19:12 PM
Quote from: OakleafCounty on May 01, 2013, 03:16:00 PM
I feel a bit sorry for Rory Best. Though he didn't have a good season he's still better than sc**bag Hartley.
I like the hype of the Lions tours but find it hard to support them. I can't stand the Scottish, English and Welsh rugby teams so it's not easy to suddenly join into a love in every four years.
Why do you hate the Scottish and Welsh?
The wouldn't come in '72.
Quote from: Hardy on May 01, 2013, 06:51:53 PM
Quote from: screenexile on May 01, 2013, 03:19:12 PM
Quote from: OakleafCounty on May 01, 2013, 03:16:00 PM
I feel a bit sorry for Rory Best. Though he didn't have a good season he's still better than sc**bag Hartley.
I like the hype of the Lions tours but find it hard to support them. I can't stand the Scottish, English and Welsh rugby teams so it's not easy to suddenly join into a love in every four years.
Why do you hate the Scottish and Welsh?
The wouldn't come in '72.
+1 England and France had no problem coming over to play us after losing to us in Paris and Twickenham. They denied great men like Gibson , McBride and Ray McLoughlin a slam >:(
Quote
+1 England and France had no problem coming over to play us after losing to us in Paris and Twickenham. They denied great men like Gibson , McBride and Ray McLoughlin a slam
Yep and as their captain John Pullen said at the dinner - we mightn't be any good but at least we turn up. Welsh are the most boorish rugby supporters I've met even give the Kiwis a run for their money
Quote from: theticklemister on May 01, 2013, 05:38:36 PM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on May 01, 2013, 04:20:00 PM
Hijacking yet more threads lol. You City men know nathing about GAA or Rugger ;)
I'm glad I know f**k all about rugby, still more in the layman to be fair; but as an ex-county Scor quiz Doire representative I would hold my own!
I;m telling Enda Gormley ye follow that sport.
Enda played rugby for the Rainey! Credits it with helping him learn how to take a tackle ;)
Tap and go lads, cocky Welsh valley men, Scottish dukes, Tans and Irish turf cutters, we're all Lions supporters for the next two months. Whether you want to be or not. :-*
Quote from: Walter Cronc on May 01, 2013, 08:27:38 PM
Quote from: theticklemister on May 01, 2013, 05:38:36 PM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on May 01, 2013, 04:20:00 PM
Hijacking yet more threads lol. You City men know nathing about GAA or Rugger ;)
I'm glad I know f**k all about rugby, still more in the layman to be fair; but as an ex-county Scor quiz Doire representative I would hold my own!
I;m telling Enda Gormley ye follow that sport.
Enda played rugby for the Rainey! Credits it with helping him learn how to take a tackle ;)
So we know his true colours now; so thats why he wants rid of the hurls in Derry!!!! In fact bring out the hurls and give him a good smack across the arse.
South Derry; heart of rugby.
Good game this morning, great first half, good win against a decent side.
Stuart Barnes would annoy the hole off ye....."Richie Gray influenced the game".....he is useless...a ruck inspector if ever I saw one :P
Very poor rugby...hope Bowe's injury isn't serious.
Woo Woo Up the British Lions....
Tommy Bowe out of the tour with a finger injury
Some amount of injuries in this tour.
any thoughts on maybe the lions team entering the world cup ...it might mean the northern hemisphere starts competing and winning world cups and ending the aussie /kiwi/springbok perennial reign?
R u serious?
Quote from: Aaron Boone on June 08, 2013, 01:57:12 PM
Some amount of injuries in this tour.
There is on every Lions tour virtually. More to come yet I'd say.
Quote from: lynchbhoy on June 08, 2013, 02:26:13 PM
any thoughts on maybe the lions team entering the world cup ...it might mean the northern hemisphere starts competing and winning world cups and ending the aussie /kiwi/springbok perennial reign?
Christ Lynchboy you are obviously as clueless about Rugby as you are on Derry football!!
By the time this tour finishes, it just be the British Lions
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 08, 2013, 06:38:09 PM
Quote from: lynchbhoy on June 08, 2013, 02:26:13 PM
any thoughts on maybe the lions team entering the world cup ...it might mean the northern hemisphere starts competing and winning world cups and ending the aussie /kiwi/springbok perennial reign?
Christ Lynchboy you are obviously as clueless about Rugby as you are on Derry football!!
Please explain!
I posed a question, I didn't make any statement!
Looks like you are 'obviously clueless' when it comes to language and comprehension !
4 countries against arguably (at the moment) the weakest of the southern hemisphere teams... hard to get excited. all about the money.
Quote from: ha ha derry on June 10, 2013, 01:13:40 AM
4 countries against arguably (at the moment) the weakest of the southern hemisphere teams... hard to get excited. all about the money.
You're some buck if you think Australia - the 2011 Tri Nations champions - are weaker than Argentina and South Africa. They even finished above both in last year's tournament. You do know Argentina are both a southern hemisphere team and play in the expanded Tri Nations, right?
Jaysus that was fairly brutal! Not many lads look up to a test match after that performance. Rory Best was absolutely brutal, Twelvetrees, Barrit and Wade were dung, in fairness to Hogg he's not a Fly Half but he wasn't much good.
Faletau and Kearney maybe the only ones to salvage any credibillity from the game.
In the grand scheme of things it won't matter come Saturdays game but I think Gatland will be livid as I imagine they had their sights on a perfect record in Oz this time!
Quote from: screenexile on June 18, 2013, 01:48:44 PM
Jaysus that was fairly brutal! Not many lads look up to a test match after that performance. Rory Best was absolutely brutal, Twelvetrees, Barrit and Wade were dung, in fairness to Hogg he's not a Fly Half but he wasn't much good.
Faletau and Kearney maybe the only ones to salvage any credibillity from the game.
In the grand scheme of things it won't matter come Saturdays game but I think Gatland will be livid as I imagine they had their sights on a perfect record in Oz this time!
Oz at both 6/4 to win first test and tournament are good value.
I still think Lions first choice XV (Even with injuries) has enough to beat the under strength Wallabies.
At the risk of repeating myself, this Lions business is a complete load of tosh.
To me, it is like the annual All-Stars playing the All-Ireland winners.
Quote from: Orior on June 18, 2013, 05:55:07 PM
At the risk of repeating myself, this Lions business is a complete load of tosh.
To me, it is like the annual All-Stars playing the All-Ireland winners.
I find I hard to get interested in it this year either. If Ireland can beat Australia at a World Cup in the Southern Hemisphere then it's hardly a massive achievement for a team carrying the best players from four nations beating them.
It is a no win situation for the Lions. If they win all three tests people will say the aussies are a poor team and it is nothing to boast about.
And they'll be right.
Rugby Union is the fourth most popular football code in Australia.
Quote from: Hardy on June 18, 2013, 10:03:32 PM
And they'll be right.
Just because you're upset Joe didn't get picked for the Lions doesn't mean you have to take it out on the rest of us.
?
Quote from: dec on June 18, 2013, 10:41:18 PM
Rugby Union is the fourth most popular football code in Australia.
What is it in Ireland and England ?
Quote from: Orior on June 18, 2013, 05:55:07 PM
At the risk of repeating myself, this Lions business is a complete load of tosh.
To me, it is like the annual All-Stars playing the All-Ireland winners.
Clearly the players who are involved in Rugby week in week out and people who properly follow it see the Lions as the pinnacle of Test Rugby. If you don't find it interesting then there's no obligation on you to watch it or take an interest in it.
I find it very interesting and enjoy the fly on the wall documentaries associated with the Tours and the contest of the games. The fact that the Lions have had so few successes means that victory is all the better when it comes. It's probably over hyped these days (like every other sport on Sky) but I still find the games enjoyable the concept a fascinating one.
Much like the Ryder Cup, I can understand people being irritated with the hoopla that surrounds the Lions tour, particularly among the 'quality' press. But this idea that the Lions is inherently a daft idea and that anyone who buys into it is daft is, uh, daft. It has a long history, turbulent at times, and if it means a lot to the rugger buggers, no harm.
Today's Lions may be professional and play better, faster rugby, but they are not a patch on the legends of tours gone by
Andy Bull
Friday 14 June 2013
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/jun/14/history-lions-tours
----
Willie John McBride stood in his underpants and surveyed the scene in front of him. The wreckage of his hotel lobby lay all around, with, as Willie John recalled it, pieces of tables, bits of chair and other furniture strewn about and, in the thick of it, "a dozen drunken Lions, all out of their tree". He clenched his pipe between his teeth till its tip bobbed up towards his nose, then turned towards the hotel manager, who was, at that precise moment in the early hours of the morning, dripping wet and hopping up and down on one foot. "What," Willie John said to the manager, "seems to be the problem?"
The Lions might have got away with it if it hadn't been for Bobby Windsor. It would have had to have been Bobby. The Welsh hooker was one of those players who just could not help but take things a little too far. It was Bobby who took the blame when Tommy David's bed was shoved out of a window on to the hotel awning down below. He had the misfortune to be standing in the shot when a local photographer took a snap of the scene.
"I was known as 'the fireman'," Bobby said, "because I was the one who put the fires out." Literally. That night, after the Lions' 28-9 victory over South Africa in the second Test of 1974, "someone", Bobby remembered, "had set light to a load of empty cardboard beer boxes. So I got the fire extinguisher off the wall, but I couldn't get it to work. So I grabbed a hose pump and used that instead." Flushed with pride at having fulfilled his civic duty, Windsor was somewhat surprised to find himself being berated by the hotel manager across the pile of soggy, steaming cardboard. "He was being a right prat," Bobby said. "So I gave him a right good drenching as well."
Roger Uttley, the English forward, was sober enough to know that he had better run and get the captain, Willie John. "Roger was banging on my door at 3am, shouting that there was a bit of trouble and I was needed downstairs." McBride strolled out, in his pants, pausing only to pick up his pipe because "I never go anywhere without it, especially in times of crisis".
"In the midst of all this carnage there was an extremely irate hotel manager, shouting and screaming." For some reason, when Willie John, naked but for his pants and pipe, asked him what the matter was, the manager snapped and said he was going to call the police.
"Now,"
Willie John thought to himself, "I'd seen the riot police in operation in South Africa and didn't like the images my mind was conjuring up. I could see hordes of them rushing through the door and I didn't think they'd be asking for autographs from these drunken idiots."
Willie John paused and saw the next morning's headlines in his mind. "Drunken Lions darken rugby's name". He considered the situation. Sucked on his pipe. "Excuse me, but if you are going to get the police," he said to the manager with a smile, "do you think there will be many of them?"
That was that. The Lions left the next morning, but not before they had completed one last little ritual, every bit as entrenched in Lions tradition as the selection of an uncapped player: the tour manager handed over a cheque to compensate the hotel owner for all the damage done.
Both those rituals are long gone now. This is the fifth Lions tour of the professional era, and the last uncapped player to be picked for the squad was Will Greenwood in 1997. Back then, as Keith Wood has said, "the game had just turned professional, but there was still a lot of the amateur ethos". It was just wild enough to make the current trip to Australia seem pretty tame. The prop Adam Jones has described his average day in the camp before this tour as "Wake up. Cryotherapy. Breakfast. Train. Cryotherapy. Lunch. Train. Cryotherapy. Dinner. Sleep."
The dullest boys on tour, Jones says, are the teetotallers, who include the captain, Sam Warburton. Brian O'Driscoll says the only chance the drinkers do have to "unwind and have a few beers together" is on the evening after an afternoon kick-off. After the 22-12 win against Queensland Reds, he said, "the non-playing 23 went home early. By the time the others got in, it was midnight. Some of the boys were already in bed. It is not as conducive to hanging out after games."
Quite right too. Modern media coverage does not allow players to get away with much, and professionalism means that even if they could, many of them wouldn't want to. Under Gatland and Warburton, the Welsh turned all-but teetotal at the 2011 World Cup, allowing those who "feel they need it" a "bottle or two" of beer after a match to relax. You couldn't wring too many war stories out of all that on the after-dinner speaking circuit. But everyone remembers England's dwarf-tossing, ferry-diving escapades. Most people won't need reminding, either, which team was two points away from making the final and which was dumped out in disgrace in the quarters.
The Lions, though, have seen it all before. When they toured New Zealand in 1908 the English forward Percy Down took a dive off the side of a ferry in the very same spot as Manu Tuilagi did, in Auckland harbour 103 years later. Down did a somersault over the railing. The main difference was that six of his team-mates followed him overboard, one of them giving himself such a bad case of concussion as he hit the water that he missed the next match.
By then the Lions already had a reputation for making trouble. On their very first tour, in 1888, the local papers in Australia carried reports complaining about their "Rowdyism on the Railway" between Newcastle and Armidale, when "three galoots invaded a private first class carriage, guzzled tea without paying, smashed the cups and saucers, and left the solitary passenger to stand the racket".
So began 109 years of raising Cain. The 1968 Lions were accused of being the "worst-behaved team ever to tour South Africa" by the Johannesburg Sunday Times. The sage rugby writer JBG Thomas refuted this on the grounds that, unlike at least one lot of their predecessors, "they have never set fire to a railway carriage". That may have been true. But a couple of them did incinerate a pile of blazers belonging to their team-mates in a bonfire on the tarmac at Kimberley airport after what was described as an "airborne cheese and wine party".
"They have left a trail of havoc and stunned incredulity after three days in East London," thundered the Sunday Times. "Marked by severe drinking bouts, riotous behaviour at hotels and nightclubs. They left broken hotel doors, broken glasses by the dozen, unpaid liquor debts and girls in tears because of outright rudeness."
In New Zealand in 1977 the local girls were crying again, out of boredom rather than rudeness. That was the tour when the infamous "Wanda from Wanganui" told the press that she had slept with four of the tourists and found them to be "lousy lovers, boring, self-centred, ruthless, always on the make and anything but exciting bedmates. Give me the down to earth Kiwi male any day".
The squad were called a "pack of animals" on that trip, which was the tour which featured the Irish pair of Moss Keane, nicknamed "rent-a-storm", and Willie Duggan, perhaps the last of the real hell-raisers. Duggan had what he called "a pathological dislike of training", his one concession to fitness being a breakfast of half a dozen raw eggs on the morning of the match. Ollie Campbell remembers how he used to be able to tell which dressing room toilet Duggan was in before a match by the clouds of smoke billowing over the cubicle door. "I always had the philosophy," Duggan said, "that if you took 30 players out for a night and made sure they were well pissed before they went to bed at 3am, then got them up at 8am, trained the bejaysus out of them, then you would know who was up to lasting 80 minutes in an international."
Duggan's great mate Keane would have passed easily enough. Keane cultivated a fear of flying just so, his team-mates reckoned, it was taken for granted that he had to have five or six pints before he got on a plane or he wouldn't be able to travel. In 1977 he was in such a state when he got a last-minute call-up that he had a crash on the way to the airport, then left a message for his mother saying "the car is at the airport, it's written off, see you in four months".
The king of them all, though, was Blair "Paddy" Mayne, a man who has every claim to being the hardest-drinking, free-est-swinging firebrand in the long history of the Lions. Mayne was an Irish lock, and one-time university heavyweight boxing champion. He toured in 1938, when his great running gag, the centre Harry McKibbin said, was to burst into his team-mates' rooms in the middle of the night, knocking the doors off the hinges, and then systematically smash up all furniture, Keith Moon-style. "Until," McKibbin said, "all the chairs and tables and things were just so much bits of kindling around us in the room while we were still in bed."
The management despaired of Mayne, who used to run around with the Welsh hooker (what is it about Welsh hookers?) Bunner Travers. The two of them dressed up as sailors and snuck off to the Durban docks just so they could pick fights with the local longshoremen. When they got to Ellis Park, they found that the stands were being erected by a team of convicts from the local prison who were sleeping in a compound underneath the scaffolding.
Blair and Bunner befriended one of them, and asked him what he had done to merit a prison sentence. "Stealing chickens," he said. "And I've been given a seven-year stretch." Full of sympathy for their new companion, who they nicknamed "Rooster", Blair and Bunner returned that night with a pair of bolt cutters and some spare clothes. They sprung Rooster, and set him free. When he was caught the next day, it turned out the jacket he was wearing still had Mayne's name stitched inside the collar.
In desperation, the management decided to make Mayne share a room with the fly-half George Cromey, who also happened to be a Presbyterian minister. Even Cromey couldn't stop Mayne sneaking off from an official dinner to go on a late-night hunting trip with a group of men he'd met who were carrying rifles and lamplights. Cromey waited up for his room-mate till 3am, and then, just as he was nodding off, Mayne broke down the door and announced "I've just shot a springbok".
Cromey said his blood ran cold. And then he turned on the light, and saw Mayne, still wearing his cummerbund, with a dead antelope draped over his shoulders. "Jimmy Unwin has been complaining that the meat here isn't as fresh as it is back home," Mayne announced. So he took himself off to his team-mate Unwin's room, broke down that door too, and tossed the beast into his bed. The trouble was that, in all the confusion, Unwin cut his leg on the antelope's horn. That wouldn't do. So Mayne decided to deposit it outside the room of the South Africa manager, with a note saying: "A gift of fresh meat from the British Isles touring team."
Well, that did it. Even though the captain, Sammy Walker, was a great friend of his, Mayne knew that the management were going to tan his hide for that. So he scarpered. The team didn't see him for three days, till he turned up, still in his suit, to meet them on board the ship they were sailing home on.
And if those stories sound a little far-fetched, as though, like all the best tales, they have gained a little in the telling, well, they've nothing on what he did next. Mayne became one of the founding members of the SAS in the second world war. He was recruited out of a prison cell, where he had been sent after striking a senior officer "because he bored me". His bravery won him the Distinguished Service Order with three bars, the Légion d'honneur, and the Croix de Guerre.
Rugby has gained a lot from professionalism but it has a lost a little something too. On the pitch the 2013 Lions may play better rugby than most of their predecessors managed – harder, faster, and tougher, but off it, they're not a patch on the ones who came before them.
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Great article. The part about Blair 'Paddy' Maine is priceless. Madman!
Each to there own, but I think the Lions tours are great. As someone mentioned above, the documentaries are great. Some of the old stories of the old Lion's legends being on ships for weeks, training on the deck in amongst the other passengers. It is indeed the pinnacle for a lot of players...you just had to listen to Besty talking on the radio when the call came through that Dylan Hartley had acted like Dylan Hartley. Will hopefully get to one when we get the weans off to work / uni :-)
Ugh. After reading that article, I take back my live-and-let-live comments. John Taylor was the only lion among them (http://www.rfu.com/images/museum/pdfs/conference_john_taylor.pdf).
And they swirl their port glasses and sniff about soccer hooliganism.
QuoteAnd they swirl their port glasses and sniff about soccer hooliganism.
Some double standards alright
I'd say 'Wanda from Wanganui' never met a Meathman?
Quote from: Declan on June 19, 2013, 07:34:13 PM
QuoteAnd they swirl their port glasses and sniff about soccer hooliganism.
Some double standards alright
If you've ever seen a rugby team out on a night out after a game or even at a wedding type situation then you have a fair idea where this comes from. Just because they are good old chaps seems to give them this notion that they can be as obnoxious and down right ill mannered as they want to be. No time for it.
Quote from: NAG1 on June 20, 2013, 08:43:43 AM
Quote from: Declan on June 19, 2013, 07:34:13 PM
QuoteAnd they swirl their port glasses and sniff about soccer hooliganism.
Some double standards alright
If you've ever seen a rugby team out on a night out after a game or even at a wedding type situation then you have a fair idea where this comes from. Just because they are good old chaps seems to give them this notion that they can be as obnoxious and down right ill mannered as they want to be. No time for it.
It always helps when there's a few coppers on the team..
Anyway that's a pretty strong team out. Suspect for me would be Cuthbert, Warburton and Heaslip and the rest pretty much bang on.
Think Zebo, Tipuric and Faletau are unlucky but obviously Bowe will be straight in for the 2nd test. Looking forward to the game I think it will be a good one!
O'Brien has to be unlucky not to be on the bench at least.
Quote from: screenexile on June 20, 2013, 09:41:03 AM
Anyway that's a pretty strong team out. Suspect for me would be Cuthbert, Warburton and Heaslip and the rest pretty much bang on.
Think Zebo, Tipuric and Faletau are unlucky but obviously Bowe will be straight in for the 2nd test. Looking forward to the game I think it will be a good one!
O'Brien has to be unlucky not to be on the bench at least.
Yeah agree about Cuthbert. He has struggled defensively. I think Digby Ione has been selected on the left wing and he is a serious finisher. The closer its getting to the series the more nervous I am getting.
As for the lads who come on here to slag the Lions and rugby in general, why bother? I dont give a monkeys about hurling, the FAI and so forth, hence why I never comment on them!!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 20, 2013, 09:50:20 AM
As for the lads who come on here to slag the Lions and rugby in general, why bother? I dont give a monkeys about hurling, the FAI and so forth, hence why I never comment on them!!
There's a difference between not caring about something and actively disliking it.
Quote from: deiseach on June 20, 2013, 10:03:06 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 20, 2013, 09:50:20 AM
As for the lads who come on here to slag the Lions and rugby in general, why bother? I dont give a monkeys about hurling, the FAI and so forth, hence why I never comment on them!!
There's a difference between not caring about something and actively disliking it.
Both of which are perfectly valid on a discussion board as long as it isnt done in an offensive manner.
