I’m in Highbury in London, but unfortunately won’t be around at Christmas to see the Quins Leicester game. I did see the corresponding game back in 2006 though. I agree that the atmosphere is what makes these games so enjoyable. The rugby is also entertaining – think Leceister v Ospreys last year. For mine, the best NH “rugby town” has got to be Biarritz though. Super 14 games in Australia cannot compare as far as the atmosphere is concerned. The smaller grounds certainly help, as well as as more concentrated fan base.

Dublin Dave

I work with an Irish guy who has 2 caps for Ireland. He’s a Leinster man, so I am well aware of the provincial rivalries!

I’m going to be totally mischievous here. If ‘commercial reality’ underpins all sport, & rugby union is no different, then having two rugby codes is eventually doomed.

In Australia, the sooner the ARU does a “Vichy” on NRL’s resources, then the better for rugby union.

Now, this bold statement will no doubt have some of the natives around here hopping mad!

Not wishing to be pedantic but it’s Athenry, not Athen Rye. It’s got nothing to do with cereal growing. It comes from the Gaelic Ath an Ri, which means the ford of the king.

Oh and as we Leinster fans never tire of pointing out, it’s in Galway, not even in Munster.

One of the joys of NH rugby is the intensity of the contest and the fervour of the fans. In addition to Munster, Leinster, Ulster, Llanelli Scarlets, Leicester, Gloucester immediately come to mind as teams that other touring sides should visit to appreciate the true spirit of rugby. As far as I am aware it is only the Lions who insist upon playing mid week matches and it will be a major feature of their tour to SA.

Even at Quins over the last two years the noise levels has increased with free flags for kids and other more older middle aged kids to wave but we are still light years behind the fervour of the supporters of other teams.It is not surprising that many supporters in the NH prefer following their club, region or province in perference to the International team it is more fun and immediate. My big disappointment was that Quins A v Munster A was cancelled on the Monday evening before the ABs match, now I can understand why, as they all played against the ABs which makes their performance even more noteworthy.

Stu

I don’t know where you are based in the NH, but if you are in London over Christmas then you might want to see Quins v Leicester at Twickenham known as the “big game”. Quins have sold 20,000 tickets for a game on 27/12, before Ticketmaster sales are recorded or sales by Leicester. Hoping for 50000 crowd which seems a bit ambitious. Quins have decided to go for broke and try and ape Stade Francais who will have 80000 at the Stade de France for the HC game v Quins.

The atmosphere was truly amazing. From the “Munster Hush” when a kicker was taking a shot at goal, to the hakas reverberating around the stands, picked up by the microphones on the pitch, to 25,500 people singing the Fields of Athen Rye as one, there was not an idle moment in the stadium. It certainly helped that the All Blacks were still behind with 4 minutes left on the clock, and then, even after Rokocoko’s try in the 76th minute, Munster had a chance to win the game.

The All Blacks were ordinary. Despite these guys being some of the best in the world, it just showed that you can’t throw 15 guys together and expect them to gel as a team, even if that team is wearing the All Black jersey. Toeava was unconvincing at 12, and Tuitavake even less impressive at 13. Donald overplayed his hand (despite backing himself and scoring the first try) and together with Toeava were too often found going sideways. Messam only realised he was in a rugby match in the last 20 minutes. Much though can be attributed to the intensity of the Munster defence and around the park generally, so aptly describedt by Spiro.

Warwick, the Munster fly half (an Australian) played brilliantly in the first half, controlling the game with solid kicking, deft goal kicking and a thundering drop-goal. It seems he was injured a bit when Rokocoko slammed into him after he kicked the ball late in the first half, as he wasn’t on-song in the second half, although moving to centre when Tipoki went off.

As a rugby fan, you are doing yourself a disservice if you never journey to Limerick to watch the Munster men and hear the Red Army:

“And low lies the fields of Athen Rye,
Where once we watched the small free birds fly.
Our love was on the wing; we had dreams and songs to sing,
Its so lonely round the fields of Athen Rye.”

The BBC (and I don’t think they’re Australian) would also seem to disagree with you regarding Thomas and the town:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/4039387.stm

OJ – was hoping no one would bring that up…

re McRae – not a highlight i am particularly fond of from an otherwise great tour. prefer to remember the more legal hits from nathan grey. for all the kudos Jonny Wilkinson gets for his tough defence, he has never terrorised or intimidated an opposition the way Greysie did.

I remember seeing wales play NSW country in Moree (or was it Inverell) in the mid 90′s. There had been a drought up there for a couple of years that broke on game day and it poured down so hard you could barely see the game. The welsh really brought the weather with them. I remember the locals built grandstands out of a few parked up semi-trailers and a few hundred bails of hay.

Shit game but great memory.

“My 14 year old son (and he’s a full back) still talks about Duncan McCrae (for the tahs) belting one of the Irish players!!!”

Was that when McCrae pinned Ronan O’Gara to the ground (while he was playing for the Lions, actually) and beat the head off him while he was prone?

The famous playwright Noel Coward is alleged to have said somewhat sniffily after the ultrastrict theatre censorship laws in Britain were relaxed in the 1960s that if one wanted to see people in the nude one went to the Turkish baths, not the theatre.

If the sort of “biff” you described is what turns your little boy on, I suggest you send him down to the sort of waste land drinks party where chavs in hoodies get pissed on cans of scrumpy and Carlsberg Special. He can see that sort of thing every Saturday night.

Admission free. Potential for audience participation, willing or not, quite high.

Granted, there are more than a few cultural morons in aus, but before you mix your cultural moronity and tar us all with the same brush, the cultural moron you berate here stems from across the ditch in nz. sorry.