Quote from: NAG1 on June 20, 2013, 10:09:03 AM
Quote from: deiseach on June 20, 2013, 10:03:06 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 20, 2013, 09:50:20 AM
As for the lads who come on here to slag the Lions and rugby in general, why bother? I dont give a monkeys about hurling, the FAI and so forth, hence why I never comment on them!!
There's a difference between not caring about something and actively disliking it.
Both of which are perfectly valid on a discussion board as long as it isnt done in an offensive manner.
If you've ever seen a rugby team out on a night out after a game or even at a wedding type situation then you have a fair idea where this comes from. Just because they are good old chaps seems to give them this notion that they can be as obnoxious and down right ill mannered as they want to be. No time for it.Come on NAG, read your post above. Quite petty if you ask me!!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 20, 2013, 10:13:39 AM
If you've ever seen a rugby team out on a night out after a game or even at a wedding type situation then you have a fair idea where this comes from. Just because they are good old chaps seems to give them this notion that they can be as obnoxious and down right ill mannered as they want to be. No time for it.
Come on NAG, read your post above. Quite petty if you ask me!!
I've seen rugby teams act like that and it is obnoxious. Of course it's true that not all rugby teams behave like that etc etc. But when you see even a lefty newspaper like the Guardian rejoicing in tales of rugby teams engaging in behaviour that, to paraphrase Patrick Mayhew, would have shamed a tribe of cannibals, and behaviour that would give them a fit of the vapours if a soccer team were to do the same, I think a little bit of snark is warranted.
Quote from: deiseach on June 20, 2013, 10:20:48 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 20, 2013, 10:13:39 AM
If you've ever seen a rugby team out on a night out after a game or even at a wedding type situation then you have a fair idea where this comes from. Just because they are good old chaps seems to give them this notion that they can be as obnoxious and down right ill mannered as they want to be. No time for it.
Come on NAG, read your post above. Quite petty if you ask me!!
I've seen rugby teams act like that and it is obnoxious. Of course it's true that not all rugby teams behave like that etc etc. But when you see even a lefty newspaper like the Guardian rejoicing in tales of rugby teams engaging in behaviour that, to paraphrase Patrick Mayhew, would have shamed a tribe of cannibals, and behaviour that would give them a fit of the vapours if a soccer team were to do the same, I think a little bit of snark is warranted.
With the changes in society, especially in this island, people from all backgrounds and dare I say it 'classes' are now playing a range of sports including rugby. However to say Rugby players behave in an obnoxious manner on a night out and Gaelic footballers, soccer players don't is just ridiculous!!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 20, 2013, 10:31:39 AM
Quote from: deiseach on June 20, 2013, 10:20:48 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 20, 2013, 10:13:39 AM
If you've ever seen a rugby team out on a night out after a game or even at a wedding type situation then you have a fair idea where this comes from. Just because they are good old chaps seems to give them this notion that they can be as obnoxious and down right ill mannered as they want to be. No time for it.
Come on NAG, read your post above. Quite petty if you ask me!!
I've seen rugby teams act like that and it is obnoxious. Of course it's true that not all rugby teams behave like that etc etc. But when you see even a lefty newspaper like the Guardian rejoicing in tales of rugby teams engaging in behaviour that, to paraphrase Patrick Mayhew, would have shamed a tribe of cannibals, and behaviour that would give them a fit of the vapours if a soccer team were to do the same, I think a little bit of snark is warranted.
With the changes in society, especially in this island, people from all backgrounds and dare I say it 'classes' are now playing a range of sports including rugby. However to say Rugby players behave in an obnoxious manner on a night out and Gaelic footballers, soccer players don't is just ridiculous!!
You may think it is petty Walter but it was a valid comment based on what was posted beforehand, Ive seen it first hand and Im not saying all rugby clubs or teams are the same but Ive yet to see any GAA or soccer team on a night out behave the way Ive seen some rugby teams behave. That's all.
(http://s3.thejournal.ie/media/2013/06/bodryder-630x349.jpg)
Look how many Ryder Cups BOD has participated in!
Quote from: NAG1 on June 20, 2013, 10:35:11 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 20, 2013, 10:31:39 AM
Quote from: deiseach on June 20, 2013, 10:20:48 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 20, 2013, 10:13:39 AM
If you've ever seen a rugby team out on a night out after a game or even at a wedding type situation then you have a fair idea where this comes from. Just because they are good old chaps seems to give them this notion that they can be as obnoxious and down right ill mannered as they want to be. No time for it.
Come on NAG, read your post above. Quite petty if you ask me!!
I've seen rugby teams act like that and it is obnoxious. Of course it's true that not all rugby teams behave like that etc etc. But when you see even a lefty newspaper like the Guardian rejoicing in tales of rugby teams engaging in behaviour that, to paraphrase Patrick Mayhew, would have shamed a tribe of cannibals, and behaviour that would give them a fit of the vapours if a soccer team were to do the same, I think a little bit of snark is warranted.
With the changes in society, especially in this island, people from all backgrounds and dare I say it 'classes' are now playing a range of sports including rugby. However to say Rugby players behave in an obnoxious manner on a night out and Gaelic footballers, soccer players don't is just ridiculous!!
You may think it is petty Walter but it was a valid comment based on what was posted beforehand, Ive seen it first hand and Im not saying all rugby clubs or teams are the same but Ive yet to see any GAA or soccer team on a night out behave the way Ive seen some rugby teams behave. That's all.
Must be very well behaved GAA/soccer men in your part of the country!!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 20, 2013, 10:31:39 AM
With the changes in society, especially in this island, people from all backgrounds and dare I say it 'classes' are now playing a range of sports including rugby. However to say Rugby players behave in an obnoxious manner on a night out and Gaelic footballers, soccer players don't is just ridiculous!!
That's not the point. It's that rugby alickadoos see no problem in rugby teams behaving like animals. Not one have I seen a rugby type who, upon hearing about the 99 story (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/international/britishandirishlionsrugby/5177598/Lions-greatest-moments-Willie-John-McBrides-99-call.html), express the opinion that battering your opponents en masse might be a bit naughty. Nah, it was all a gentlemanly lark. Maybe each blow was being landed on behalf of Nelson Mandela in Robben Island.
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 20, 2013, 10:38:54 AM
Quote from: NAG1 on June 20, 2013, 10:35:11 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 20, 2013, 10:31:39 AM
Quote from: deiseach on June 20, 2013, 10:20:48 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 20, 2013, 10:13:39 AM
If you've ever seen a rugby team out on a night out after a game or even at a wedding type situation then you have a fair idea where this comes from. Just because they are good old chaps seems to give them this notion that they can be as obnoxious and down right ill mannered as they want to be. No time for it.
Come on NAG, read your post above. Quite petty if you ask me!!
I've seen rugby teams act like that and it is obnoxious. Of course it's true that not all rugby teams behave like that etc etc. But when you see even a lefty newspaper like the Guardian rejoicing in tales of rugby teams engaging in behaviour that, to paraphrase Patrick Mayhew, would have shamed a tribe of cannibals, and behaviour that would give them a fit of the vapours if a soccer team were to do the same, I think a little bit of snark is warranted.
With the changes in society, especially in this island, people from all backgrounds and dare I say it 'classes' are now playing a range of sports including rugby. However to say Rugby players behave in an obnoxious manner on a night out and Gaelic footballers, soccer players don't is just ridiculous!!
You may think it is petty Walter but it was a valid comment based on what was posted beforehand, Ive seen it first hand and Im not saying all rugby clubs or teams are the same but Ive yet to see any GAA or soccer team on a night out behave the way Ive seen some rugby teams behave. That's all.
Must be very well behaved GAA/soccer men in your part of the country!!
Na just really badly behaved rugby men! ;)
See what I did there
(http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/cameron-bullingdon-club.jpg)
The Lions yesterday.
Fuk the begrudgers...great buzz about Brisbane, looking forward to Saturday!
Love Lions rugby, class stuff.
Hopefully George North is 100%, beast of a man, love watching him play. Potential White Lomu.
Quote from: deiseach on June 20, 2013, 11:26:01 AM
(http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/cameron-bullingdon-club.jpg)
The Lions yesterday.
Christ, what you wouldn't do to have a machine gun handy when they were lining up that picture.
Ah the Lions aren't all bad won't fancy playing full back against this lad
(http://www.gaa.ie/content/images/news/miscellaneous/VainipoluLionsHurling.jpg)
Quote from: johnneycool on June 20, 2013, 01:41:29 PM
Quote from: deiseach on June 20, 2013, 11:26:01 AM
(http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/cameron-bullingdon-club.jpg)
The Lions yesterday.
Christ, what you wouldn't do to have a machine gun handy when they were lining up that picture.
Even as an ex player and still fan of the code I'm with deiseach on this. Funny enough I googled a famous quote about rugby and fascism and came up with the article below. every day's a schoolday.
Quote
How I enraged xenophobes, Christians and devotees of both rugby codes
Brian Viner Author Biography
Saturday 26 March 2005
It is not an easy trick to write a newspaper column and simultaneously open a can of worms, but I appear to have pulled it off with my reflections a week ago on Peter Howard, captain of the England rugby union team in 1931, who was engaged by Oswald Mosley to crack heads, when it was deemed necessary, as leader of a bunch known as Mosley's Biff Boys.
It is not an easy trick to write a newspaper column and simultaneously open a can of worms, but I appear to have pulled it off with my reflections a week ago on Peter Howard, captain of the England rugby union team in 1931, who was engaged by Oswald Mosley to crack heads, when it was deemed necessary, as leader of a bunch known as Mosley's Biff Boys.
A barrage of e-mails compels me to return to the subject; after all, I can't think of any previous occasion when in fewer than 800 words I have provoked raging xenophobes (how odd that they read The Independent), committed Christians (who took issue with my description of Howard's beloved Oxford Group, which became Moral Rearmament), fans of rugby union and devotees of rugby league, into writing letters to me ranging from the calmly informative to the offensively irate.
A Mr Bond went at me hammer and tongs for criticising Howard without setting his support for Mosley in some historical context. When he'd stopped condemning me as "disgraceful" and "contemptible", and wondering why I hadn't similarly exposed some Irish rugby star who perchance supported the IRA, he more temperately explained that "right-wing ideas were very popular among many members of the Establishment as a way to defend the country against Socialist revolution." Which is true, but still it seemed worthy of comment, I replied, that an England rugby union captain led Mosley's Biff Boys. And presumably it was possible to swing to the right without swinging with the right.
Most interesting of all were those letters from rugby league fundamentalists who said it did not surprise them in the least that an England rugby union captain should have joined Mosley. Several of them quoted George Orwell, although it is also said to have been Philip Toynbee, who wryly observed that a bomb placed under the West Stand at Twickenham would set back the cause of British fascism by 50 years. A larger number cited South African rugby union in the age of apartheid, and French rugby union during the Vichy regime, as further examples of the sport's tainted record in what might rather provocatively be termed human rights.
I was told that, to further acquaint myself with the history of rugby in Vichy France, I should read a book called The Forbidden Game, by Mike Rylance. I contacted Rylance himself. He told me about the campaign known as Refaire l'Unité du Rugby Français, which in 1940 resulted in the Vichy minister for sport, the former Wimbledon singles champion Jean Borotra, effectively signing rugby league's death warrant for the duration of the Second World War. To this day it has not recovered its pre-war popularity, which eclipsed that of rugby union.
The professionalism of rugby à treize was considered ethically unsound by the Vichy French, although of more significance, Rylance explained, was simply that many collaborationists in positions of power were union men, not least Colonel Pascot, Borotra's deputy and later his successor, who had been an international in the 15-man game and resented the fact that it was on its uppers while rugby league was thriving. So rugby à treize was declared illegal, and its assets, including its Paris headquarters, were seized. It recovered sufficiently to win a Test series against the mighty Australians, in Australia, in 1951. But the revival was short-lived, and efforts continue to force the French rugby union to make reparations.
To return to the late Peter Howard, I was mildly troubled, having rather questioned his character and implied that he fought for Franco (which he did not), to discover that his son is the eminent Times columnist Philip Howard, himself the father of a guy I was friendly with at university. I duly talked to Philip, who was the soul of kindness and clearly feels deep ambivalence about Peter and his convictions. He did tell me, however, his father had been born with a disability, a withered left leg, which in his international rugby career he used to conceal with copious bandaging. But once, when he was running in an English try at Cardiff Arms Park, the bandaging came undone and, according to Philip, "was flying behind him like a Jack Russell chasing him", much to the crowd's delight.
It was good to get a more rounded portrait of a somewhat flawed hero of English rugby union. I hope the worms can now be considered back in the can.
b.viner@independent.co.uk
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-union/how-i-enraged-xenophobes-christians-and-devotees-of-both-rugby-codes-6149726.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-union/how-i-enraged-xenophobes-christians-and-devotees-of-both-rugby-codes-6149726.html)
More agricultural hurling.
(http://balls.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/762395.jpg)
(http://balls.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/762400.jpg)
(http://balls.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/762399.jpg)
(http://balls.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/762393.jpg)
Quote from: johnneycool on June 20, 2013, 01:41:29 PM
Quote from: deiseach on June 20, 2013, 11:26:01 AM
(http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/cameron-bullingdon-club.jpg)
The Lions yesterday.
Christ, what you wouldn't do to have a machine gun handy when they were lining up that picture.
surely you'd weigh in with your fists? you wouldnt need a machine gun ;)
Jaysus I could imagine some of the lads here if they were around at the beginning of any sport.
WTF are you kicking that pigs belly for?
Sticks and a ball, in a field, are ye mad?
30 fat fools and only 1 ball, waste of time boys.
What the hell are ye doing with a net in a field?
My personal interest in the Lions is to watch how the Irish get on. If there were no Irish, as there often was in the past, my only problem would be with the state of the game here not the Lions. Sure it is contrived, but so is every single ball sport. Sky hype it to death but we then use Sky as a stick to beat RTE and the GAA when they don't promote our own games enough.
There's no need to be complicating a debate about emotions with logic.
Team picked is probably as strong as is available.....but I feel that if any key players get injured then they could be in big trouble. Key players being Halfpenny, BOD, Sexton and O'Connell....also think the replacements should have included O'Brien and Kearney. O'Brien was brilliant when Ireland beat them in WC.
No green blinkers on there then count?
Been interesting to see who would have made way if Roberts was fit, and Bowe for that matter.
Green...yes .....if Sexton gets injured(carrying a hamstring injury) and they have to rely on Farrell then it could spell trouble, BOD and POC for their leadership qualities alone, Halfpenny for his kicking alone. I would still expect the Lions to win but it will be tight.
Quote from: Dinny Breen on June 20, 2013, 02:44:24 PM
Ah the Lions aren't all bad won't fancy playing full back against this lad
(http://www.gaa.ie/content/images/news/miscellaneous/VainipoluLionsHurling.jpg)
He has the auldest head ever seen on a 22 yr old!
(http://media.joe.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Heaslip-lions-geech1.jpg)
Jamie must have exchanged his belt for the jersey.
So what is the source of the confidence for the Lions in the first test? Is it that Australia are not the force they were?
Quote from: deiseach on June 21, 2013, 03:15:49 PM
So what is the source of the confidence for the Lions in the first test? Is it that Australia are not the force they were?
Yeah, also their injuries.
As well as that the Lions look to be a strong team. They had good outings against the Reds and the Waratah's and have lads playing in the team who are clearly on form.
Quote from: screenexile on June 21, 2013, 03:22:57 PM
Quote from: deiseach on June 21, 2013, 03:15:49 PM
So what is the source of the confidence for the Lions in the first test? Is it that Australia are not the force they were?
Yeah, also their injuries.
As well as that the Lions look to be a strong team. They had good outings against the Reds and the Waratah's and have lads playing in the team who are clearly on form.
I have serious doubts about the front row and the lineout. Tom Youngs is not international quality. In saying that neither is Hibbert or Best. Madness having Lydiate on the bench ahead of O'Brien. Lydiate is an unreal tackler, not a game changer!!
Be interesting to see how they deal with Genia around the base of rucks.
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 21, 2013, 03:34:26 PM
Quote from: screenexile on June 21, 2013, 03:22:57 PM
Quote from: deiseach on June 21, 2013, 03:15:49 PM
So what is the source of the confidence for the Lions in the first test? Is it that Australia are not the force they were?
Yeah, also their injuries.
As well as that the Lions look to be a strong team. They had good outings against the Reds and the Waratah's and have lads playing in the team who are clearly on form.
I have serious doubts about the front row and the lineout. Tom Youngs is not international quality. In saying that neither is Hibbert or Best. Madness having Lydiate on the bench ahead of O'Brien. Lydiate is an unreal tackler, not a game changer!!
Be interesting to see how they deal with Genia around the base of rucks.
The Lydiate one is an odd one alright. If Heaslip is injured who is going to play 8?
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 21, 2013, 03:34:26 PM
Quote from: screenexile on June 21, 2013, 03:22:57 PM
Quote from: deiseach on June 21, 2013, 03:15:49 PM
So what is the source of the confidence for the Lions in the first test? Is it that Australia are not the force they were?
Yeah, also their injuries.
As well as that the Lions look to be a strong team. They had good outings against the Reds and the Waratah's and have lads playing in the team who are clearly on form.
Enda Gormley better not be reading this
I have serious doubts about the front row and the lineout. Tom Youngs is not international quality. In saying that neither is Hibbert or Best. Madness having Lydiate on the bench ahead of O'Brien. Lydiate is an unreal tackler, not a game changer!!
Be interesting to see how they deal with Genia around the base of rucks.
Quote from: theticklemister on June 21, 2013, 05:12:39 PM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 21, 2013, 03:34:26 PM
Quote from: screenexile on June 21, 2013, 03:22:57 PM
Quote from: deiseach on June 21, 2013, 03:15:49 PM
So what is the source of the confidence for the Lions in the first test? Is it that Australia are not the force they were?
Yeah, also their injuries.
As well as that the Lions look to be a strong team. They had good outings against the Reds and the Waratah's and have lads playing in the team who are clearly on form.
Enda Gormley better not be reading this
I have serious doubts about the front row and the lineout. Tom Youngs is not international quality. In saying that neither is Hibbert or Best. Madness having Lydiate on the bench ahead of O'Brien. Lydiate is an unreal tackler, not a game changer!!
Be interesting to see how they deal with Genia around the base of rucks.
Sort out your quoting tickle before ye slag ;)
Rainey Old Boys abú
any decent links?
Quote from: gerrykeegan on June 22, 2013, 11:04:33 AM
any decent links?
http://www.firstrow1.eu/watch/192314/1/watch-australia-vs-british-and-irish-lions.html (http://www.firstrow1.eu/watch/192314/1/watch-australia-vs-british-and-irish-lions.html)
Quote from: gerrykeegan on June 22, 2013, 11:04:33 AM
any decent links?
http://www.tsmplug.com/rugby/british-irish-lions-matches-2013-live-stream-online/
Genia made a fool out of Phillips there.
Ref is killing BOD.
Can't get either of them to work. What browser are using. It might just be my piece of shit laptop
Quote from: gerrykeegan on June 22, 2013, 11:28:26 AM
Can't get either of them to work. What browser are using. It might just be my piece of shit laptop
Safari works for the 1st one.
Genia is running the show. Lions are lucky not to be further behind with O Connors 2 missed penalties.
Cheers. Finally something working
Some try by North, they won't kick it to him again!
Thought North had another try
The one he did score http://t.co/aHIuL9GG2a
What a mighty Lions team. We can't defend for our lives, though.
North scoring tries and knocking out people.
Ref will decide this
Quote from: bennydorano on June 22, 2013, 12:49:00 PM
Ref will decide this
He's trying his best to anyways. The Aussies should give him an honorary yellow jersey.
Some let off..
The better team lost.If they had a reliable kicker they would have won no question
Plenty of luck, but plenty of silly mistakes & a Ref who gave them f**k all, room for improvement and with Roberts, Bowe & Kearney to come in they will come on for it.
Quote from: galwayman on June 22, 2013, 12:59:22 PM
The better team lost.If they had a reliable kicker they would have won no question
You see this type of thing I don't understand. Is a reliable kicker not a key part of being the 'better team'? If you don't have a reliable kicker and the other team does than that is a major key advantage team wise that one team has over the other. One team took their chances and the other team didn't because the respective place kickers were miles apart. Thus the team with the less reliable place kicker lost and not the better team.
The Lions were being robbed by a terrible ref. On the balance they were the better team from play, no matter where Beale's last kick went. The Aussies bossed the end-game because Gatland replaced his entire front row.
Not sure how you reckon the referee favoured either side.I thought he was quite good overall.
Quote from: galwayman on June 22, 2013, 01:12:01 PM
Not sure how you reckon the referee favoured either side.I thought he was quite good overall.
He wanted to ref it like they were playing rugby league, not allowing any meaningful contest at the ruck.
Any whiff of an Aussie penalty and he blew right away while he seemed reluctant to ever blow it up for the Lions. The passage that lead to the Fallau's first try was a scoreable Lions penalty that the referee ended the second the ball bobbled away from them. I can't see how anyone thinks that lad was having a good game.
They never adapted to how he was reffing the breakdown. Very strange interpretation and very little tolerance of any sort of a contest.
The hooker was very good and should not have been replaced. Changes ahead of the second test should be in the back row and at nine. Tipuric, O'Brien and Youngs to come in. The Welsh back three are excellent and they will probably be the winning of this series for the Lions.
Phillips will be very lucky if he starts next weekend, quiet 2nd halfs for both N11's today, North is just awesome.
Quote from: bennydorano on June 22, 2013, 01:02:10 PM
Plenty of luck, but plenty of silly mistakes & a Ref who gave them f**k all, room for improvement and with Roberts, Bowe & Kearney to come in they will come on for it.
Kearney won't be playing ahead of Halfpenny barring injury.
Was screaming at the ref through the TV and thought he was brutal giving marginal decisions to the Aussies. They were off their feet all over the shop, even for Genias try there was an Aussie lying on top if BOD.
Anyway but for injuries and a kicker it was the Aussiea game but the Lions got out if jail bigtime.
Anyway its all about the W and they got it. North is class, thought Sexton was excellent and the forwards got through a mountain of work. Tipuric or O'Brien could come in for Croft next week, possibly Faletau for Heaslip as well.
PS. Phillips was given a lesson today he was ket!
Thought Heaslip was the best back rower on display, certainly don't see him being dropped.
10mins into the 2nd i was thinking Sexton & Heaslip were both playing rubbish but they were excellent from then on.
Quote from: screenexile on June 22, 2013, 01:37:30 PM
Quote from: bennydorano on June 22, 2013, 01:02:10 PM
Plenty of luck, but plenty of silly mistakes & a Ref who gave them f**k all, room for improvement and with Roberts, Bowe & Kearney to come in they will come on for it.
Kearney won't be playing ahead of Halfpenny barring injury.
Was screaming at the ref through the TV and thought he was brutal giving marginal decisions to the Aussies. They were off their feet all over the shop, even for Genias try there was an Aussie lying on top if BOD.
Anyway but for injuries and a kicker it was the Aussiea game but the Lions got out if jail bigtime.
Anyway its all about the W and they got it. North is class, thought Sexton was excellent and the forwards got through a mountain of work. Tipuric or O'Brien could come in for Croft next week, possibly Faletau for Heaslip as well.
PS. Phillips was given a lesson today he was ket!
That was one of Heaslip's best games in a long time. Not a chance he'll be dropped.
There will be no changes from that team bar injury unless Roberts makes a miraculous recovery.
Bowe will come in for Maitland. Matt Stevens may have a chance for a bench propping spot.
Anywhere to watch highlights on the game?
Quote from: bennydorano on June 22, 2013, 01:02:10 PM
Plenty of luck, but plenty of silly mistakes & a Ref who gave them f**k all, room for improvement and with Roberts, Bowe & Kearney to come in they will come on for it.
Can't see Kearney replacing Halfpenny. Halfpenny has a kicking success rate of 92% and is in much better form than Kearney atm.
Quote from: CorkMan on June 22, 2013, 11:16:52 PM
Quote from: bennydorano on June 22, 2013, 01:02:10 PM
Plenty of luck, but plenty of silly mistakes & a Ref who gave them f**k all, room for improvement and with Roberts, Bowe & Kearney to come in they will come on for it.
Can't see Kearney replacing Halfpenny. Halfpenny has a kicking success rate of 92% and is in much better form than Kearney atm.
Doing nothing from play at the moment, but maybe that's by design. My God if his kicking isn't in one hell of a grove right now, he's striking the ball as sweetly as I've ever seen. Just let him kick the Aussies to death.
Irishmen playing for the british ???
What part of British AND Irish lions to you not understand? Dumbass!
Paul O'Connell getting sent home with broken bone in his hand
Edit - He is staying on tour by the looks of it
Tom Court? Jaysus!!!!
Times are tough lol!!
Lions must be in bad shape for front row cover if Tom Court is getting called out to Australia!!
Apparently it was more of a convenience thing - court was already in Australia on holiday so easier to call him in to sit on the bench on Tuesday rather than fly someone from the UK to the other side of the world. If he is anywhere near the test teams in the next few weeks then they may call it a day now.
Quote from: tyroneboi on June 23, 2013, 07:03:22 PM
Apparently it was more of a convenience thing - court was already in Australia on holiday so easier to call him in to sit on the bench on Tuesday rather than fly someone from the UK to the other side of the world. If he is anywhere near the test teams in the next few weeks then they may call it a day now.
Jaysus, Stephenite and Aerlik better start some training.
Good article in Sunday Times by David Walsh on the evolution of wings (&yesterday's impact of GN & Folau)
Giant wingers the new game-changers | The Australian
The extent to which they are changing the game was perfectly obvious on Saturday because North and Folau scored the kind of tries reminiscent of Jonah Lomu in his pomp but the difference was that Lomu was considered a physical freak, a once-in-a-lifetime player. On Saturday we saw three variations on the Lomu model and all three are considered world class.
North's try was so good it first got you out of your seat willing him to go all the way, then needing to sit back down and have someone pour you a cup of tea. It wasn't that he scored a try from a ball caught 5m inside his own half with the entire Australia team in front of him. No, what was startling was the ease with which he shredded the Wallabies' defence.
Berrick Barnes' clearance wasn't that bad as he hung the ball high in the air to give his chasers a chance to arrive close to the man making the catch. The Wallaby fullback could never have known that man would be North because no right thinking player would offer the Welsh winger any opportunity, however slim.
North made the catch, saw the isolated Pat McCabe approach and thought, "I can easily take him." McCabe is in the Aussie squad solely because of his great work in defence. He doesn't miss tackles. North surged past as if poor McCabe was a lamp post. James O'Connor came next and he threw himself at North's feet, more in adoration than with any belief he could bring down the Welshman.
Now North had his eyes on Barnes who had surged across field and stood like a sentry in his path. Recovering quickly from a stumble caused by O'Connor's limp attempt at a hand trip, North decided he would take Barnes on the outside and to ensure he would do so without losing momentum, he switched the ball from his right to left hand, leaving the right free to fend off Barnes.
First, the Australian had to get close enough for North to be able to fend him off. You almost heard the Welshman ask, "How can I fend you off from this far away?" Barnes fell by the wayside, and then there was just the Lions winger and the covering Will Genia. It was a tough one for Genia but the angle did suit him and in your mind's eye you saw him make a terrific tackle, like the one George Gregan made on Jeff Wilson way back in 1994.
Genia never even got close and North was so comfortable he pointed his finger at the Australia halfback, as if in admonishment.
"Really Will, you've got to do an awful lot better than that." But this is the extent of the advantage enjoyed by men with North's size and speed. It wasn't that much different nine minutes after that try when Folau got the ball almost 45m from the Lions line. He had Jonathan Sexton in front of him, waiting to cut him down, Alex Corbisiero running across to cover off the step inside, and Leigh Halfpenny waiting behind them in case Folau found a way through.
Folau first ran with the ball in both hands, not giving any clue as to whether he would go outside or inside Sexton. Against such a big and fast opponent, the Irish five-eighth knew he had to get his body position right and at the last second he crouched, ready to tackle Folau into touch. At the last half second, Folau stepped inside, and though Corbisiero sprinted, he was like a bus against a Ferrari.
But in this new game, the Ferrari is the size of the bus and Corbisiero only got to suck in the fumes. Halfpenny is normally one of the best one-on-one tacklers in the game but Folau is not normal.
Playing in his first rugby union Test, this convert from league danced past poor Leigh with a hauteur that said, "really Halfpenny, how could you imagine you had any chance?"
These men are different and when Cuthbert got his one opportunity in the second half, he breezed through as comfortably as his colleagues in the Giants' Club had done earlier in the game.
The brilliance of North, Folau and Cuthbert will cause the game to evolve. For starters, those nines and 10s looking for somewhere to kick the ball must make sure they don't kick it anywhere near them.
And you can bet your last dollar that no sooner had Saturday's game ended than rugby coaches everywhere were out searching for the next one. Taller, faster, stronger; that's the way the game is gone and the march is inexorable
Quote from: lickthem on June 23, 2013, 08:11:25 AM
What part of British AND Irish lions to you not understand? Dumbass!
its the british lions, always has been ;)
Quote from: muppet on June 23, 2013, 07:28:38 PM
Quote from: tyroneboi on June 23, 2013, 07:03:22 PM
Apparently it was more of a convenience thing - court was already in Australia on holiday so easier to call him in to sit on the bench on Tuesday rather than fly someone from the UK to the other side of the world. If he is anywhere near the test teams in the next few weeks then they may call it a day now.
Jaysus, Stephenite and Aerlik better start some training.
surely there is a differrence between desperate and clean mad !!
The CCC would be proud of this one.
QuoteUPDATE 3-Rugby-Australia captain Horwill cleared of stamping
Sun Jun 23, 2013 3:26pm BST
* Accidental contact with head of Alun Wyn Jones
* Free to play second test (Updates with Horwill cleared of stamping)
By Nick Mulvenney
BRISBANE, June 23 (Reuters) - Australia captain James Horwill has been cleared of stamping during his side's loss to the British and Irish Lions in the first test in Brisbane, the Australian Rugby Union said.
The 28-year-old lock was cited for allegedly stamping or trampling on Lions counterpart Alun Wyn Jones early in the match at Lang Park on Saturday.
"After hearing all the evidence I could not find that when James Horwill's right foot came into glancing contact with Alun Wyn Jones' face, that he Horwill was acting recklessly," judicial officer Nigel Hampton said in a statement after the hearing in Melbourne on Sunday.
"I found that I could not reject as being implausible or improbable Horwill's explanation that as he was driving forward with his right leg raised he was spun off balance through the impact of Lions players entering the ruck from the opposite side.
"In an endeavour to regain his balance Horwill brought his right leg to the ground unknowing that Alun Wyn Jones' head was in that area, due to having his sight impeded by the presence of Michael Hooper and Tom Croft who were beneath him and over the top of Alun Wyn Jones."
The decision means Horwill will be free to play the second test in Melbourne on Saturday, a match his side must win to keep the three-match series alive.
Wyn Jones required stitches in his eye following the match, Lions coach Warren Gatland said in a news conference earlier on Sunday.
"The feeling from us is that it needed to be referred to the citing commission to have a look and for him to make a decision.
"For me, I played in the days when rucking was allowed and I've still got a few scars that bear the witness of some decent ruckings that I had. But the head was sacrosanct and you stayed away from that."
The Lions held on to win the game 23-21 after the Wallabies' replacement fullback Kurtley Beale missed two late penalties, the second on the stroke of fulltime that could have won the game for the hosts.
The Lions face the Melbourne Rebels in their final midweek clash of the tour on Tuesday. (Additional reporting by Greg Stutchbury in Wellington and Josh Reich in London; Editing by John O'Brien and John Mehaffey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=K2I8Fpk7FpQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=K2I8Fpk7FpQ)
Bad news
http://www1.skysports.com/rugby-union/news/16057/8789833/British-and-Irish-Lions-Paul-O-Connell-to-miss-the-remainder-of-the-tour
If the series swings against the Lions in the second test it'll be hard to see them winning the third with all these injuries. Melbourne or bust?
British and Irish Lions: 15 Leigh Halfpenny, 14 Tommy Bowe, 13 Brian O'Driscoll, 12 Jonathan Davies, 11 George North, 10 Jonny Sexton, 9 Ben Youngs, 1 Mako Vunipola, 2 Tom Youngs, 3 Adam Jones, 4 Alun Wyn Jones, 5 Geoff Parling, 6 Dan Lydiate, 7 Sam Warburton, 8 Jamie Heaslip.
Replacements: 16 Richard Hibbard, 17 Ryan Grant, 18 Dan Cole, 19 Tom Croft, 20 Sean O'Brien, 21 Conor Murray, 22 Owen Farrell, 23 Alex Cuthbert
Australia by around 12-15.
Quote from: Count 10 on June 27, 2013, 05:34:56 AM
British and Irish Lions: 15 Leigh Halfpenny, 14 Tommy Bowe, 13 Brian O'Driscoll, 12 Jonathan Davies, 11 George North, 10 Jonny Sexton, 9 Ben Youngs, 1 Mako Vunipola, 2 Tom Youngs, 3 Adam Jones, 4 Alun Wyn Jones, 5 Geoff Parling, 6 Dan Lydiate, 7 Sam Warburton, 8 Jamie Heaslip.
Replacements: 16 Richard Hibbard, 17 Ryan Grant, 18 Dan Cole, 19 Tom Croft, 20 Sean O'Brien, 21 Conor Murray, 22 Owen Farrell, 23 Alex Cuthbert
Some big calls by the management for this one. Surprised to see Bowe straight in from the start. No natural 2nd row cover apart from Croft. Lydiate obviously selected to combat the threat of Genia sniping!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 27, 2013, 09:02:08 AM
Quote from: Count 10 on June 27, 2013, 05:34:56 AM
British and Irish Lions: 15 Leigh Halfpenny, 14 Tommy Bowe, 13 Brian O'Driscoll, 12 Jonathan Davies, 11 George North, 10 Jonny Sexton, 9 Ben Youngs, 1 Mako Vunipola, 2 Tom Youngs, 3 Adam Jones, 4 Alun Wyn Jones, 5 Geoff Parling, 6 Dan Lydiate, 7 Sam Warburton, 8 Jamie Heaslip.
Replacements: 16 Richard Hibbard, 17 Ryan Grant, 18 Dan Cole, 19 Tom Croft, 20 Sean O'Brien, 21 Conor Murray, 22 Owen Farrell, 23 Alex Cuthbert
Some big calls by the management for this one. Surprised to see Bowe straight in from the start. No natural 2nd row cover apart from Croft. Lydiate obviously selected to combat the threat of Genia sniping!
Mike Philips gone completely from the match day squad, that's some fall from grace..
Quote from: johnneycool on June 27, 2013, 09:24:09 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on June 27, 2013, 09:02:08 AM
Quote from: Count 10 on June 27, 2013, 05:34:56 AM
British and Irish Lions: 15 Leigh Halfpenny, 14 Tommy Bowe, 13 Brian O'Driscoll, 12 Jonathan Davies, 11 George North, 10 Jonny Sexton, 9 Ben Youngs, 1 Mako Vunipola, 2 Tom Youngs, 3 Adam Jones, 4 Alun Wyn Jones, 5 Geoff Parling, 6 Dan Lydiate, 7 Sam Warburton, 8 Jamie Heaslip.
Replacements: 16 Richard Hibbard, 17 Ryan Grant, 18 Dan Cole, 19 Tom Croft, 20 Sean O'Brien, 21 Conor Murray, 22 Owen Farrell, 23 Alex Cuthbert
Some big calls by the management for this one. Surprised to see Bowe straight in from the start. No natural 2nd row cover apart from Croft. Lydiate obviously selected to combat the threat of Genia sniping!
Mike Philips gone completely from the match day squad, that's some fall from grace..
Serious call but I think it's the right one. It's as bad a game I've seen him play and he didn't look up to the pace at all.
Paddy Power have paid out on a Lions series win already??!!
I fancy the Aussies big time for this one. The key to their backline didnt last 30 seconds last week and is back on Saturday! Lealiifano is an excellent distributor and will prove an excellent foil for O'Connor.
The Lions are unable to build phases of play and rely on flashes of individual brilliance to win games. That will only last so long!
Had a chuckle at this tweet ;D
Brendan Fanning @BrendanFanning
Congrats to Tommy Bowe for answering with straight face when asked if there was any daily activity ruled out by his hand injury!
This was good as well
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/996716_10151735696828265_1818796168_n.jpg)
So good old Paddy responded with
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/7945_10151735696698265_65845270_n.jpg)
Sportsbet win for the look on the face of the lion.
All the better considering Paddy Power own Sportsbet!!
Quote from: screenexile on June 27, 2013, 12:09:38 PM
All the better considering Paddy Power own Sportsbet!!
Fair enough. 'Paddy' has the knack of being all things to all punters, you can be sure the ad bragging about England winning the Ashes won't appear much on Irish IP addresses.
Lydiate ahead of Croft? I can see the obvious argument for starting him to combat Genia, but Tom Crofts athleticism and line-out ability make him a better option for me. I agree with the call to drop Mike Phillips but I thought Conor Murray would be a better option than Ben Youngs. Alex Cuthbert can feel fairly aggrieved imo. He got a good try the last day out and was solid enough defensively, but, I suppose, when you have a player of Tommy Bowes quality available, you can't leave him out.
Almost none of the Lions team looked defensively solid the last day, particularly on the wings. Hopefully this weekend's ref actually allows the Lions to play rugby union rather than rugby league and some of those holes might disappear.
Good Article by O Gara in the Examiner http://t.co/HolJRjlQWW
Quote from: rodney trotter on June 28, 2013, 02:40:09 PM
Good Article by O Gara in the Examiner http://t.co/HolJRjlQWW
I've heard O'Gara interviewed before . . . has Russell Brand done the ghost writing on this one:
Incalculable
Emotional Aura
Breadth of attributes
heretofore
No way he's saying those words!!
Quote from: screenexile on June 28, 2013, 04:26:44 PM
Quote from: rodney trotter on June 28, 2013, 02:40:09 PM
Good Article by O Gara in the Examiner http://t.co/HolJRjlQWW
I've heard O'Gara interviewed before . . . has Russell Brand done the ghost writing on this one:
Incalculable
Emotional Aura
Breadth of attributes
heretofore
No way he's saying those words!!
He comes across very articulately in interviews, actually. The article seems about right.
Future Ireland coach.
Sky have a "Lions Breakfast" show which started at 7am. They know how to market a sport on the telly.
Looking forward to Willie and Harry wishing the best of luck to the boys before start of game. Pass me the sick bucket please SKY.
The cringe hyperbole aside, hope game is as good as last week though
What time's throw in?
30 mins played 6-6,poor enough stuff,game needs a try
Quote from: bigfrank on June 29, 2013, 11:39:37 AM
30 mins played 6-6,poor enough stuff,game needs a try
Enjoyable game actually, back and forth and cooking nicely for the second half. Line outs and scrums look a problem.
(http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR16Av-Hv59Q47qkqG6rxhMgaD00VjKJ_Y1RNa0uQyd_NogjTYDq74SRi_2OQ)
George North is an animal
Amazing stuff. North is a beast. Turned the momentum of the game in one tackle.
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:32:10 PM
Amazing stuff. North is a beast. Turned the momentum of the game in one tackle.
Yea, delivered a huge tackle while he had the ball!
Balls, winner takes all in Sydney..
Whew. Some series. It's going to be tough to win the third test. Need better lineouts to have a chance. Hookers not delivering. Time for Best?
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:54:48 PM
Whew. Some series. It's going to be tough to win the third test. Need better lineouts to have a chance. Hookers not delivering. Time for Best?
Best won't fix that.
Quote from: muppet on June 29, 2013, 12:56:01 PM
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:54:48 PM
Whew. Some series. It's going to be tough to win the third test. Need better lineouts to have a chance. Hookers not delivering. Time for Best?
Best won't fix that.
He can't be any worse honestly. Some of throws today gave an already shakey pack no chance. That last one was the stuff of nightmares.
Would hate to see BOD and POC to go out without a Lions tour victory.
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:58:09 PM
Quote from: muppet on June 29, 2013, 12:56:01 PM
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:54:48 PM
Whew. Some series. It's going to be tough to win the third test. Need better lineouts to have a chance. Hookers not delivering. Time for Best?
Best won't fix that.
He can't be any worse honestly. Some of throws today gave an already shakey pack no chance. That last one was the stuff of nightmares.
Would hate to see BOD and POC to go out without a Lions tour victory.
Have you seen him throw lately? His confidence is shot otherwise he would have would have been a shoe in for the tour.
North's big hit ..http://t.co/uvm9HV6UJD
Quote from: muppet on June 29, 2013, 01:00:32 PM
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:58:09 PM
Quote from: muppet on June 29, 2013, 12:56:01 PM
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:54:48 PM
Whew. Some series. It's going to be tough to win the third test. Need better lineouts to have a chance. Hookers not delivering. Time for Best?
Best won't fix that.
He can't be any worse honestly. Some of throws today gave an already shakey pack no chance. That last one was the stuff of nightmares.
Would hate to see BOD and POC to go out without a Lions tour victory.
Have you seen him throw lately? His confidence is shot otherwise he would have would have been a shoe in for the tour.
I've seen Best enough to know he's no master thrower but you need to be thinking about a switch at hooker because we've seen two players fail today. Murray's a shoe-in at scrum-half now, though.
Roberts has to start next weekend if he's fit, Davies is way too anonymous and Roberts-BOD was so good four years ago.
Murray was good when he came on. The Sexton-Bowe bombs worked but that seems to be the only attacking success. That is a real problem. O'Brien should start and take the game to Australia.
Australia deserved to win today...at least they moved the ball to their back line. If O'Brien doesn't start next week then they have no hope. Vunipola poor yet not replaced...very strange.
Quote from: Count 10 on June 29, 2013, 01:06:09 PM
Australia deserved to win today...at least they moved the ball to their back line. If O'Brien doesn't start next week then they have no hope. Vunipola poor yet not replaced...very strange.
Who would you put in? Tom Court??
Badly need Corbisiero fit.
Quote from: muppet on June 29, 2013, 01:07:39 PM
Quote from: Count 10 on June 29, 2013, 01:06:09 PM
Australia deserved to win today...at least they moved the ball to their back line. If O'Brien doesn't start next week then they have no hope. Vunipola poor yet not replaced...very strange.
Who would you put in? Tom Court??
Badly need Corbisiero fit.
If Tom Court starts, there is something seriously wrong. He's only on the tour because he was already in Australia. If they want to replace Vunipola, then Dave Kilcoyne is a better option than Court (I'm not saying Kilcoyne should be called up, just that he's better than Court). Ryan Grant might be worth a start, with Vunipola on the bench. The plan seemed to be, before Healy and Jenkins got injured, that one of them would start and Vunipola would start on the bench. He seems to be better coming off the bench so maybe Ryan Grant should start the next day out.