Tipoki has to be commended on his excellent use of his elbow to take out Waratahs players.

So much better than carrying Tuqiri for four games because he can’t train on his own!!! Give me a break. hard, tough, sportsmanlike and a bit of Biff for good measure. My 14 year old son (and he’s a full back) still talks about Duncan McCrae (for the tahs) belting one of the Irish players!!!

I was rushing when I wrote this…..what I meant was…”If the matches were carefully scheduled, it could be a boon to the ARU on inbound tours”.

Greg might be right about the dirt trackers coming good after several games, and some spankings being on the agenda, but that isn’t new to professional sport. Roar contributor Jim Boyce once scored 6 tries (yes S-I-X!) in a Wallaby tour match in New Zealand in the 60′s so being walloped by a touring side isn’t new.

But I for one would love to see say, England play the Waratahs….France play Sydney University….Italy play NSW Country…or the Wallabies playing the likes of Natal, Waikato, Leicester or something.

If the matches were carefully scheduled by the home unions, it could be a boon to the ARU. And we could use the matches. We have so few games of top level rugby after the S14 finishes – these type of games on inbound tours would be enormous.

However, back to the point…….Munster vs All Blacks was just brilliant. I was proud to call myself a rugby man when I saw that game and the bits that went with it.

What made this match is that a half-strength Munster was able to be very competitive against a dysfunctional group of New Zealand understudies. But if these New Zealand ‘dirt-trackers’ played every week, then they would approach their potential, and opposition like yesterday’s Munster reserve team would be thrashed. Would people still be so keen for such matches then?

This was a great occasion, but I tend to put it down as a one-off: the instigation by adidas, the opening of a new ground, and the dysfunctionality of the tourists.

Regarding Swansea, I think Dylan Thomas described it as an ‘ugy lovely town’, however it is more commonly known as a ‘pretty s***ty city’….

What a match and what an occasion! This had everything that the much more precise, professional, predictable but utterly turgid international match on Saturday hadn’t. Excitement, errors, faith in the incredible, players putting their lives on the line. A 25,000 crowd going berserk. A result in doubt until the final whistle. In short, the sort of match that stirs your heart.

So what if there were few examples of sweeping back play, deft passing, scintillating counter attacks. Quality is all very well but if we got excited by meticulous mechanical monotony then we’d get turned on by watching a bunch of accountants at work.

Last night it was the very unpredictability of a prop, say, disrupting a scrum half by sticking his toe on the ball and hoofing it 25m downfield to put an already rattled defence under even more pressure that set the pulses racing. Amid all that mayhem the occasional example of a cool head directing things was all the more impressive because of the contrast.

Peter Stringer may be in the process of being phased out at both Munster and Ireland but he was magnificent last night, directing the traffic with the wisdom of the elder statesman he now is. Mick O’Driscoll, captain for the night, led by example, busting his guts out in the process. The young kids, many of them still in the academy, stepped up to the mark and enjoyed their moment in the limelight.

The minutes leading up to half time gave a hint as to how the match might be decided but also reminded us that nothing was guaranteed. Having just gone behind, the All Blacks decided they were going to even things up before the break. They attacked in waves, phase after phase. Wonderfully controlled passing, spinning it when needed, popping it when appropriate. Inexorable, relentless, unpanicking retention of possession and momentum. They were bound to score. Only they didn’t. A ferocious tackle, a forced error and the ball was sent hurtling downfield again.

Finally, they were forced to accept that they were not going to achieve any more in this half and ran the ball into touch to bring proceedings to a halt. In that moment, there was one of the other delightful cameos, following on from the “Munster haka” which illuminated the evening. Having raced into touch and crashing into the advertising hoarding, the All Black defender saw a young lad in the front row and dropped the ball into his lap. You’ve never seen a bigger smile on any kid’s face. That was one ball the Munster branch didn’t get back!

When they finally lost the lead with about three minutes to go, Munster’s approach should have been the same as the All Blacks 40 minutes before. Work the ball downfield. Keep possession. Hang on to it until you got a penalty or, more likely, a drop goal opportunity. But for some reason, probably sheer exhaustion and an addled brain, they didn’t do it and kicked to touch to set off the final whistle.

Still, it would be a dull world if everything was certain. There was nothing dull about last night. Just a fantastic occasion.

Memo to the law makers. Quit tinkering with the rules to try and “make the game more attractive”. At the end of the day, honesty, pashion and faith in the odd miracle will provide the sort of contest that anybody will want to witness.

Like everyone else so far, I say: Bring it on!

One of the travesties of the modern era has been the demise of the tour matches, or ‘non-test’ fixtures. The 1984 Wallaby grand slammers played “only” 18 tour matches, including the 4 tests plus Babas game. Their 81 compatriots had 24 or 25 games scheduled.

It wasn’t unusual for tours to the UK, Ireland & France before that to include over 30 matches, sometimes over 40 matches.

Of course, those days are well & truly gone. But there’s no reason, with these regular tours now to the northern hemisphere, to include at least one non-test game with each test, plus a couple more pre-first test matches. In other words, a tour of 3-4 test matches might involve 8-10 matches all up.

They’re usually away for 4-5 weeks anyway. All we’re doing is adding mostly midweek games, which are an excellent blooding venue for young up & comers, who can play alongside established & experienced stars, in the national jersey, without the pressure of it being a test match.

And sometimes you get classics like All Blacks-Munster & All Blacks-Randwick. And thank God that the British & Irish Lions are determined to continue traditional touring despite many pressures upon them.

What would it take to get Evan Whitton to contribute to The Roar? His intelligent writing in the SMH actually got me following rugby. He has to be bored just writing about the Law!

cheers