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:58:09 PM
Quote from: muppet on June 29, 2013, 12:56:01 PM
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:54:48 PM
Whew. Some series. It's going to be tough to win the third test. Need better lineouts to have a chance. Hookers not delivering. Time for Best?
Best won't fix that.
He can't be any worse honestly. Some of throws today gave an already shakey pack no chance. That last one was the stuff of nightmares.
Would hate to see BOD and POC to go out without a Lions tour victory.
True, but continued selection of a BOD in decline may be one reason why this Tour could end in yet another defeat.
Quote from: mouview on July 01, 2013, 01:22:38 AM
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:58:09 PM
Quote from: muppet on June 29, 2013, 12:56:01 PM
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:54:48 PM
Whew. Some series. It's going to be tough to win the third test. Need better lineouts to have a chance. Hookers not delivering. Time for Best?
Best won't fix that.
He can't be any worse honestly. Some of throws today gave an already shakey pack no chance. That last one was the stuff of nightmares.
Would hate to see BOD and POC to go out without a Lions tour victory.
True, but continued selection of a BOD in decline may be one reason why this Tour could end in yet another defeat.
BOD has been excellent in the series bar that one pass that changed the momentum in the second test. No signs of decline, certainly nothing that should have any supporter even thinking he should be dropped. This sort of situation is when you need the BODs and POCs of the world more than ever.
Experience could well decide this series. BOD is only the third man to ever be selected for four Lions tours - ironically all three have been Irish - so we're talking about experience without any modern era parallel.
Crazy refereeing in the first test meant BOD couldn't contest the ruck like he should have been able to but he remains the best passer in the game and perhaps the best passer in the history of the sport. Defensively he's rock solid as always.
BOD-Roberts could ignite the centre offensively in the third test, Davies is the problem, not BOD.
With Warburton pretty much KO'd BOD is going to be the test captain heading into the decider. Talk about entering folklore if he leads the Lions to a tour victory after what happened in 2005.
i'm astounded so called 'irishmen' are besotted by the british lions, we russians have more respect for ourselves + country
down, down, croppies lie down!
Quote from: Syferus on July 01, 2013, 01:47:16 AM
Quote from: mouview on July 01, 2013, 01:22:38 AM
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:58:09 PM
Quote from: muppet on June 29, 2013, 12:56:01 PM
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:54:48 PM
Whew. Some series. It's going to be tough to win the third test. Need better lineouts to have a chance. Hookers not delivering. Time for Best?
Best won't fix that.
He can't be any worse honestly. Some of throws today gave an already shakey pack no chance. That last one was the stuff of nightmares.
Would hate to see BOD and POC to go out without a Lions tour victory.
True, but continued selection of a BOD in decline may be one reason why this Tour could end in yet another defeat.
BOD has been excellent in the series bar that one pass that changed the momentum in the second test. No signs of decline, certainly nothing that should have any supporter even thinking he should be dropped. This sort of situation is when you need the BODs and POCs of the world more than ever.
Experience could well decide this series. BOD is only the third man to ever be selected for four Lions tours - ironically all three have been Irish - so we're talking about experience without any modern era parallel.
Crazy refereeing in the first test meant BOD couldn't contest the ruck like he should have been able to but he remains the best passer in the game and perhaps the best passer in the history of the sport. Defensively he's rock solid as always.
BOD-Roberts could ignite the centre offensively in the third test, Davies is the problem, not BOD.
With Warburton pretty much KO'd BOD is going to be the test captain heading into the decider. Talk about entering folklore if he leads the Lions to a tour victory after what happened in 2005.
Really? I thought BOD has been poor enough in the two test so far. One silly penalty is forgivable but he's given away 5 or 6 over the two tests plus his decision making in possession hasn't been the best either. But I don't think we are allowed to criticise BOD in this country are we?
Quote from: BennyHarp on July 01, 2013, 08:18:16 AM
Quote from: Syferus on July 01, 2013, 01:47:16 AM
Quote from: mouview on July 01, 2013, 01:22:38 AM
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:58:09 PM
Quote from: muppet on June 29, 2013, 12:56:01 PM
Quote from: Syferus on June 29, 2013, 12:54:48 PM
Whew. Some series. It's going to be tough to win the third test. Need better lineouts to have a chance. Hookers not delivering. Time for Best?
Best won't fix that.
He can't be any worse honestly. Some of throws today gave an already shakey pack no chance. That last one was the stuff of nightmares.
Would hate to see BOD and POC to go out without a Lions tour victory.
True, but continued selection of a BOD in decline may be one reason why this Tour could end in yet another defeat.
BOD has been excellent in the series bar that one pass that changed the momentum in the second test. No signs of decline, certainly nothing that should have any supporter even thinking he should be dropped. This sort of situation is when you need the BODs and POCs of the world more than ever.
Experience could well decide this series. BOD is only the third man to ever be selected for four Lions tours - ironically all three have been Irish - so we're talking about experience without any modern era parallel.
Crazy refereeing in the first test meant BOD couldn't contest the ruck like he should have been able to but he remains the best passer in the game and perhaps the best passer in the history of the sport. Defensively he's rock solid as always.
BOD-Roberts could ignite the centre offensively in the third test, Davies is the problem, not BOD.
With Warburton pretty much KO'd BOD is going to be the test captain heading into the decider. Talk about entering folklore if he leads the Lions to a tour victory after what happened in 2005.
Really? I thought BOD has been poor enough in the two test so far. One silly penalty is forgivable but he's given away 5 or 6 over the two tests plus his decision making in possession hasn't been the best either. But I don't think we are allowed to criticise BOD in this country are we?
First three were in the first test and only in that mad referee's eyes was standing on your feet and reaching in for a ball at a ruck a penalty. Should not be held against him and I highly doubt Gatland does.
BOD had 14 tackles and missed none. 2nd highest again.
One crazy stat is that after Sexton, Sean O'Brien made the 2nd highest number of metres carrying the ball and he was only on for 16 minutes. That is shocking for the rest of them, including but not limited to BOD
Warburton out of Saturdays test!!
Time for the Lions mgt to get their heads out of their arses and go for it!!
The back row should be Tupuric, O'Brien and Heaslip. Let them worry about us and not the other way around.
I thought Saturday was Warburton's best game for the Lions so far so he will be a loss. O'Brien and Tipuric need to be brought in right away!
He did play well on Saturday SE, no doubt but I'd just love to see them really go for it!!
I'd love to see Roberts back. I'm not the biggest fan of Tuilagi but I'd even start him ahead of Davies just to get over the gainline and give go forward ball.
Last chance saloon...need to start with all guns blazing...O'Brien has to start.
Quote from: muppet on July 01, 2013, 09:00:53 AM
One crazy stat is that after Sexton, Sean O'Brien made the 2nd highest number of metres carrying the ball and he was only on for 16 minutes. That is shocking for the rest of them, including but not limited to BOD
How much of those were gained from catching restarts and running?
I didn't see any of the match btw, but the stats for someone like O'Brien can be misleading as he very often catches restarts and gets to run the first 10 metres for free.
Quote from: Bord na Mona man on July 01, 2013, 12:45:55 PM
Quote from: muppet on July 01, 2013, 09:00:53 AM
One crazy stat is that after Sexton, Sean O'Brien made the 2nd highest number of metres carrying the ball and he was only on for 16 minutes. That is shocking for the rest of them, including but not limited to BOD
How much of those were gained from catching restarts and running?
I didn't see any of the match btw, but the stats for someone like O'Brien can be misleading as he very often catches restarts and gets to run the first 10 metres for free.
O'Brien didn't receive any restarts as far as I'm away. Murray Kinsella on twitter has a couple of interesting points on how the Lions defended restarts. Basically AW Jones was on his own with the rest of the pack further withdrawn for restarts. This resulted in the Aussies securing possession on a couple of occasions!!
Quote from: screenexile on July 01, 2013, 09:37:34 AM
I thought Saturday was Warburton's best game for the Lions so far so he will be a loss. O'Brien and Tipuric need to be brought in right away!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 01, 2013, 09:33:40 AM
Warburton out of Saturdays test!!
Time for the Lions mgt to get their heads out of their arses and go for it!!
The back row should be Tupuric, O'Brien and Heaslip. Let them worry about us and not the other way around.
Who would of thought it?................................ 2 South Derry men chatting about this! ;D ;D ;D ;D
Quote from: theticklemister on July 01, 2013, 12:53:23 PM
Quote from: screenexile on July 01, 2013, 09:37:34 AM
I thought Saturday was Warburton's best game for the Lions so far so he will be a loss. O'Brien and Tipuric need to be brought in right away!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 01, 2013, 09:33:40 AM
Warburton out of Saturdays test!!
Time for the Lions mgt to get their heads out of their arses and go for it!!
The back row should be Tupuric, O'Brien and Heaslip. Let them worry about us and not the other way around.
Who would of thought it?................................ 2 South Derry men chatting about this! ;D ;D ;D ;D
Rainey has a lot to answer for.
Quote from: theticklemister on July 01, 2013, 12:53:23 PM
Quote from: screenexile on July 01, 2013, 09:37:34 AM
I thought Saturday was Warburton's best game for the Lions so far so he will be a loss. O'Brien and Tipuric need to be brought in right away!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 01, 2013, 09:33:40 AM
Warburton out of Saturdays test!!
Time for the Lions mgt to get their heads out of their arses and go for it!!
The back row should be Tupuric, O'Brien and Heaslip. Let them worry about us and not the other way around.
Who would of thought it?................................ 2 South Derry men chatting about this! ;D ;D ;D ;D
Dont lie Tickle I used to enjoy nailing you when you lined out for City of LondonDerry
Training must be going well as O'Driscoll and O'Brien are slagging each other off on twitter ( in a good humoured way)
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 01, 2013, 01:18:16 PM
Quote from: theticklemister on July 01, 2013, 12:53:23 PM
Quote from: screenexile on July 01, 2013, 09:37:34 AM
I thought Saturday was Warburton's best game for the Lions so far so he will be a loss. O'Brien and Tipuric need to be brought in right away!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 01, 2013, 09:33:40 AM
Warburton out of Saturdays test!!
Time for the Lions mgt to get their heads out of their arses and go for it!!
The back row should be Tupuric, O'Brien and Heaslip. Let them worry about us and not the other way around.
Who would of thought it?................................ 2 South Derry men chatting about this! ;D ;D ;D ;D
Dont lie Tickle I used to enjoy nailing you when you lined out for City of LondonDerry
Spent three years at scrum-half playing for st.columbs college and then burnsy took me aside and said ' ticklemister cut this shit out, we need ye fit for the mclaron season ahead' . Turned out to be the fittest and best uninjured sub on the bench
Quote from: theticklemister on July 02, 2013, 09:37:06 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 01, 2013, 01:18:16 PM
Quote from: theticklemister on July 01, 2013, 12:53:23 PM
Quote from: screenexile on July 01, 2013, 09:37:34 AM
I thought Saturday was Warburton's best game for the Lions so far so he will be a loss. O'Brien and Tipuric need to be brought in right away!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 01, 2013, 09:33:40 AM
Warburton out of Saturdays test!!
Time for the Lions mgt to get their heads out of their arses and go for it!!
The back row should be Tupuric, O'Brien and Heaslip. Let them worry about us and not the other way around.
Who would of thought it?................................ 2 South Derry men chatting about this! ;D ;D ;D ;D
Dont lie Tickle I used to enjoy nailing you when you lined out for City of LondonDerry
Spent three years at scrum-half playing for st.columbs college and then burnsy took me aside and said ' ticklemister cut this shit out, we need ye fit for the mclaron season ahead' . Turned out to be the fittest and best uninjured sub on the bench
When were you at St Columbs?
I enjoy watching rugby but the whole Lions concept is based on an over hyped commercial brand playing representitive matches that I'm not too bothered about the result in. Its a great honour for the players to be selected for the team but why put so much emphasis on 4 nations combined playing a test series against Southern Hemisphere sides when these individual nations themselves frequently tour against the same teams. Sky Sports do a great job in 'selling the product' but I would far rather see an Irish province win a HC or the Irish side win a 6 nations than some representitive team win a test series against an Australian team that Ireland beat on their own in the last WC.
Quote from: yellowcard on July 02, 2013, 10:54:55 AM
I enjoy watching rugby but the whole Lions concept is based on an over hyped commercial brand playing representitive matches that I'm not too bothered about the result in. Its a great honour for the players to be selected for the team but why put so much emphasis on 4 nations combined playing a test series against Southern Hemisphere sides when these individual nations themselves frequently tour against the same teams. Sky Sports do a great job in 'selling the product' but I would far rather see an Irish province win a HC or the Irish side win a 6 nations than some representitive team win a test series against an Australian team that Ireland beat on their own in the last WC.
Nail on head.
I enjoy watching it and following it but let's be honest, very few of us actually care whether the Lions win or lose. It's like the Ryder Cup - nobody supports Europe. You hope they do well and enjoy following the Irish contingent. Sky would have you believe it's the greatest show on earth - they need something to keep people interest until their next Transfer Deadline Day extravaganza. What will they do without 'Arry in the Premier League?
Quote from: yellowcard on July 02, 2013, 10:54:55 AM
I enjoy watching rugby but the whole Lions concept is based on an over hyped commercial brand playing representitive matches that I'm not too bothered about the result in. Its a great honour for the players to be selected for the team but why put so much emphasis on 4 nations combined playing a test series against Southern Hemisphere sides when these individual nations themselves frequently tour against the same teams. Sky Sports do a great job in 'selling the product' but I would far rather see an Irish province win a HC or the Irish side win a 6 nations than some representitive team win a test series against an Australian team that Ireland beat on their own in the last WC.
I feel much the same way about Irish provinces....ie they are not clubs, but conglomerations and amalgamations !
it has made Irish rugby teams more competitive against the french and english clubs, but if they copied that trick - the sport would turn into complete sihte (and some of the rules currently are not helping this anyhow - eg scrums).
A former club player in leinster said to me last year -where were these fans and the hype 15 years ago for the inter-provincial games!
still, thats the way it is now, so these amaglamations have to be tolerated.
I'd love to see the Lions win a test series. I was only a little buckeen in 1997 so I really have never seen it happen. It's been a great series.
Quote from: gallsman on July 02, 2013, 02:04:39 PM
Quote from: yellowcard on July 02, 2013, 10:54:55 AM
I enjoy watching rugby but the whole Lions concept is based on an over hyped commercial brand playing representitive matches that I'm not too bothered about the result in. Its a great honour for the players to be selected for the team but why put so much emphasis on 4 nations combined playing a test series against Southern Hemisphere sides when these individual nations themselves frequently tour against the same teams. Sky Sports do a great job in 'selling the product' but I would far rather see an Irish province win a HC or the Irish side win a 6 nations than some representitive team win a test series against an Australian team that Ireland beat on their own in the last WC.
Nail on head.
I enjoy watching it and following it but let's be honest, very few of us actually care whether the Lions win or lose. It's like the Ryder Cup - nobody supports Europe. You hope they do well and enjoy following the Irish contingent. Sky would have you believe it's the greatest show on earth - they need something to keep people interest until their next Transfer Deadline Day extravaganza. What will they do without 'Arry in the Premier League?
Yep agree, I'd put it on a par with the Ryder Cup in terms of how much the result matters to me. I want to see Ireland well represented and will watch the matches but the hype is way disproportionate to how much I care about the result. I'm fairly sure a large percentage of people feel the same way about it.
Quote from: gallsman on July 02, 2013, 02:04:39 PM
Quote from: yellowcard on July 02, 2013, 10:54:55 AM
I enjoy watching rugby but the whole Lions concept is based on an over hyped commercial brand playing representitive matches that I'm not too bothered about the result in. Its a great honour for the players to be selected for the team but why put so much emphasis on 4 nations combined playing a test series against Southern Hemisphere sides when these individual nations themselves frequently tour against the same teams. Sky Sports do a great job in 'selling the product' but I would far rather see an Irish province win a HC or the Irish side win a 6 nations than some representitive team win a test series against an Australian team that Ireland beat on their own in the last WC.
Nail on head.
I enjoy watching it and following it but let's be honest, very few of us actually care whether the Lions win or lose. It's like the Ryder Cup - nobody supports Europe. You hope they do well and enjoy following the Irish contingent. Sky would have you believe it's the greatest show on earth - they need something to keep people interest until their next Transfer Deadline Day extravaganza. What will they do without 'Arry in the Premier League?
Catch yourself on!!! No one supports Europe. What a ridiculous comment. Thousands attend Ryder Cup matches and travel to the states to see the tournament. I support Europe, I follow the Lions. For people with a love of rugby it was important to us in pre skysports!!
I think that since professionalism the Lions has been diluted somewhat. Realistically the pick of four countries (3 ranked in top 10) should have little trouble beating any of the tri-nations teams...but it hasn't proved to be the case. Looking forward to Saturday and a great game.
Quote from: yellowcard on July 02, 2013, 10:54:55 AM
I enjoy watching rugby but the whole Lions concept is based on an over hyped commercial brand playing representitive matches that I'm not too bothered about the result in. Its a great honour for the players to be selected for the team but why put so much emphasis on 4 nations combined playing a test series against Southern Hemisphere sides when these individual nations themselves frequently tour against the same teams. Sky Sports do a great job in 'selling the product' but I would far rather see an Irish province win a HC or the Irish side win a 6 nations than some representitive team win a test series against an Australian team that Ireland beat on their own in the last WC.
Like Man Utd, Arsenal or Liverpool?
Like the above the Lions concept had tradition before they all became over-hyped brands.
Quote from: Count 10 on July 02, 2013, 02:48:59 PM
Realistically the pick of four countries (3 ranked in top 10) should have little trouble beating any of the tri-nations teams
The three tri-nations teams (quad-nations now) are all top 3 in the world.
Quote from: muppet on July 02, 2013, 02:49:52 PM
Quote from: yellowcard on July 02, 2013, 10:54:55 AM
I enjoy watching rugby but the whole Lions concept is based on an over hyped commercial brand playing representitive matches that I'm not too bothered about the result in. Its a great honour for the players to be selected for the team but why put so much emphasis on 4 nations combined playing a test series against Southern Hemisphere sides when these individual nations themselves frequently tour against the same teams. Sky Sports do a great job in 'selling the product' but I would far rather see an Irish province win a HC or the Irish side win a 6 nations than some representitive team win a test series against an Australian team that Ireland beat on their own in the last WC.
Like Man Utd, Arsenal or Liverpool?
Like the above the Lions concept had tradition before they all became over-hyped brands.
Wouldn't disagree with that.
Quote from: CorkMan on July 02, 2013, 03:12:30 PM
Quote from: Count 10 on July 02, 2013, 02:48:59 PM
Realistically the pick of four countries (3 ranked in top 10) should have little trouble beating any of the tri-nations teams
The three tri-nations teams (quad-nations now) are all top 3 in the world.
Yip but what is the point of Cork playing Limerick in football or Man Utd playing some vegetables in an open draw FA Cup. Sport doesn't always have to make sense.
Administrators and sponsors love it because it generates significant cash. The media love it because it generates significant hype for months and months on end (mostly around selection issues and not the actual matches). The players love them mainly beacuse they are competitive beasts and getting selected for the Lions represents them getting to the top of their tree individually in their profession.
I'm sure that some supporters love them because they can immerse themselves in an ideology and a heritage which harks back to the amateur era and is more rose-tinted than real, plus they are an excuse for a decent trip abroad. However a very many supporters aren't too bothered by the result but will tune in to watch the matches out of curiosity and in support of individual players. I would fall into the latter category.
I don't know about the rest of you but the drama and quality of last year's Ryder Cup was unreal.
I've yet to watch any sport that has come close to it since!!
Quote from: screenexile on July 02, 2013, 03:45:45 PM
I don't know about the rest of you but the drama and quality of last year's Ryder Cup was unreal.
I've yet to watch any sport that has come close to it since!!
Eamon Coughlan, 1983, Helsinki trumps them all. :)
Quote from: J OGorman on July 02, 2013, 04:57:01 PM
Quote from: screenexile on July 02, 2013, 03:45:45 PM
I don't know about the rest of you but the drama and quality of last year's Ryder Cup was unreal.
I've yet to watch any sport that has come close to it since!!
Eamon Coughlan, 1983, Helsinki trumps them all. :)
Aga Khan Trophy 1979, in a jump off!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 02, 2013, 02:41:49 PM
Quote from: gallsman on July 02, 2013, 02:04:39 PM
Quote from: yellowcard on July 02, 2013, 10:54:55 AM
I enjoy watching rugby but the whole Lions concept is based on an over hyped commercial brand playing representitive matches that I'm not too bothered about the result in. Its a great honour for the players to be selected for the team but why put so much emphasis on 4 nations combined playing a test series against Southern Hemisphere sides when these individual nations themselves frequently tour against the same teams. Sky Sports do a great job in 'selling the product' but I would far rather see an Irish province win a HC or the Irish side win a 6 nations than some representitive team win a test series against an Australian team that Ireland beat on their own in the last WC.
Nail on head.
I enjoy watching it and following it but let's be honest, very few of us actually care whether the Lions win or lose. It's like the Ryder Cup - nobody supports Europe. You hope they do well and enjoy following the Irish contingent. Sky would have you believe it's the greatest show on earth - they need something to keep people interest until their next Transfer Deadline Day extravaganza. What will they do without 'Arry in the Premier League?
Catch yourself on!!! No one supports Europe. What a ridiculous comment. Thousands attend Ryder Cup matches and travel to the states to see the tournament. I support Europe, I follow the Lions. For people with a love of rugby it was important to us in pre skysports!![
Perhaps I should have typed "supports". It's not the same and you know it. It's like an added bonus on top of the day in, day out stuff. The element of caring and feeling truly involved isn't there. I want the Lions to win on Saturday and I want Europe to win the Ryder Cup every time. However, if the Lions lose on Saturday, I'm not going to wake up on Sunday morning with the same feeling I'd have had if Stephen Jones had nailed his penalty in '09.
Quote from: muppet on July 02, 2013, 05:03:24 PM
Quote from: J OGorman on July 02, 2013, 04:57:01 PM
Quote from: screenexile on July 02, 2013, 03:45:45 PM
I don't know about the rest of you but the drama and quality of last year's Ryder Cup was unreal.
I've yet to watch any sport that has come close to it since!!
Eamon Coughlan, 1983, Helsinki trumps them all. :)
He said 'since'.
Aga Khan Trophy 1979, in a jump off!
Quote from: AZOffaly on July 02, 2013, 05:09:39 PM
Quote from: muppet on July 02, 2013, 05:03:24 PM
Quote from: J OGorman on July 02, 2013, 04:57:01 PM
Quote from: screenexile on July 02, 2013, 03:45:45 PM
I don't know about the rest of you but the drama and quality of last year's Ryder Cup was unreal.
I've yet to watch any sport that has come close to it since!!
Eamon Coughlan, 1983, Helsinki trumps them all. :)
He said 'since'.
Aga Khan Trophy 1979, in a jump off!
Yes but I didn't. :P
O'Driscoll not even on the bench :o
British and Irish Lions team to play Australia
15-Leigh Halfpenny (Wales), 14-Tommy Bowe (Ireland), 13-Jonathan Davies (Wales), 12-Jamie Roberts (Wales), 11-George North (Wales), 10-Jonathan Sexton (Ireland), 9-Mike Phillips (Wales), 8-Toby Faletau (Wales), 7-Sean O'Brien (Ireland), 6-Dan Lydiate (Wales), 5-Geoff Parling (England), 4-Alun Wyn Jones (captain, Wales), 3-Adam Jones (Wales), 2-Richard Hibbard (Wales), 1-Alex Corbisiero (England)
Replacements - 16-Tom Youngs (England), Mako Vunipola (England), 18-Dan Cole (England), 19-Richie Gray (Scotland), 20-
Justin Tipuric (Wales), 21-Conor Murray (Ireland), 22-Owen Farrell (England), 23-Manu Tuilagi (England)
10 Welshmen, including Phillips.
What an insult to the others.
Quote from: muppet on July 03, 2013, 05:34:04 AM
10 Welshmen, including Phillips.
What an insult to the others.
Bit of a shocker. Bad way for BOD to leave the stage.
Hope they are hammered
Shocking decision. How he can justify starting Davies at 13 is beyond me. The Aussies limited a poor functioning Lions line out to throwing to the front, hence no ball coming off the top giving the centres go forward ball. As usual it's all about Gatland and his ego, thought Australia would win regardless, now even more so.
Luckily Tom Jones isn't touring in Australia or he would have got the call up too! No Heaslip either...strange decisions...Gatland will be a big hero or a complete clown around lunch time Saturday!
Can we all agree to hate the lions now? Looks like Gatty just doesn't rate our lads as highly as we do. In one way it's understandable that when push comes to shove, he'll lean on the lads who have won stuff for him in Wales. If Warburton was fit, he'd be playing as well.
As I said, it's a glorified All Stars tour. Ireland beat Australia in the world cup. Now we can't get more than 2 people on an All Star team that will probably lose to Australia.
This really sums it up.....
Ian Robertson
BBC rugby union correspondent
"You just wonder if they got a lucky bag and picked some names out. The Lions won the first Test and made eight changes to their squad. The Wallabies won the second and probably won't make any changes. The Lions lose by one point and there are six changes in the team and three guys on the bench who were nowhere near the team for the second Test. I was convinced Brian O'Driscoll should have been named as captain. It's catastrophic leaving him out. He's still one of the top centres in world rugby. He's a fantastic guy and has been on four tours and knows it all inside out. It's a massive mistake."
#seaofred ?? ?? ?? ?? ?
I always found it hard to like the Lions but now I hate them. Hope they get stuffed!
I reckon the Lions will win this one. It's a strong team.
Leaving emotion aside. BOD is the greatest sportsman our country has ever produced, but he's over the hill now.
Quote from: thewobbler on July 03, 2013, 08:28:20 AM
I reckon the Lions will win this one. It's a strong team.
Leaving emotion aside. BOD is the greatest sportsman our country has ever produced, but he's over the hill now.
Very big statement there, think may emotions are getting the better of some on this one.
A courageous and proactive decision by Gatland to drop a great player long into the twilight of his career. No doubt George Hook will be delighted but Sean Og O'Halpin will probably be in the weekend press accusing Gatland of picking players from small countries he's never heard of.
The way BODhas reacted to the news speaks volumes for his character, not that it was ever questioned. Great leader, superb player and a selfless individual
Not a big Rugby fan but read somewhere that the number of tackles that O'Driscoll had to make in the two tests for the position he plays suggests that there is something wrong with the structure of the team. Also, find it hard to believe that O'Driscoll was any worse than the majority of the 15 on the pitch from the last test, surely with his pedigree he would be one you would take a risk with with regards to coming up with something special. Warburton was brutal in any game he played before the second test yet didn't lose his place. Hope the Lions get hammered.
Strange decision alright but some good reaction on the old twittersphere
Surprised Gatland hasn't included Katherine Jenkins, Tom Jones, Ryan Giggs or The Prince of Wales in the #LionsXV
Big congrats to Sean O' Brien, Tommy Bowe and Jonathan Sexton on their debut for Wales this weekend." #lionstour
So Davies, the man that left the front door open for AA Cooper to score the winning try last week, is the new BO'D
You can feel the anger as the Luas pushes through Leinster's heartland this morning @RossOCK #BOD
Jack Charlton was right, we don't give up on our hero's easily.
Well done Sean O'Brien on getting his first Lions start.
Quote from: muppet on July 03, 2013, 05:34:04 AM
10 Welshmen, including Phillips.
What an insult to the others.
Absolutely. Near as shocking as starting 14 of his former clubmen for Wales.
The Lions will sorely miss O'Driscolls leadership on Sat. He is the go to man for so many of his team mates.
Gatland is a bellend but he has success behind him in fairness.
That said I would have had O'Driscoll on even if he was on crutches as an inspirational force on the field. He still has a fair amount of petrol in the tank.
Murray over Phillips annoys me more than dropping BOD. Arguments could be made that BOD hasn't been up to scratch (no more than some of the others, including Davies, in my opinion) but Murray was excellent when he came on for Youngs last week and Phillips was annihilated in the first test.
Quote from: NAG1 on July 03, 2013, 08:31:30 AM
Quote from: thewobbler on July 03, 2013, 08:28:20 AM
I reckon the Lions will win this one. It's a strong team.
Leaving emotion aside. BOD is the greatest sportsman our country has ever produced, but he's over the hill now.
Very big statement there, think may emotions are getting the better of some on this one.
Larry Reilly is the ultimate in cool
Serious over reaction to BOD being dropped.
Quote from: orangeman on July 03, 2013, 09:46:29 AM
Serious over reaction to BOD being dropped.
Yeah and serious rugby 'experts' hijacking this thread!!
Some of the comments here are quite disarming.
I've no emotional favour to the Lions, but "they" are actually "we". I'm not telling anyone they have to cheer on the Lions, but as a team they do actually represent Ireland.
This reminds me of a thread on here years ago when Darren Clarke didn't get a wildcard pick for the Ryder Cup. Ian Poulter (one of the best match players in the world) was rightly chosen instead, but it was enough to turn Europe into "them".
Get behind a team or don't get behind them, but don't change your colours because you don't agree with the manager.
NAG1 - For the best part of a decade, BOD was by some distance the best player in the world in his position, and often the standout player in the world. There were no flaws in his game. Skill, flair, poise, dedication, athleticism, application, commitment, longevity, all in bucketloads. You'd do well to find anyone even fit to ride his coat tails.
nrico - For the past 5 years BOD has played more like a flanker than a centre for Ireland and Leinster. His game evolved into this role as his pace began to leave him. In some ways him doing this is robbing Peter to pay Paul, but it's not as obvious when he's with Ireland or Leinster as the coaches have worked this into their systems.
And finally, have a look at http://www.rbs6nations.com/en/match-centre_table.php. That's the most recent gauge of each team's worth in the Northern Hemisphere. The English can feel aggrieved at 10 Welshmen. Ireland cannot feel aggrieved at having 3 spots.
Quote from: thewobbler on July 03, 2013, 09:51:51 AM
Some of the comments here are quite disarming.
I've no emotional favour to the Lions, but "they" are actually "we". I'm not telling anyone they have to cheer on the Lions, but as a team they do actually represent Ireland.
This reminds me of a thread on here years ago when Darren Clarke didn't get a wildcard pick for the Ryder Cup. Ian Poulter (one of the best match players in the world) was rightly chosen instead, but it was enough to turn Europe into "them".
Get behind a team or don't get behind them, but don't change your colours because you don't agree with the manager.
NAG1 - For the best part of a decade, BOD was by some distance the best player in the world in his position, and often the standout player in the world. There were no flaws in his game. Skill, flair, poise, dedication, athleticism, application, commitment, longevity, all in bucketloads. You'd do well to find anyone even fit to ride his coat tails.
nrico - For the past 5 years BOD has played more like a flanker than a centre for Ireland and Leinster. His game evolved into this role as his pace began to leave him. In some ways him doing this is robbing Peter to pay Paul, but it's not as obvious when he's with Ireland or Leinster as the coaches have worked this into their systems.
And finally, have a look at http://www.rbs6nations.com/en/match-centre_table.php. That's the most recent gauge of each team's worth in the Northern Hemisphere. The English can feel aggrieved at 10 Welshmen. Ireland cannot feel aggrieved at having 3 spots.
They are not 'we'. They are an amalgamation of national sides that includes Ireland, but that doesn't make us all 'Lions'.
Ireland is represented in the Lions, but that's different to saying the Lions represent Ireland - in my view at least.
If no Irish player was selected, would we still have to consider the Lions as representing us?
I kind of agree with you Tubberman. I've no more allegiance to the Lions than I do to the Ryder Cup team, or to Ulster in Railway Cup, or even to Ireland in the International Rules series. Which is basically none.
These teams are forced together for the purposes of sport, rather than bonded together to represent.
But in saying that, while the result will not affect my thoughts, I'd still prefer to see "us" beat the opposition in all those events. No jingoism, no national pride, it's just a preference.
Quote from: Tubberman on July 03, 2013, 10:00:11 AM
Quote from: thewobbler on July 03, 2013, 09:51:51 AM
Some of the comments here are quite disarming.
I've no emotional favour to the Lions, but "they" are actually "we". I'm not telling anyone they have to cheer on the Lions, but as a team they do actually represent Ireland.
This reminds me of a thread on here years ago when Darren Clarke didn't get a wildcard pick for the Ryder Cup. Ian Poulter (one of the best match players in the world) was rightly chosen instead, but it was enough to turn Europe into "them".
Get behind a team or don't get behind them, but don't change your colours because you don't agree with the manager.
NAG1 - For the best part of a decade, BOD was by some distance the best player in the world in his position, and often the standout player in the world. There were no flaws in his game. Skill, flair, poise, dedication, athleticism, application, commitment, longevity, all in bucketloads. You'd do well to find anyone even fit to ride his coat tails.
nrico - For the past 5 years BOD has played more like a flanker than a centre for Ireland and Leinster. His game evolved into this role as his pace began to leave him. In some ways him doing this is robbing Peter to pay Paul, but it's not as obvious when he's with Ireland or Leinster as the coaches have worked this into their systems.
And finally, have a look at http://www.rbs6nations.com/en/match-centre_table.php. That's the most recent gauge of each team's worth in the Northern Hemisphere. The English can feel aggrieved at 10 Welshmen. Ireland cannot feel aggrieved at having 3 spots.
They are not 'we'. They are an amalgamation of national sides that includes Ireland, but that doesn't make us all 'Lions'.
Ireland is represented in the Lions, but that's different to saying the Lions represent Ireland - in my view at least.
If no Irish player was selected, would we still have to consider the Lions as representing us?
So by that logic an Ireland team minus Connacht players don't represent Connacht people. Right I get ya!!
Huge blow for Drico. From talk of him being Captain of the final test, to not even being in the Squad.
Gatland obviously has more faith in the Welsh to get the Lions over the line, in the winner takes all Final test. They were the best team in the Six nations, maybe he feels they have the greater winning mentality for the final test. Still 3 Irish so not that bad..
Decision obviously based on form and combination
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VttNqKXu84o&sns=em
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VttNqKXu84o&sns=em)
The last Lions team to win a deciding match in Australia.
15 FB Gavin Hastings
14 W Ieuan Evans
13 C Jerry Guscott
12 C Scott Hastings
11 W Rory Underwood
10 FH Rob Andrew
9 SH Robert Jones
1 P David Sole
2 H Brian Moore
3 P Dai Young
4 L Paul Ackford
5 L Wade Dooley
6 F Mike Teague
7 F Finlay Calder (c)
8 N8 Dean Richards
In the words of another Aussie 'Can you tell what it is yet?'
If the Lions win, the Gatland's dropping of O'Driscoll will be hailed as courageous masterstroke. It will be a black mark on O'Driscoll's career because the wisdom will become that he stayed on too long, was over the hill and needed to be pushed off the stage in order to rescue a Lions series.
If they lose, or even get thumped Gatland will be the villain and will get a right shoeing for being both wrong, callous and possibly biased. Imagine the grilling he'll gets next Spring when he brings Wales (the Lions) over to Dublin for the 6 nations for example! Every press conference and newspaper article about him for the next few years will dredge it up.
I'd get much more enjoyment out of the 2nd scenario! :)
Quote from: Declan on July 03, 2013, 10:29:32 AM
Decision obviously based on form and combination
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VttNqKXu84o&sns=em
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VttNqKXu84o&sns=em)
With Tuilagi and Roberts injured we were always going to struggle at 12 as Davies is a natural 13. It looks like he fucked up twice there at least.
Yes it seems like a bad call especially when it's Brian O'Driscoll but Davies has played well at 13 in this tour and the Lions gameplan of 12 bashing the Aussies and 13 running off him hasn't happened yet and it's fairly clear Gatland has nailed his colours to the mast on this one. We will have strong runners bashing up the middle with the likes of O'Brien, Faletau and Roberts/Tuilagi.
He'd better hope this tactic works because if the game hangs in the balance with 10 to go where is the leadership that is going to take us over the line in a tight situation?
QuoteTom English @TomEnglishSport 5m
I'm guessing that this wouldn't be a good time to mention that Ian Evans is very unlucky...
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 10:11:31 AM
Quote from: Tubberman on July 03, 2013, 10:00:11 AM
Quote from: thewobbler on July 03, 2013, 09:51:51 AM
Some of the comments here are quite disarming.
I've no emotional favour to the Lions, but "they" are actually "we". I'm not telling anyone they have to cheer on the Lions, but as a team they do actually represent Ireland.
This reminds me of a thread on here years ago when Darren Clarke didn't get a wildcard pick for the Ryder Cup. Ian Poulter (one of the best match players in the world) was rightly chosen instead, but it was enough to turn Europe into "them".
Get behind a team or don't get behind them, but don't change your colours because you don't agree with the manager.
NAG1 - For the best part of a decade, BOD was by some distance the best player in the world in his position, and often the standout player in the world. There were no flaws in his game. Skill, flair, poise, dedication, athleticism, application, commitment, longevity, all in bucketloads. You'd do well to find anyone even fit to ride his coat tails.
nrico - For the past 5 years BOD has played more like a flanker than a centre for Ireland and Leinster. His game evolved into this role as his pace began to leave him. In some ways him doing this is robbing Peter to pay Paul, but it's not as obvious when he's with Ireland or Leinster as the coaches have worked this into their systems.
And finally, have a look at http://www.rbs6nations.com/en/match-centre_table.php. That's the most recent gauge of each team's worth in the Northern Hemisphere. The English can feel aggrieved at 10 Welshmen. Ireland cannot feel aggrieved at having 3 spots.
They are not 'we'. They are an amalgamation of national sides that includes Ireland, but that doesn't make us all 'Lions'.
Ireland is represented in the Lions, but that's different to saying the Lions represent Ireland - in my view at least.
If no Irish player was selected, would we still have to consider the Lions as representing us?
So by that logic an Ireland team minus Connacht players don't represent Connacht people. Right I get ya!!
But Connacht is part of Ireland.
Ireland is not part of some 'Britain & Ireland' state/nation... we'll leave Ulster out of it for now ;-).
Quote from: Tubberman on July 03, 2013, 11:00:50 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 10:11:31 AM
Quote from: Tubberman on July 03, 2013, 10:00:11 AM
Quote from: thewobbler on July 03, 2013, 09:51:51 AM
Some of the comments here are quite disarming.
I've no emotional favour to the Lions, but "they" are actually "we". I'm not telling anyone they have to cheer on the Lions, but as a team they do actually represent Ireland.
This reminds me of a thread on here years ago when Darren Clarke didn't get a wildcard pick for the Ryder Cup. Ian Poulter (one of the best match players in the world) was rightly chosen instead, but it was enough to turn Europe into "them".
Get behind a team or don't get behind them, but don't change your colours because you don't agree with the manager.
NAG1 - For the best part of a decade, BOD was by some distance the best player in the world in his position, and often the standout player in the world. There were no flaws in his game. Skill, flair, poise, dedication, athleticism, application, commitment, longevity, all in bucketloads. You'd do well to find anyone even fit to ride his coat tails.
nrico - For the past 5 years BOD has played more like a flanker than a centre for Ireland and Leinster. His game evolved into this role as his pace began to leave him. In some ways him doing this is robbing Peter to pay Paul, but it's not as obvious when he's with Ireland or Leinster as the coaches have worked this into their systems.
And finally, have a look at http://www.rbs6nations.com/en/match-centre_table.php. That's the most recent gauge of each team's worth in the Northern Hemisphere. The English can feel aggrieved at 10 Welshmen. Ireland cannot feel aggrieved at having 3 spots.
They are not 'we'. They are an amalgamation of national sides that includes Ireland, but that doesn't make us all 'Lions'.
Ireland is represented in the Lions, but that's different to saying the Lions represent Ireland - in my view at least.
If no Irish player was selected, would we still have to consider the Lions as representing us?
So by that logic an Ireland team minus Connacht players don't represent Connacht people. Right I get ya!!
But Connacht is part of Ireland.
Ireland is not part of some 'Britain & Ireland' state/nation... we'll leave Ulster out of it for now ;-).
So it comes down to politics, and you probably another FG man!!
Stick you lads to winning All Irelands.....oh wait! ;)
Quote from: thewobbler on July 03, 2013, 10:09:28 AM
I kind of agree with you Tubberman. I've no more allegiance to the Lions than I do to the Ryder Cup team, or to Ulster in Railway Cup, or even to Ireland in the International Rules series. Which is basically none.
These teams are forced together for the purposes of sport, rather than bonded together to represent.
But in saying that, while the result will not affect my thoughts, I'd still prefer to see "us" beat the opposition in all those events. No jingoism, no national pride, it's just a preference.
s
No, they are the British and Irish Lions, therefore they represent us. They are 'we', not 'them'. Similarly, just having no Irish player on the Ryder Cup team, doesn't make it less representative of golf here. The team represents Europe (and European golf) of which we are an intrinsic part.
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 10:11:31 AM
So by that logic an Ireland team minus Connacht players don't represent Connacht people. Right I get ya!!
Listen to yourself man. You have the cheek to tell me to catch myself on. All Irishmen may not be from Connacht, but all Connacht men are by default Irishmen, like it or not. We're not all "Lions"
Quote from: gallsman on July 03, 2013, 11:38:13 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 10:11:31 AM
So by that logic an Ireland team minus Connacht players don't represent Connacht people. Right I get ya!!
Listen to yourself man. You have the cheek to tell me to catch myself on. All Irishmen may not be from Connacht, but all Connacht men are by default Irishmen, like it or not. We're not all "Lions"
Rugby must be popular round West Belfast given the interest you have in this thread!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 11:40:01 AM
Quote from: gallsman on July 03, 2013, 11:38:13 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 10:11:31 AM
So by that logic an Ireland team minus Connacht players don't represent Connacht people. Right I get ya!!
Listen to yourself man. You have the cheek to tell me to catch myself on. All Irishmen may not be from Connacht, but all Connacht men are by default Irishmen, like it or not. We're not all "Lions"
Rugby must be popular round West Belfast given the interest you have in this thread!
a) I'm not from West Belfast.
b) I hear it's absolutely massive in South Derry.
Quote from: gallsman on July 03, 2013, 11:45:19 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 11:40:01 AM
Quote from: gallsman on July 03, 2013, 11:38:13 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 10:11:31 AM
So by that logic an Ireland team minus Connacht players don't represent Connacht people. Right I get ya!!
Listen to yourself man. You have the cheek to tell me to catch myself on. All Irishmen may not be from Connacht, but all Connacht men are by default Irishmen, like it or not. We're not all "Lions"
Rugby must be popular round West Belfast given the interest you have in this thread!
a) I'm not from West Belfast.
b) I hear it's absolutely massive in South Derry.
Oh thats right you Galls men are from all over the City
Good to see Mugsy's thoughts on it
@owen_mulligan: Warren Gatland must had dinner with Micky Harte last night. The two wee skitters drop kicking men in to touch flat out. #ruthless
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 11:54:01 AM
Quote from: gallsman on July 03, 2013, 11:45:19 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 11:40:01 AM
Quote from: gallsman on July 03, 2013, 11:38:13 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 10:11:31 AM
So by that logic an Ireland team minus Connacht players don't represent Connacht people. Right I get ya!!
Listen to yourself man. You have the cheek to tell me to catch myself on. All Irishmen may not be from Connacht, but all Connacht men are by default Irishmen, like it or not. We're not all "Lions"
Rugby must be popular round West Belfast given the interest you have in this thread!
a) I'm not from West Belfast.
b) I hear it's absolutely massive in South Derry.
Oh thats right you Galls men are from all over the City
You mentioned something previously about fondly remembering the amateur era? Something about the content of your posts makes me doubt you can remember it, never mind fondly.
Quote from: gallsman on July 03, 2013, 12:00:46 PM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 11:54:01 AM
Quote from: gallsman on July 03, 2013, 11:45:19 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 11:40:01 AM
Quote from: gallsman on July 03, 2013, 11:38:13 AM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 10:11:31 AM
So by that logic an Ireland team minus Connacht players don't represent Connacht people. Right I get ya!!
Listen to yourself man. You have the cheek to tell me to catch myself on. All Irishmen may not be from Connacht, but all Connacht men are by default Irishmen, like it or not. We're not all "Lions"
Rugby must be popular round West Belfast given the interest you have in this thread!
a) I'm not from West Belfast.
b) I hear it's absolutely massive in South Derry.
Oh thats right you Galls men are from all over the City
You mentioned something previously about fondly remembering the amateur era? Something about the content of your posts makes me doubt you can remember it, never mind fondly.
Well you've doubted wrong, I do remember manys a game in the amateur days!!
Strange decision to drop both off the match squad, Gatland must be very fond of playing streetrugby ( bit.ly/13NfnxO ) and impressed by Sean O'Brien knocking over buses around Dublin
I guess revenge is best served cold in Gatland's eyes. Both Heaslip and BOD were not the problem, and not just dropping them, but not even putting them on the bench? As always BOD was the picture of class after one of the greatest shaftings in rugby history.
Very poor coaching on this tour, Gatland has rarely seemed bothered and this stinks of headless desperation. You lost the last test by a single point; you weren't far off to begin with.
I almost hope the Lions lose just so Gatland has to suffer the consequences of being a total fool instead of it becoming accepted logic that it was a masterstroke to drop BOD - make no mistake, if the Lions win it'll be in spite of dropping BOD and Heaslip, not because of it.
And Mike f**king Philips? Really? That's an even worse move than dropping BOD, he was a total liability in the first test and Genia will make ribbons of him in the decider.
I thought we put all this parochial nonsense behind us and matured as a nation. There is no England, Ireland, Scotland & Wales, there is a single entity called the Loins. We're all Loins, Jonathan Davies is as much a Loin as is (was) O'Driscoll.
It will be very interesting to see the post tour DVD behind the scenes and especially the final team selection meeting. Will give a good insight of the logic behind this drastic change in personnel.
Quote from: king of leon on July 03, 2013, 01:37:16 PM
It will be very interesting to see the post tour DVD behind the scenes and especially the final team selection meeting. Will give a good insight of the logic behind this drastic change in personnel.
"I don't like Ireland.."
"..I like Wales.."
"..lol, I have an idea.."
Quote from: Syferus on July 03, 2013, 01:41:03 PM
Quote from: king of leon on July 03, 2013, 01:37:16 PM
It will be very interesting to see the post tour DVD behind the scenes and especially the final team selection meeting. Will give a good insight of the logic behind this drastic change in personnel.
"I don't like Ireland.."
"..I like Wales.."
"..lol, I have an idea.."
Lets not kid ourselves, this is a 4 year jolly, end of season tour for an All stars selection hyped up beyond belief by Sky sports who've a schedule to fill now that the EPL is over.
The players see it as an honour to be picked and play in it, that's brilliant, but do you honestly think BOD, Rory Best would swap a 'Loins' for a 6N championship, not the token home crown thingy majig.
It was only a matter of time . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Deg1bQt1rzQ
Quote from: screenexile on July 03, 2013, 01:54:00 PM
It was only a matter of time . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Deg1bQt1rzQ
Beat me to it! One of the better Hitler reaction in my opinion!
Quote from: gallsman on July 03, 2013, 01:59:39 PM
Quote from: screenexile on July 03, 2013, 01:54:00 PM
It was only a matter of time . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Deg1bQt1rzQ
Beat me to it! One of the better Hitler reaction in my opinion!
Really didn't think I'd laugh at another one of those but It's decent! As a man who worked in Sydney, the nurses getting paid bit really did make me laugh, we had the dates circled on the calenders always!
One of the better ones alright
Quote from: Greenabovethered on July 03, 2013, 01:36:17 PM
There is no England, Ireland, Scotland & Wales, there is a single entity called the Loins. We're all Loins
http://www.tubechop.com/watch/1297639
http://www.rte.ie/sport/rugby/2013/0703/460356-hook-mistake-by-odriscoll-to-go-on-lions-tour/
Never the biggest fan of George but good article here!!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 03:17:01 PM
http://www.rte.ie/sport/rugby/2013/0703/460356-hook-mistake-by-odriscoll-to-go-on-lions-tour/
Never the biggest fan of George but good article here!!
A 'mistake to go on the tour'?
On what planet would you need to be on to not know enough about BOD to be absolutely sure he wouldn't be selfish enough to turn down a tour invite to protect his reputation? That wasn't even an option and to even suggest it is just Hook doing more of his trademark frothing.
''He should have retired last year''. Yeah, ok George. Just more attention seeking by Hook whose nose is probably out of joint from having to surrender the punditry chair to Sky Sports for the tour.
It's fun during a tv broadcast to listen to him rant but it's tedious outside that realm and he always comes across as desperate to make it known that he knows far more than you, the lowly sports fan.
He makes some good points about Gatland and BOD's treatment but he just distracts from them with his usual stuff.
Quote from: Syferus on July 03, 2013, 03:39:03 PM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 03:17:01 PM
http://www.rte.ie/sport/rugby/2013/0703/460356-hook-mistake-by-odriscoll-to-go-on-lions-tour/
Never the biggest fan of George but good article here!!
A 'mistake to go on the tour'?
On what planet would you need to be on to not know enough about BOD to be absolutely sure he wouldn't be selfish enough to turn down a tour invite to protect his reputation? That wasn't even an option and to even suggest it is just Hook doing more of his trademark frothing.
''He should have retired last year''. Yeah, ok George. Just more attention seeking by Hook whose nose is probably out of joint from having to surrender the punditry chair to Sky Sports for the tour.
It's fun during a tv broadcast to listen to him rant but it's tedious outside that realm and he always comes across as desperate to make it known that he knows far more than you, the lowly sports fan.
Apologies, should have stated I was referring to the possible arguement over tactics between BOD and Gatland!
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 03:41:07 PM
Quote from: Syferus on July 03, 2013, 03:39:03 PM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 03, 2013, 03:17:01 PM
http://www.rte.ie/sport/rugby/2013/0703/460356-hook-mistake-by-odriscoll-to-go-on-lions-tour/
Never the biggest fan of George but good article here!!
A 'mistake to go on the tour'?
On what planet would you need to be on to not know enough about BOD to be absolutely sure he wouldn't be selfish enough to turn down a tour invite to protect his reputation? That wasn't even an option and to even suggest it is just Hook doing more of his trademark frothing.
''He should have retired last year''. Yeah, ok George. Just more attention seeking by Hook whose nose is probably out of joint from having to surrender the punditry chair to Sky Sports for the tour.
It's fun during a tv broadcast to listen to him rant but it's tedious outside that realm and he always comes across as desperate to make it known that he knows far more than you, the lowly sports fan.
Apologies, should have stated I was referring to the possible arguement over tactics between BOD and Gatland!
Aye, there is some good stuff there but Hook always seems to want to snipe at fans at any chance he gets, the neagtive reaction he gets in some quarters must really get to him.
BOD gets dropped for:
Davies - I'll leave it to Jeremy Guscott: "Davies put himself in no-man's land for the Adam Ashley-Cooper try on Saturday, he came to help O'Driscoll stop James O'Connor when he didn't need to."
Roberts - Was not playing well on tour and then got injured. A big ask for him to suddenly find both his fitness and his form.
Tuilagi - Was playing well before he got injured and in particular played well at 12 with BOD outside him. If Roberts breaks down & Tuilagi isn't right the Lions will lose, simples. O'Driscoll should at least have made the bench.
Gameplan:
Bish, bash bosh and then hope Davies can got on some shoulders. After all Davies is his country's record try scorer, all time 5/6 Nations record try scorer, never missed a tackle all tour............ops sorry, that is young O'Driscoll of course.
Leadership:
Who needs it? The Lions obviously don't.
Rucking:
O'Brien has loads of reasons for his inclusion but this is an area where the Aussies will make hay. Roberts & Davies can't lace BOD's boots in this regard.
Gatland seems to have run out of ideas and simply picked the tallest men in each position. Bowe is lucky, as Cuthbert must have been sitting down when the team was picked and Kearney must have been asleep.
Someone stated that the Lions were Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales...could someone tell Gatland. The one poit Hook got right was in asking would Wales beat Australia in Australia...well no. O'Driscoll was not that poor that he deserved to be dropped completely. I'd agree with the sentiment that from the get go Gatland was picking his Welsh buddies for his own selfish reasons. I hope he gets what he desreves...his arse on a plate. O'Driscoll has more class in his wee toe than there is in all of Gatlands body.
Gatland made my mind up for me. I'm going to Lansdowne for the Wales game next year to watch BOD make him look even worse. If we could be on our way to winning the Six Nations, all the better..
What are they saying down under about this news story ( I dont mean strabne either)
Nice to see Sean O'Brien making his debut for Wales all the same.
Quote from: theticklemister on July 03, 2013, 05:18:59 PM
What are they saying down under about this news story ( I dont mean strabne either)
Matt Giteau:
"Gee dropping @BrianODriscoll out of the team is a huge call.. For mine, he has been the stand out unsung hero this series.. Defensively huge."
Morgan Turinui: "Best Wallaby of our generation IN. Best Lion of our Generation @BrianODriscoll OUT. Most influential Lion @JonnyWilkinson absent. Advantage?"
Austin Healy: "I actually thought BOD played well last week made some decisive big tackles...big call has Gatland panicked?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2013/jul/03/warren-gatland-brian-odriscoll-lions
Gatland has put Irish Lions supporters in a sickening position now. I want to see Bowe, Sexton and O'Brien go great and have loved watching some of the Welsh lads play but lord if it wouldn't be very bittersweet if the Lions won after this.
Quote from: Syferus on July 03, 2013, 08:12:55 PM
Gatland has put Irish Lions supporters in a sickening position now. I want to see Bowe, Sexton and O'Brien go great and have loved watching some of the Welsh lads play but lord if it wouldn't be very bittersweet if the Lions won after this.
Up Roscommon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's the only team ye should be supporting!
The best thing you can say for the Roberts/Davies partnership is that they won't be facing O'Driscoll:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5umGrR1jQnw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5umGrR1jQnw)
Lads. Anyone consider that Gatland is learning from the likes of McGeeney and naming a bogus team!
No!
Me neither!
Gatland has been planning this for ten years.
IRFU, Eddie O'Sullivan, George Hook, Mick Galwey, Jackie Kyle, Trevor Brennan - your boy took a hell of a beating.
(http://s1.thejournal.ie/media/2013/07/bodtweet12.png)
The Mullingar man speaks a lot of sense.
Quote from: Syferus on July 03, 2013, 10:50:19 PM
(http://s1.thejournal.ie/media/2013/07/bodtweet12.png)
The Mullingar man speaks a lot of sense.
Amy Huberman's views will be interesting.
Quote from: Aaron Boone on July 03, 2013, 11:17:11 PM
Quote from: Syferus on July 03, 2013, 10:50:19 PM
(http://s1.thejournal.ie/media/2013/07/bodtweet12.png)
The Mullingar man speaks a lot of sense.
Amy Huberman's views will be interesting.
Pure class, just like her husband:
Amy Huberman @amyhuberman 15h
Massively proud of my hubby.
Article from 2010
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/vincent-hogan/vincent-hogan-sour-gatland-cant-get-over-irish-allergy-26639022.html
No ones mentioned it but do u think there is anything personal going on?
Quote from: Radda bout yeee on July 04, 2013, 12:51:01 AM
No ones mentioned it but do u think there is anything personal going on?
It's always been personal between Gatland and Ireland.
Imagine if BOD was retiring this season. Imagine our greatest ever player going out like
this. Small mercies.
Quote from: Syferus on July 04, 2013, 12:59:31 AM
Quote from: Radda bout yeee on July 04, 2013, 12:51:01 AM
No ones mentioned it but do u think there is anything personal going on?
It's always been personal between Gatland and Ireland.
Imagine if BOD was retiring this season. Imagine our greatest ever player going out like this. Small mercies.
Gatland doesn't have to keep everyone happy by selecting Drico. He has looked at him in the last 2 tests and feels he is not up to the task, he is probably wrong, But he won't give a fook if the Lions beat Australia if they lose, them he had the balls to drop a star player and make a brave call which would have back fired on him..
Its not about agenda with Irish players, sure there was 9 in the orginal squad and various other called up like Zebo , Court. That's only crap talk.
Lot of fuss over a friendly game.
Quote from: rodney trotter on July 04, 2013, 01:21:53 AM
Quote from: Syferus on July 04, 2013, 12:59:31 AM
Quote from: Radda bout yeee on July 04, 2013, 12:51:01 AM
No ones mentioned it but do u think there is anything personal going on?
It's always been personal between Gatland and Ireland.
Imagine if BOD was retiring this season. Imagine our greatest ever player going out like this. Small mercies.
Gatland doesn't have to keep everyone happy by selecting Drico. He has looked at him in the last 2 tests and feels he is not up to the task, he is probably wrong, But he won't give a fook if the Lions beat Australia if they lose, them he had the balls to drop a star player and make a brave call which would have back fired on him..
Its not about agenda with Irish players, sure there was 9 in the orginal squad and various other called up like Zebo , Court. That's only crap talk.
If you don't think he has an affliction against all things Irish you've been hiding out under a rock for over a decade. He never forgave us for sacking him.
Today was partly him reverting to type and picking the tallest and widest feckers available to him but there's plenty of scope for his own emotions to be mixed into the pot as well.
Heaslip and Murray were both shafted too and we've forgotten that in the rush to talk about BOD.
Quote from: tyssam5 on July 04, 2013, 01:25:13 AM
Lot of fuss over a friendly game.
+1
only competitive games in rugby are at world cup.
As a Liverpool fan once explained to me about playing Man U. He loved nothing better than Keane to play out of his skin, score a goal and Liverpool to win 2-1. So with the Lions, the Bowe, Sexton and O'Brien toplay well, the Aussies to win by 10 points...Advance Australia Fair!
In the interests of balance ...
http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/rugby/odriscoll-exclusion-is-the-correct-decision-based-on-form-but-gatland-might-have-made-it-too-late.21520578
QuoteAnyone shocked by Brian O'Driscoll's omission from the British & Irish Lions team for Saturday's series decider against Australia was not paying attention to this season's Six Nations Championship.
By his own extraordinary standards, barring some flickering brilliance in the opening match against Wales, the Irishman's form was mediocre while, from the second half of that encounter onwards, Welshmen Jamie Roberts and Jonathan Davies played a huge part in the Welsh's successful championship defence.
If Warren Gatland, the Lions coach, has made any poor decisions, then, it could have been selecting O'Driscoll in the first place rather than when leaving him out this time around. Taking into account the performances of Manu Tuilagi, Brad Barritt and even Billy Twelvetrees ahead of England's implosion in the final match of the campaign, along with the versatility of Tommy Bowe, O'Driscoll's Ireland team-mate who started at outside centre in the only Test the Lions won in South Africa last time around, an argument could have been made that he could have been left behind altogether on form.
Even setting sentiment aside, that can never have been a consideration because a player of O'Driscoll's class over such a sustained period meant that he was more than entitled to be given the chance to prove himself in the course of the tour.
Just how much reputation played a part in his subsequent inclusion in the team for the first two Tests only Gatland knows. But even the coach may be unable to judge whether the Irishman's form in those matches reflected an on-going failure to find his best form or whether it offered any sort of evidence that his mere presence remains influential.
However on the basis of the most important matches played annually in the Northern Hemisphere, the two Welsh centres are the best combination available to the Lions management right now. Whether that is enough to get the better of the third best side in the Southern Hemisphere this Saturday remains to be seen.
As for whether criticism should be levelled at Gatland in terms of the ruthlessness he has shown, it may well be that the real issue is that he has done so too late. The difficulty of making that case is, of course, that the only thing that can happen on Saturday to support it is a Lions win and, if that happens, no-one will care about anything Gatland may or may not have got wrong.
To that end, then, O'Driscoll should probably be grateful because he now appears to be the one Lion who cannot lose this weekend.
Quote from: Applesisapples on July 04, 2013, 10:13:36 AM
As a Liverpool fan once explained to me about playing Man U. He loved nothing better than Keane to play out of his skin, score a goal and Liverpool to win 2-1. So with the Lions, the Bowe, Sexton and O'Brien toplay well, the Aussies to win by 10 points...Advance Australia Fair!
Can't have been much of a Liverpool fan then.
Quote from: bcarrier on July 04, 2013, 10:17:43 AM
In the interests of balance ...
http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/rugby/odriscoll-exclusion-is-the-correct-decision-based-on-form-but-gatland-might-have-made-it-too-late.21520578
QuoteAnyone shocked by Brian O'Driscoll's omission from the British & Irish Lions team for Saturday's series decider against Australia was not paying attention to this season's Six Nations Championship.
By his own extraordinary standards, barring some flickering brilliance in the opening match against Wales, the Irishman's form was mediocre while, from the second half of that encounter onwards, Welshmen Jamie Roberts and Jonathan Davies played a huge part in the Welsh's successful championship defence.
If Warren Gatland, the Lions coach, has made any poor decisions, then, it could have been selecting O'Driscoll in the first place rather than when leaving him out this time around. Taking into account the performances of Manu Tuilagi, Brad Barritt and even Billy Twelvetrees ahead of England's implosion in the final match of the campaign, along with the versatility of Tommy Bowe, O'Driscoll's Ireland team-mate who started at outside centre in the only Test the Lions won in South Africa last time around, an argument could have been made that he could have been left behind altogether on form.
Even setting sentiment aside, that can never have been a consideration because a player of O'Driscoll's class over such a sustained period meant that he was more than entitled to be given the chance to prove himself in the course of the tour.
Just how much reputation played a part in his subsequent inclusion in the team for the first two Tests only Gatland knows. But even the coach may be unable to judge whether the Irishman's form in those matches reflected an on-going failure to find his best form or whether it offered any sort of evidence that his mere presence remains influential.
However on the basis of the most important matches played annually in the Northern Hemisphere, the two Welsh centres are the best combination available to the Lions management right now. Whether that is enough to get the better of the third best side in the Southern Hemisphere this Saturday remains to be seen.
As for whether criticism should be levelled at Gatland in terms of the ruthlessness he has shown, it may well be that the real issue is that he has done so too late. The difficulty of making that case is, of course, that the only thing that can happen on Saturday to support it is a Lions win and, if that happens, no-one will care about anything Gatland may or may not have got wrong.
To that end, then, O'Driscoll should probably be grateful because he now appears to be the one Lion who cannot lose this weekend.
Aye, there's always one, commenter, journalist, whatever, that wants to be controversial and go agains the grain.
Third test, a 80k+ cauldron baying for Lions' blood, your two captains out injured , you have no real leaders left and you happen to have probably the greatest centre to play the game and one of the most decorated players of all-time sitting in your dressing room. You don't need to over-think this one.
BOD wasn't at his very best but he was a damn sight better than Jonathan Davies (who lest we forget missed the tackle for Australia's match winning try on Saturday).
This match was made for BOD. The Lions were favoured to lose anyways but Gatland just gambled the house on a Welsh team that has lost its last eight tests to Australia in the last 20 months. C'mon now.
Gatland seems to be channeling Babs Keating at the moment.
BOD is 34 ... I rarely watch rugby, but surely BOD is not the force he used to be?
Quote from: http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/rugby/odriscoll-exclusion-is-the-correct-decision-based-on-form-but-gatland-might-have-made-it-too-late.21520578O'Driscoll ... now appears to be the one Lion who cannot lose this weekend.
That is a good point.
Quote from: deiseach on July 04, 2013, 10:25:53 AM
Quote from: Applesisapples on July 04, 2013, 10:13:36 AM
As a Liverpool fan once explained to me about playing Man U. He loved nothing better than Keane to play out of his skin, score a goal and Liverpool to win 2-1. So with the Lions, the Bowe, Sexton and O'Brien toplay well, the Aussies to win by 10 points...Advance Australia Fair!
Can't have been much of a Liverpool fan then.
he's a Corkman!
Quote from: theskull1 on July 04, 2013, 01:54:55 PM
BOD is 34 ... I rarely watch rugby, but surely BOD is not the force he used to be?
You have your answer. The best passer in world rugby and a complete defender. 13 tackles without a single broken one the last day.
Quote from: Applesisapples on July 04, 2013, 02:18:04 PM
Quote from: deiseach on July 04, 2013, 10:25:53 AM
Quote from: Applesisapples on July 04, 2013, 10:13:36 AM
As a Liverpool fan once explained to me about playing Man U. He loved nothing better than Keane to play out of his skin, score a goal and Liverpool to win 2-1. So with the Lions, the Bowe, Sexton and O'Brien toplay well, the Aussies to win by 10 points...Advance Australia Fair!
Can't have been much of a Liverpool fan then.
he's a Corkman!
Still can't be much of a Liverpool fan. You wouldn't catch my wife saying she hopes Wayne Rooney does okay for Man Utd just because they're both Scousers.
Quote from: Syferus on July 04, 2013, 02:21:11 PM
Quote from: theskull1 on July 04, 2013, 01:54:55 PM
BOD is 34 ... I rarely watch rugby, but surely BOD is not the force he used to be?
You have your answer. The best passer in world rugby and a complete defender. 13 tackles without a single broken one the last day.
Thats a bigggggg shout. Genia??
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 04, 2013, 02:25:36 PM
Quote from: Syferus on July 04, 2013, 02:21:11 PM
Quote from: theskull1 on July 04, 2013, 01:54:55 PM
BOD is 34 ... I rarely watch rugby, but surely BOD is not the force he used to be?
You have your answer. The best passer in world rugby and a complete defender. 13 tackles without a single broken one the last day.
Thats a bigggggg shout. Genia??
I'm thinking out in open field, the feints, the dummies, the direction switches. He's got exceptional vision.
Obviously scrum halves are going to be specialised in passing quick ball but there's less room for invention with your passing at 9. BOD would have made a serious scrum-half, actually, especially when you consider his work as fourth back rower a lot of the time.
Yeah know what you mean, I actually think for all his faults Quade Cooper is one of the worlds best passers!!
Gatland is going for crash bang wallop, crash bang wallop and then crash, bang wallop again rugby, BOD hasn't got the build for that. Its the managers choice.
He might be right, he might be wrong who really cares as there will be a better contest on later that evening down in Nowlan park.
Quote from: Syferus on July 04, 2013, 01:49:45 AM
Quote from: rodney trotter on July 04, 2013, 01:21:53 AM
Quote from: Syferus on July 04, 2013, 12:59:31 AM
Quote from: Radda bout yeee on July 04, 2013, 12:51:01 AM
No ones mentioned it but do u think there is anything personal going on?
It's always been personal between Gatland and Ireland.
Imagine if BOD was retiring this season. Imagine our greatest ever player going out like this. Small mercies.
Gatland doesn't have to keep everyone happy by selecting Drico. He has looked at him in the last 2 tests and feels he is not up to the task, he is probably wrong, But he won't give a fook if the Lions beat Australia if they lose, them he had the balls to drop a star player and make a brave call which would have back fired on him..
Its not about agenda with Irish players, sure there was 9 in the orginal squad and various other called up like Zebo , Court. That's only crap talk.
If you don't think he has an affliction against all things Irish you've been hiding out under a rock for over a decade. He never forgave us for sacking him.
Today was partly him reverting to type and picking the tallest and widest feckers available to him but there's plenty of scope for his own emotions to be mixed into the pot as well.
Heaslip and Murray were both shafted too and we've forgotten that in the rush to talk about BOD.
Do you actually believe Gatland would jepordise a test Series at 1-1 going into the final test , over getting rough treatment from the IRFU 10 years ago?
Gatland is a kiwi , he would like to beat Australia as much as the players. He probably feels O Driscoll's body isn't recovering as it should from tough test games, by watching him daily in training.
Its not about politics, he is picking the side/ squad he feels on current form can beat Australia in the final test. Wether we would agree with him or not,
Quote from: johnneycool on July 04, 2013, 02:57:46 PM
Gatland is going for crash bang wallop, crash bang wallop and then crash, bang wallop again rugby, BOD hasn't got the build for that. Its the managers choice.
He might be right, he might be wrong who really cares as there will be a better contest on later that evening down in Nowlan park.
100%, also once he never made the team the bench wasn't an option as a like for like replacement was needed for the Walloper with the dodgy hammer.
I thought he looked old last saturday, not as bad as the Stones at Glastonbury, but definitely like he'd gone to the well once too often. Just didn't think Gatland would have the Cojones to drop him.
p.s Here's hoping Kilkenny and Kerry are helped off the stage this weekend.
While I disagree with dropping O'Driscoll in the first place and certainly from the squad, there appears to have been a collective madness covering this island in the last two days. "Oh, but remember how great Roberts and O'Driscoll were together." Yes, most of us do. That was four years ago. Roberts and Davies are the regular Welsh centres who play together an awful lot more frequently. Everyone is rushing to condemn Davies as he's the one O'Driscoll has made way for but he's a fine player in his own right. A lot of people are pointing out that BOD made one and scored one against the Welsh this year. I seem to recall Davies torching us for two the year before that.
Gatland was entitled to make the call and he'll end up living and dying by it.
On a pure form assessment, Murray is much more unlucky than O'Driscoll. Of the 160 minute played by Lions scrum-halves so far in the Tests, only Murray's 20 minutes have stood out for the right reasons.
Quote from: gallsman on July 04, 2013, 04:08:05 PM
While I disagree with dropping O'Driscoll in the first place and certainly from the squad, there appears to have been a collective madness covering this island in the last two days.
Correct. The reaction has been completely disproportionate. Gatland is out to win a rugby match. Should the Lions win, will all those people going mental over this be issuing apologies for the lack of judgement? Like fun they will.
The really tight calls were:
Hooker - Youngs (England) v Hibbard (Wales)
Decision Wales
Openside - O'Brien (Ireland) v Tipuric (Wales)
Decision Ireland
No. 8 - Healsip (Ireland) v Fetanau (Wales)
Decision Wales
Scrum half - Phillips (Wales) v Murray (Ireland) v Youngs (England)
Decision - Wales
Centres - Roberts & Davies (Wales) v BOD (Ireland) v Tuilagi (England)
Decision Wales & Wales
England faired worse than we did tbh.
If both Roberts and Tuilagi breakdown during the match, Gatland will be absolutely vilified in the English media. The Irish are understandably upset but the huge reaction in the English media has a different agenda. They can use BOD as a stick to beat Gatland, who they dislike for not picking more English players, without fear of being accused of bias.
Quote from: gallsman on July 04, 2013, 04:08:05 PM
While I disagree with dropping O'Driscoll in the first place and certainly from the squad, there appears to have been a collective madness covering this island in the last two days. "Oh, but remember how great Roberts and O'Driscoll were together." Yes, most of us do. That was four years ago. Roberts and Davies are the regular Welsh centres who play together an awful lot more frequently. Everyone is rushing to condemn Davies as he's the one O'Driscoll has made way for but he's a fine player in his own right. A lot of people are pointing out that BOD made one and scored one against the Welsh this year. I seem to recall Davies torching us for two the year before that.
Gatland was entitled to make the call and he'll end up living and dying by it.
On a pure form assessment, Murray is much more unlucky than O'Driscoll. Of the 160 minute played by Lions scrum-halves so far in the Tests, only Murray's 20 minutes have stood out for the right reasons.
Not gona fall out with ya my friend ;) but if you remember correctly Davies was shocking against us this year in Cardiff. He threw 2 passes into touch if I remember correctly. As for his try in the Aviva the year before, it was a case of George North bulldozing Fergus Mc Fadden and the Irish backline, with a sublime offload to Davies to run in un-opposed.
Quote from: deiseach on July 04, 2013, 04:16:46 PM
Quote from: gallsman on July 04, 2013, 04:08:05 PM
While I disagree with dropping O'Driscoll in the first place and certainly from the squad, there appears to have been a collective madness covering this island in the last two days.
Correct. The reaction has been completely disproportionate. Gatland is out to win a rugby match. Should the Lions win, will all those people going mental over this be issuing apologies for the lack of judgement? Like fun they will.
Absolutely not, I least amongst them. That's where I get back to the fact that I don't
really care who wins. I'd like the Lions to of course but I'll not worry too much if they don't.
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 04, 2013, 04:20:45 PM
Not gona fall out with ya my friend ;) but if you remember correctly Davies was shocking against us this year in Cardiff. He threw 2 passes into touch if I remember correctly. As for his try in the Aviva the year before, it was a case of George North bulldozing Fergus Mc Fadden and the Irish backline, with a sublime offload to Davies to run in un-opposed.
And O'Driscoll threw a shocking pass last Saturday - it happens. From the wider Irish reaction, you'd have thought it was the BOD of old which, much as we love to kid ourselves, he's not. I still think he should have been kept in for his defense and leadership (I think he was the real leader even when Warburton was fit - he had just as many conversations with the ref) but at the end of the day, Gatland's job is to win a series. If this team does it, he's done his job.
Rarely do I hope for injuries but how delicious would it be if Roberts or Tuilagi did a SON and tripped over a ball or the like before Saturday evening?
Gatland looks like he's in for a clobbering.
Quote from: gallsman on July 04, 2013, 04:29:19 PM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 04, 2013, 04:20:45 PM
Not gona fall out with ya my friend ;) but if you remember correctly Davies was shocking against us this year in Cardiff. He threw 2 passes into touch if I remember correctly. As for his try in the Aviva the year before, it was a case of George North bulldozing Fergus Mc Fadden and the Irish backline, with a sublime offload to Davies to run in un-opposed.
And O'Driscoll threw a shocking pass last Saturday - it happens. From the wider Irish reaction, you'd have thought it was the BOD of old which, much as we love to kid ourselves, he's not. I still think he should have been kept in for his defense and leadership (I think he was the real leader even when Warburton was fit - he had just as many conversations with the ref) but at the end of the day, Gatland's job is to win a series. If this team does it, he's done his job.
Granted that pass was poor (maybe the 1st/2nd of his career??) but Murray Kinsellas video clearly points out a lack of forward thinking by Davies, not only offensively but defensively.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VttNqKXu84o
In saying that the reaction has been OTT!!
This tour hasnt grabbed me because Ireland do well against Australia anyway.
Sat 9th Nov 02 14:30 Ireland 18 - 9 Australia Lansdowne Road
Sat 7th Jun 03 17:00 Australia 45 - 16 Ireland Subiaco Oval
Sat 1st Nov 03 20:35 RWC-PA Australia 17 - 16 Ireland Telstra Dome
Sat 19th Nov 05 14:30 Ireland 14 - 30 Australia Lansdowne Road
Sat 24th Jun 06 18:00 Australia 37 - 15 Ireland Subiaco Oval
Sun 19th Nov 06 16:00 Ireland 21 - 6 Australia Lansdowne Road
Sat 14th Jun 08 20:05 Australia 18 - 12 Ireland Telstra Dome
Sun 15th Nov 09 15:00 Ireland 20 - 20 Australia Croke Park
Sat 26th Jun 10 20:00 Australia 22 - 15 Ireland Suncorp Stadium
Sat 17th Sep 11 20:30 RWC-PC Australia 6 - 15 Ireland Eden Park
Quote from: muppet on July 04, 2013, 04:18:42 PM
The really tight calls were:
Hooker - Youngs (England) v Hibbard (Wales)
Decision Wales
Openside - O'Brien (Ireland) v Tipuric (Wales)
Decision Ireland
No. 8 - Healsip (Ireland) v Fetanau (Wales)
Decision Wales
Scrum half - Phillips (Wales) v Murray (Ireland) v Youngs (England)
Decision - Wales
Centres - Roberts & Davies (Wales) v BOD (Ireland) v Tuilagi (England)
Decision Wales & Wales
England faired worse than we did tbh.
If both Roberts and Tuilagi breakdown during the match, Gatland will be absolutely vilified in the English media. The Irish are understandably upset but the huge reaction in the English media has a different agenda. They can use BOD as a stick to beat Gatland, who they dislike for not picking more English players, without fear of being accused of bias.
If Healy and O'Connell had been fit, there'd be no English players starting!
Hibbard's been terrible all tour, Phillips and Davies have looked good against the rubbish warm-up teams but have been poor in the Tests they've played (perhaps Phillips had an injury excuse), but all three are very lucky to be starting tomorrow.
Quote from: Hound on July 05, 2013, 11:25:02 AM
Hibbard's been terrible all tour, Phillips and Davies have looked good against the rubbish warm-up teams but have been poor in the Tests they've played (perhaps Phillips had an injury excuse), but all three are very lucky to be starting tomorrow.
My problem with that is that if you're fit enough to start, there should be no excuses. If you're not fit enough to play to a certain standard, you shouldn't play.
Quote from: gallsman on July 04, 2013, 04:29:19 PM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 04, 2013, 04:20:45 PM
Not gona fall out with ya my friend ;) but if you remember correctly Davies was shocking against us this year in Cardiff. He threw 2 passes into touch if I remember correctly. As for his try in the Aviva the year before, it was a case of George North bulldozing Fergus Mc Fadden and the Irish backline, with a sublime offload to Davies to run in un-opposed.
And O'Driscoll threw a shocking pass last Saturday - it happens. From the wider Irish reaction, you'd have thought it was the BOD of old which, much as we love to kid ourselves, he's not. I still think he should have been kept in for his defense and leadership (I think he was the real leader even when Warburton was fit - he had just as many conversations with the ref) but at the end of the day, Gatland's job is to win a series. If this team does it, he's done his job.
As has been quoted his pass wasn't a bad one but more so Davies (who isn't a natural 12 in fairness) took the wrong line. if he had gone straightened instead of faded there was a line break on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VttNqKXu84o
This piece shows a few deficiencies in Davies' game last weekend that would probably not have occurred had there been a natural 12 playing with BOD last week.
Quote from: screenexile on July 05, 2013, 12:24:19 PM
Quote from: gallsman on July 04, 2013, 04:29:19 PM
Quote from: Walter Cronc on July 04, 2013, 04:20:45 PM
Not gona fall out with ya my friend ;) but if you remember correctly Davies was shocking against us this year in Cardiff. He threw 2 passes into touch if I remember correctly. As for his try in the Aviva the year before, it was a case of George North bulldozing Fergus Mc Fadden and the Irish backline, with a sublime offload to Davies to run in un-opposed.
And O'Driscoll threw a shocking pass last Saturday - it happens. From the wider Irish reaction, you'd have thought it was the BOD of old which, much as we love to kid ourselves, he's not. I still think he should have been kept in for his defense and leadership (I think he was the real leader even when Warburton was fit - he had just as many conversations with the ref) but at the end of the day, Gatland's job is to win a series. If this team does it, he's done his job.
As has been quoted his pass wasn't a bad one but more so Davies (who isn't a natural 12 in fairness) took the wrong line. if he had gone straightened instead of faded there was a line break on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VttNqKXu84o
This piece shows a few deficiencies in Davies' game last weekend that would probably not have occurred had there been a natural 12 playing with BOD last week.
In all of those pieces of action, O'Driscoll is inside Davies who is in the natural 13 position.
Maybe I imagined it, but I thought odriscoll played in last weeks loss!
He did well to get on the squad let alone start given his age, average 6n and that he is physically way small for modern day intl rugby.
I think the men most snubbed here are heaslip and croft.
Quote from: camanchero on July 05, 2013, 06:37:09 PM
Maybe I imagined it, but I thought odriscoll played in last weeks loss!
He did well to get on the squad let alone start given his age, average 6n and that he is physically way small for intl rugby.
I think the men most snubbed here are heaslip and croft.
LOL.
Gatland doesn't understand back-play at all - it's one note bang bang bang stuff with little craft or defensive intelligence - and someone in the Indo pointed out today Gatland's biggest mistake was not getting Schmidt to be the Lions' backs' coach. I'd agree.
Forgot alex cuthbert - also very unlucky, though I'd always have room for bowe in a side whether at centre or wing
Camanchero/LB knows as much about rugby as he does Derry football.
Career defining call by (& for) Gatland, he'll never live it down if the Lions are beaten. 'mon the Taffs.
Quote from: camanchero on July 05, 2013, 06:53:20 PM
Forgot alex cuthbert - also very unlucky, though I'd always have room for bowe in a side whether at centre or wing
Dear God.
Watch Cuthbert and Davies closely.
People would pay lots of money to get the spectator's view they got here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5umGrR1jQnw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5umGrR1jQnw)
Heathrow arrivals will be a sorry place at 6am Tuesday.
Dublin arrivals midday Tuesday will be value to hear the real views post-Gatland.
Quote from: Aaron Boone on July 05, 2013, 11:07:21 PM
Heathrow arrivals will be a sorry place at 6am Tuesday.
Dublin arrivals midday Tuesday will be value to hear the real views post-Gatland.
I doubt BOD is going to start a flame war either way. It'll probably a few years yet before we hear the full story behind this one.
The lions lead 10-3 after 9 minutes.
Make that 13-3
Maybe Gatland made the right call. 16-3
Quote from: All of a Sludden on July 06, 2013, 11:25:03 AM
Maybe Gatland made the right call. 16-3
Roberts certainly was the right call, the jury is still out on Davies.
Front row demolishing Australia.
Lions scrum well on top.
Quote from: Lecale2 on July 06, 2013, 11:29:58 AM
Lions scrum well on top.
Australia can't scrum. Corbisiero the difference.
This could be a mauling.
Quote from: muppet on July 06, 2013, 11:34:02 AM
Quote from: Lecale2 on July 06, 2013, 11:29:58 AM
Lions scrum well on top.
Australia can't scrum. Corbisiero the difference.
This could be a mauling.
I reckon I could play ouside centre for the Lions in this game. 10 man tripe
Last week when they changed the fronts rows Australia got the upper hand. They would need to be within 15 points though.
Excellent stuff so far
Davies did to Halfpenny there what he did to BOD. Penalty Australia.
Great try by O'Connor.
19-10 at half time. Great try.
Australia leaving it late to start playing. Don't know whether to be happy or sick.
Sexton poor for that try but jaysus its boring from the Lions at least Aussies try and play
As long as they get the win, haven't won a series since 97
Momentum change - Australia to win
Alot of blood and thunder in the first half from the Lions - but no real quality! Aussies will win this! Glad I backed them when 16-3 down at 7/2.
Quote from: BennyHarp on July 06, 2013, 12:12:49 PM
Alot of blood and thunder in the first half from the Lions - but no real quality! Aussies will win this! Glad I backed them when 16-3 down at 7/2.
Bish, bash, bosh.
Wales playing English/Munster style 10 man rugby.
God Phillips is slow.
Quote from: muppet on July 06, 2013, 12:14:40 PM
Quote from: BennyHarp on July 06, 2013, 12:12:49 PM
Alot of blood and thunder in the first half from the Lions - but no real quality! Aussies will win this! Glad I backed them when 16-3 down at 7/2.
Bish, bash, bosh.
Wales playing English/Munster style 10 man rugby.
The only way they can win this is to stick it up the jumper. Fckn horrible to watch.
QuoteGod Phillips is slow.
Yep - If they keep it tight the Lions might win. Interesting Murray on now
Has George North actually received a pass in the three tests so far? His try the first day came from a returned kick.
Quote from: BennyHarp on July 06, 2013, 12:21:55 PM
Has George North actually received a pass in the three tests so far? His try the first day came from a returned kick.
At least he was used there with that kick from Sexton
Sexton, North & Bowe doing well with the scraps that they receive.
Sexton stepping up alright - brilliant
Good lead now, fair play Johnny Sexton..
Sexton has been excellent - only man with a bit of creativity!
Quote from: BennyHarp on July 06, 2013, 12:32:05 PM
Sexton has been excellent - only man with a bit of creativity!
So he gets subbed........
Holy f**k what a decision
Game set & match - North try .. Halfpenny has been the best Lions player on tour, serious
Gatland 100% spot on.
Davies did nothing to suggest it was the right descision, buck.
Glad to see POC and BOD getting a series win, albeit not in the manner they'd have hoped.
Quote from: ONeill on July 06, 2013, 12:41:18 PM
Gatland 100% spot on.
Will make a great documentary in years to come.
Garland amazingly shows that he knows more about rugby than the armchair suporter/Internet message boarder !
Quote from: BennyHarp on July 06, 2013, 12:12:49 PM
Alot of blood and thunder in the first half from the Lions - but no real quality! Aussies will win this! Glad I backed them when 16-3 down at 7/2.
;D
Ah, in fairness we had to stand up for one of our own!
Quote from: sans pessimism on July 06, 2013, 12:48:34 PM
Quote from: BennyHarp on July 06, 2013, 12:12:49 PM
Alot of blood and thunder in the first half from the Lions - but no real quality! Aussies will win this! Glad I backed them when 16-3 down at 7/2.
;D
What this Lions tour showed was that I know absolutely feck all about rugby! ;D
Benny,don't be too hard on yourself! You know as much about rugby as the slobbering gobshite Hook and the other so called "experts"
Quote from: BennyHarp on July 06, 2013, 12:12:49 PM
Alot of blood and thunder in the first half from the Lions - but no real quality! Aussies will win this! Glad I backed them when 16-3 down at 7/2.
Indeed.
Quote from: ONeill on July 06, 2013, 12:41:18 PM
Gatland 100% spot on.
Hard to argue with the result, but it would have been nice to have BOD on the field, at least, for the last few minutes.
Faletua proved to be the right call but Murray showed in the few minutes that he's in better form than Phillips and Davies didn't do anything that BOD couldn't. When the game was in the balance Halfpenny( player of the tour) and Sexton stood up and won it so feck all to do with the tight calls. Aussies gave up after the North try. Fair play to them but like eaten bread will be soon forgotten
BOD shows his class by going around on the pitch congratulating players. Looks legitimately delighted.
I always think the Lions should be winning these lions series so I am taking this win for granted. This is the first series win in 16 years today.
Sky claiming one of the greatest achievements ever
by a touring side ....really needs to get out more
where s John Terry?
Quote from: Gaffer on July 06, 2013, 01:16:25 PM
where s John Terry?
riding gatlands wife probably !
john terry lol class!!
Great win, Gatland vindicated but O'Driscoll could have played there without any need for a tactical change, hindsight is a great thing tho.
What will Gatland do now? Is there a big payday waiting for him somewhere? All Blacks?
He could and should have been Ireland's coach for a very long time. Gatland would never have been Wales and lions coach if Ireland hadn't sacked him.
Quote from: Capt Pat on July 06, 2013, 01:56:42 PM
He could and should have been Ireland's coach for a very long time. Gatland would never have been Wales and lions coach if Ireland hadn't sacked him.
Err, what?
Lads in essence the BOD call proved not to be all that decisive. Lions were head and shoulders above Wallabies without playing too much expansive Rugby.
For all the talk of Roberts I saw 68 mins of Rugby and can't remeber his name being mentioned. Fair play to the Lions they won the series but the quality wasn't much to write home about!
PS. Tommy Bowe, O'Brien and Sexton were all excellent IMO!
Quote from: screenexile on July 06, 2013, 04:41:42 PM
Lads in essence the BOD call proved not to be all that decisive. Lions were head and shoulders above Wallabies without playing too much expansive Rugby.
For all the talk of Roberts I saw 68 mins of Rugby and can't remeber his name being mentioned. Fair play to the Lions they won the series but the quality wasn't much to write home about!
PS. Tommy Bowe, O'Brien and Sexton were all excellent IMO!
Agreed due to the game plan, the centres were largely irrelevant.
On the other big Gatland calls,
Hibbard - probably the wrong call
O'Brien - definitely got that right
Feletau - played fairly well so gets benefit of the doubt
Phillips - poor, shouldn't have made the test squad.
IMO if they had went with Murray for the last 2 tests the score would have been 3 zip. the Irish obviously had no voice in the coach meetings and it was only O'Brien's sheer excellence and dodged determination that finally played him into the squad. Sexton was fecking lording it and they still pulled him off with 20 left to give the coach's son a run (okay didnt really matter in the end) but the game was still somewhat in the balance. In the grand scheme of things its a great Lions victory, but when analysed their quality on paper really did outweigh that of Australia and a series loss would have been a travesty. 4 years is a long time away but the New Zealand tour will be a much more sterner test, however there is plenty of talent at the right age to give it a great rattle.
I guess the narrative will now say that Gatland was vindicated but in reality the dropping of BOD had no material impact on the game one way or another. Had he played they would have won just as handsomely given the Lions' complete dominance up front and in particular in the scrum. Something they didn't have in the previous two games. A dominant set-piece makes everyone look better.
Gatland got it right, leave our myopia out of it.
Great win.
Correcto, you couldn't have put a fag paper between the teams in the first 2 tests & then to dish out a hiding in the third speaks volumes for his selection, tactics & man management, he mightn't have been directly responsible for some of it, but the buck stops with him.
Quote from: bennydorano on July 06, 2013, 11:16:42 PM
Correcto, you couldn't have put a fag paper between the teams in the first 2 tests & then to dish out a hiding in the third speaks volumes for his selection, tactics & man management, he mightn't have been directly responsible for some of it, but the buck stops with him.
He got most calls right but it was hardly rocket science to pick Roberts, Corb and the Tullow Tank.
Philips instead Murray was totally wrong and Gatland realised that quick enough. Heaslip deserved to keep his spot and BOD couldn't have been any more anonymous than Davies. The mast-head calls just placed a pall over preparations for the third test and ended up not really contributing much to the victory either way so he was only really working against himself on those counts.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BOeZNADCUAAzCZr.jpg:medium)
Quote from: Sidney on July 07, 2013, 12:14:02 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BOeZNADCUAAzCZr.jpg:medium)
and not a sign of emerald green or Gold?
Lions tour is the greatest load of shite going. I like rugby, would watch Irish U20's play in Athlone etc. How an irish man can be passionate about a team packed with Welsh players trying to beat a team, Ireland beat well (and in their own back yard) 18 months ago is beyond me. 4 teams V 1. Could you imagine a best selection of New Zealand, SA and Australia taking on Scotland or Ireland in a Lions tour. Irish lads in red jerseys drinking pints in pubs in Melbourne, screaming lions lions lions, posh toffs, would love to shoot them. ;D
Hook said last night that Gatland could have played Amy Huberman at outside centre and it would have make no difference.
Drico was never really in Gatty's plans. Roberts injury put the spanner in the works.
I don't like Gatland to be honest- never have since he left the Irish gig. I feel desperately sorry for BOD over the whole incident. He'd have been better off doing a Wilkinson on it and staying at home. He deserved better
Gatland should have been up front from the start. Told him he was 4th choice and given him the option on whether he wanted to go. Then he wouldn't have created the storm he did create. I've no sympathy for Gatland over it. He created it for himself.
A huge percentage of Irish rugby pundits have inadvertently used the Lions Tour to clearly prove they're incapable of subjective assessment.
Bearing this in mind, RTE could start their coverage of games 10 minutes before kick off, while the Indo and co can reduce their 16 page Saturday previews to just a couple. It's not like these fuckwits are educating or informing.
Quote from: muppet on July 07, 2013, 10:30:28 AM
Hook said last night that Gatland could have played Amy Huberman at outside centre and it would have make no difference.
The Aussies would have been rucking her and the pitch would have been otherwise empty
So the statement is incorrect
Quote from: thewobbler on July 07, 2013, 11:16:48 AM
A huge percentage of Irish rugby pundits have inadvertently used the Lions Tour to clearly prove they're incapable of subjective assessment.
Bearing this in mind, RTE could start their coverage of games 10 minutes before kick off, while the Indo and co can reduce their 16 page Saturday previews to just a couple. It's not like these fuckwits are educating or informing.
You're dead right there wobbler. I watched a video of Tony Ward and two other Indo experts last Thursday and it was hilarious. The three of them had no doubt that Gatland had blown the series by dropping O' Driscoll. I know nothing about rugby but I thought this a bit strange since O'Driscoll had done nothing special in the first two tests. We laugh at the English and all their ridiculous Beckham hype, but we're nearly as bad where O' Driscoll is concerned. I do feel a bit sorry for O'Driscoll in all this though as it wasn't of his own making, but something tells me he'll be alright.
Quote from: INDIANA on July 07, 2013, 11:08:43 AM
Drico was never really in Gatty's plans. Roberts injury put the spanner in the works.
I don't like Gatland to be honest- never have since he left the Irish gig. I feel desperately sorry for BOD over the whole incident. He'd have been better off doing a Wilkinson on it and staying at home. He deserved better
Gatland should have been up front from the start. Told him he was 4th choice and given him the option on whether he wanted to go. Then he wouldn't have created the storm he did create. I've no sympathy for Gatland over it. He created it for himself.
Why should Gatland do that? Should he tell every player where they are in the pecking order or do you think O'Driscoll should get special treatment because he's so special? The whole thing is laughable. He's a player who's past his best, he got dropped and his team did fine without him. It happens all the time in sport.
Quote from: Asal Mor on July 07, 2013, 01:22:56 PM
Quote from: INDIANA on July 07, 2013, 11:08:43 AM
Drico was never really in Gatty's plans. Roberts injury put the spanner in the works.
I don't like Gatland to be honest- never have since he left the Irish gig. I feel desperately sorry for BOD over the whole incident. He'd have been better off doing a Wilkinson on it and staying at home. He deserved better
Gatland should have been up front from the start. Told him he was 4th choice and given him the option on whether he wanted to go. Then he wouldn't have created the storm he did create. I've no sympathy for Gatland over it. He created it for himself.
Why should Gatland do that? Should he tell every player where they are in the pecking order or do you think O'Driscoll should get special treatment because he's so special? The whole thing is laughable. He's a player who's past his best, he got dropped and his team did fine without him. It happens all the time in sport.
gatland cant have it both ways. hes whingeing now about criticism of making the call- well boo hoo. thats what he gets paid for.
If he was so concerned about the fall-out he should have left him at home to start with because its obvious to anyone with a brain he never intended to pick him anyone.
He wasn't just dropping any player- if he wasn't smart enough to expect the fallout then it doesnt say much for him upstairs
Yeah he has to expect criticism as a coach, more than ever in the Twitter age. I haven't seen his comments but if he was complaining that the reaction was over the top I'd say he has a fair point. The reaction in Britain to Princess Diana's death, was less melodramatic than the reaction here to O'Driscoll being dropped. Gatland got the result - job done. It's not his concern to worry about O'Driscoll's legacy.
Quote from: Asal Mor on July 07, 2013, 01:48:10 PM
Yeah he has to expect criticism as a coach, more than ever in the Twitter age. I haven't seen his comments but if he was complaining that the reaction was over the top I'd say he has a fair point. The reaction in Britain to Princess Diana's death, was less melodramatic than the reaction here to O'Driscoll being dropped. Gatland got the result - job done. It's not his concern to worry about O'Driscoll's legacy.
its not but if he brought the team announcement forward a day then he must have been expecting some sort of a fallout. No point complaining afterwards. As I said he created the problem by bringing the best centre in the modern era on tour when he never had any intention of using him.
should have had the row 6 weeks ago. If he didn't expect a fallout he's a desperately naive individual
Quote from: INDIANA on July 07, 2013, 01:58:08 PM
Quote from: Asal Mor on July 07, 2013, 01:48:10 PM
Yeah he has to expect criticism as a coach, more than ever in the Twitter age. I haven't seen his comments but if he was complaining that the reaction was over the top I'd say he has a fair point. The reaction in Britain to Princess Diana's death, was less melodramatic than the reaction here to O'Driscoll being dropped. Gatland got the result - job done. It's not his concern to worry about O'Driscoll's legacy.
its not but if he brought the team announcement forward a day then he must have been expecting some sort of a fallout. No point complaining afterwards. As I said he created the problem by bringing the best centre in the modern era on tour when he never had any intention of using him.
should have had the row 6 weeks ago. If he didn't expect a fallout he's a desperately naive individual
He played 2 of the 3 tests and if he had shown in either of those games that he was still capable of his former brilliance he'd surely have played all 3. Sorry Indiana but I'm with Gatland on this one. Anyway I want to try and listen to the Laois minor hurlers hopefully making history. Best of luck in the senior final. May the best team win (and go on to beat the Cats, please God).
the reality is thats style of play used in the last test would have been lambs to the slaughter to a fearsome all black team who would have hammered the lions up front, and would have run rings round the big but slow backs. They would put 20+ points on this team pulling up!!!
I think a lot of the arguments are missing the very simple point.
It came down to a call between Davies and O'Driscoll.
One is a decent international centre. The other is a legend of the game, with one thing missing from his glittering CV that was possibly about to be resolved.
A non-emotive analysis of the two suggested it was a close call. Defensively O'Driscoll is still better despite his age, while offensively Gatland must have felt the reverse applied which is certainly debatable. O'Driscoll would be ahead on leadership and experience and even for his age, still has the X-factor that Davies does not have.
In Davies favour was his partner Roberts was nailed on and he had more experience with him, and regardless of what anyone thinks there appeared to be a serious favouring of Welsh players. That is not as bad it might sound, it is perfectly natural in tight calls for a manager to go with the tried and trusted.
In conclusion, the Irish, the romantics, those looking for a stick to beat Gatland and those who love the history of the game wanted BOD. The Welsh wanted Davies. There were reasonable arguments for both and to be fair the way the game went it didn't justify either argument.
So while I don't believe Gatland was 'vindicated' by the result, he was entitled to make the call and it wasn't bad a call as it was made out to be.
Quote from: muppet on July 07, 2013, 02:48:05 PM
I think a lot of the arguments are missing the very simple point.
It came down to a call between Davies and O'Driscoll.
One is a decent international centre. The other is a legend of the game, with one thing missing from his glittering CV that was possibly about to be resolved.
A non-emotive analysis of the two suggested it was a close call. Defensively O'Driscoll is still better despite his age, while offensively Gatland must have felt the reverse applied which is certainly debatable. O'Driscoll would be ahead on leadership and experience and even for his age, still has the X-factor that Davies does not have.
In Davies favour was his partner Roberts was nailed on and he had more experience with him, and regardless of what anyone thinks there appeared to be a serious favouring of Welsh players. That is not as bad it might sound, it is perfectly natural in tight calls for a manager to go with the tried and trusted.
In conclusion, the Irish, the romantics, those looking for a stick to beat Gatland and those who love the history of the game wanted BOD. The Welsh wanted Davies. There were reasonable arguments for both and to be fair the way the game went it didn't justify either argument.
So while I don't believe Gatland was 'vindicated' by the result, he was entitled to make the call and it wasn't bad a call as it was made out to be.
I'd agree with pretty much all of that Muppet, but I think the coach is always vindicated by a win*.
*As long as the win is not achieved by diving, purposely injuring the opposition's best player or chewing on a fake blood capsule.
Quote from: muppet on July 07, 2013, 02:48:05 PM
I think a lot of the arguments are missing the very simple point.
It came down to a call between Davies and O'Driscoll.
One is a decent international centre. The other is a legend of the game, with one thing missing from his glittering CV that was possibly about to be resolved.
A non-emotive analysis of the two suggested it was a close call. Defensively O'Driscoll is still better despite his age, while offensively Gatland must have felt the reverse applied which is certainly debatable. O'Driscoll would be ahead on leadership and experience and even for his age, still has the X-factor that Davies does not have.
In Davies favour was his partner Roberts was nailed on and he had more experience with him, and regardless of what anyone thinks there appeared to be a serious favouring of Welsh players. That is not as bad it might sound, it is perfectly natural in tight calls for a manager to go with the tried and trusted.
In conclusion, the Irish, the romantics, those looking for a stick to beat Gatland and those who love the history of the game wanted BOD. The Welsh wanted Davies. There were reasonable arguments for both and to be fair the way the game went it didn't justify either argument.
So while I don't believe Gatland was 'vindicated' by the result, he was entitled to make the call and it wasn't bad a call as it was made out to be.
it didnt really though. He was never in the frame lads. He was 4th choice centre so I'll again ask the question why was he brought?
I've no sympathy for Gatty because he has to have known the fallout was likely to be seismic if and when Drico wasn't picked.
Gatland should have simply said to BOD beforehand if I pick a Test team tomorrow you're not in it. Do you still want to go as a mid-weeker?
We can go on about all players being the same etc. We all know that isn't true. Every team sport in the world has its icons who have a certain status. Thats life. And in my view Gatland made his own bed.
As regards the merits of the players. Davies did nothing yesterday BOD can't do.
The Corporate Partners would have made overtures to ensure BOD traveled, same way as Johnny Wilkinson was close to going.
The Lions means a lot to the players who have toured as a Lion but as someone who adores Irish rugby I find it very hard to identify with it and while I watched the games I felt nothing emotionally.
Money talks and the Lions is a massive revenue generator for the Big 3, Matt Williams was stating yesterday how the Tour has cleared ARU of all it's debts and they're now on a sound financial footing going forward. In saying all that I'd imagine a tour is some craic for the supporters.
The level of media coverage (pages and pages in broadsheets - 25% of the Times sport supplement today) is ludicrous, given its - at best - the 3rd most popular sport in the country.
Rugby sickens my hole.
Without the Lions it's all Bullets, Caid, dungballing in the UK Sunday Times too. They dont play to the demographics of the UK at all - English make up 80/90% of the 50/60M UK population & they all love Cricket, Rugger & buggery.
Down here in the sunny south we call it ruggers :-*
Was this on the cards in any case ?
Robbie Deans has been sacked as Australia head coach following the Wallabies' Test series defeat to the British and Irish Lions, according to reports in the Australian press.
Ewen McKenzie, the former Test prop who guided the Queensland Reds to the Super Rugby title in 2011, will reportedly be unveiled as the new Wallabies coach tomorrow.
Deans is said to have been released from his contract six months early following a meeting with Australian Rugby Union chief executive Bill Pulver.
The Lions' record 41-16 victory over the Wallabies in Sydney on Saturday, which secured the tourists a 2-1 Test series triumph, appears to have sealed Deans' fate.
The New Zealander took over as Australia head coach after the 2007 Rugby World Cup. He led the Wallabies to third place in the 2011 tournament and to the Tri-Nations title in 2011.
But he never delivered the Bledisloe Cup – the trophy presented for series between the Wallabies and New Zealand – and there has been a clamour for the Wallabies to be coached by an Australian.
McKenzie, a World Cup winner with the Wallabies in 1991, was part of the Australia coaching staff under Eddie Jones before taking over as head coach of the NSW Waratahs, Stade Francais and the Reds.
The 48-year-old announced in March that he would be standing down from his position with the Reds at the end of the Super Rugby season to pursue a national coaching role. He was linked with the Ireland post before it was filled by Joel Schmidt.
McKenzie reportedly fended off competition for the Australia position from Jake White, the ACT Brumbies coach who led South Africa to their 2007 World Cup triumph.
The Wallabies' next match is against New Zealand on August 17 in the Rugby Championship.
The feeling was he had to win the Lions series AND the Tri Nations, or whatever it's called, to keep his job.
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/sep/05/brian-odriscoll-resents-warren-gatland
Let it go, Brian. Doesn't diminish your standing in the international game. Have you looked in the mirror and wondered that what you see may have been contributory to the Lions' poor first 2 tests?
(http://l.yimg.com/ao/sp/manu_tuilagi_david_cameron_rabbit_ears_600.jpg)
Do they visit Dáil Eireann as well? After all they are the British AND Irish Lions. I really don't get that whole concept I have to say.
Quote from: AZOffaly on September 17, 2013, 03:47:24 PM
Do they visit Dáil Eireann as well? After all they are the British AND Irish Lions. I really don't get that whole concept I have to say.
Could you imagine the response if Tuilagi repeats to Kenny what he did above to Cameron?
A national celebration? Or are you suggesting Kenny would revert to the spirit of the Gael and chin him?
Quote from: muppet on September 17, 2013, 03:51:49 PM
Quote from: AZOffaly on September 17, 2013, 03:47:24 PM
Do they visit Dáil Eireann as well? After all they are the British AND Irish Lions. I really don't get that whole concept I have to say.
Could you imagine the response if Tuilagi repeats to Kenny what he did above to Cameron?
Yeah I was thinking that myself. I took it as a bit of messing, no harm.
If it was Kenny I have no doubt that people would go out of their way to get annoyed about it! Not so much so as Cameron is British and not that well liked (not saying Kenny is)
Quote from: north aontroim gael on September 17, 2013, 03:55:13 PM
Quote from: muppet on September 17, 2013, 03:51:49 PM
Quote from: AZOffaly on September 17, 2013, 03:47:24 PM
Do they visit Dáil Eireann as well? After all they are the British AND Irish Lions. I really don't get that whole concept I have to say.
Could you imagine the response if Tuilagi repeats to Kenny what he did above to Cameron?
Yeah I was thinking that myself. I took it as a bit of messing, no harm.
If it was Kenny I have no doubt that people would go out of their way to get annoyed about it! Not so much so as Cameron is British and not that well liked (not saying Kenny is)
If the squad meets Kenny there will be those offended if Tuilagi does that again, and then there will be those offended if he doesn't.
Kenny is an awful bollocks not fit to be a Deputy First Minister let alone Taoiseach. Cameron is much the same.
Quote from: Applesisapples on September 18, 2013, 02:11:37 PM
Kenny is an awful bollocks not fit to be a Deputy First Minister let alone Taoiseach. Cameron is much the same.
Work on joining our fine country, not attacking it, Bin Laden.
Quote from: AZOffaly on September 17, 2013, 03:47:24 PM
Do they visit Dáil Eireann as well? After all they are the British AND Irish Lions. I really don't get that whole concept I have to say.
What is there not to get? As for whether or not they visit Dail Eireann, I'd imagine that depends on whether or not they were invited.
Yeah, people getting their 'not getting' and 'not liking' mixed up.
I've commented on it before Michael. I basically don't understand why the concept of 4 international teams combined taking on a single country is such a big deal these days, especially with world cups and autumn internationals where the constituent countries play, and occasionally or more often, beat the same countries. I understand that ir is a huge honour for a player although when lads are literally being selected from the stands out there, and with initial squads of over 40, even that is somewhat diluted. I just feel that the whole thing now is a marketing gimmick by Adidas as much as anything else.
Quote from: bennydorano on September 18, 2013, 08:47:26 PM
Yeah, people getting their 'not getting' and 'not liking' mixed up.
Pretty sure I know what I mean, but if I'm not sure I'll be sure to ask you. Thanks.
Not getting would imply not understanding, which is clearly not the case, i suggest 'not embracing the concept' for future use.
Away and shite for yourself :)
Quote from: Syferus on September 18, 2013, 06:35:30 PM
Quote from: Applesisapples on September 18, 2013, 02:11:37 PM
Kenny is an awful bollocks not fit to be a Deputy First Minister let alone Taoiseach. Cameron is much the same.
Work on joining our fine country, not attacking it, Bin Laden.
Not attacking your part of our country, I've met Kenny and been in his company, he is an awful bollocks not fit to be Taoiseach, IMO.
You can see why BOD was dropped in this footage from Lions RAW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWCuODjCXCE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWCuODjCXCE)
Understandable. Can't be making the welshies look bad like that.