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The referees have been announced for the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals. Nigel Owens has been given the whistle for the New Zealand vs Ireland…
In a week in which the sporting community, in Australia in particular, is mourning the tragic, sudden and very public death of a young…
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It’s been a sad week for the Irish rugby community as it said goodbye to one of its favourite sons, Moss Keane, who has…
The Bible says: ”the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong”. To which Damon Runyon, one of the…
Those are the laws and that is the interpretation nowadays. If you make head on head contact in a tackle you are in big trouble. Your only mitigation is if you went low and the tackled player also ducked his head at the same time.
Ireland played its first international match in 1875. It took 102 years for the first Irish player to be sent off: the late Willie Duggan for retaliating to some Welsh skullduggery in Cardiff. He and his fellow pugilist both got sent off. There have been three Irish players sent off in the last three years: Peter O’Mahoney and Bundee Aki (twice) for head collisions in the tackle. That’s just the way it is now. In earlier times, the tackled player would have had his head stuck in a bucket of cold water and gotten on with it. Nowadays, with lucrative careers at stake and lawyers circling with class action suits in preparation, people have to be more circumspect.
And it’s not a bad thing to improve player safety while permitting a physical contest.
I do agree, though, that having a team play with 14 men for most of the match is bad for the game. I believe there’s an experiment in the SH to allow a red-carded player in cases such as this to be substituted after 20 minutes. That could be worth investigating.
But the ref wasn’t wrong yesterday. Those are the rules now; he was just enforcing them.
Gone in 82 seconds: Record-breaking red card paves way for Ireland's win over plucky England
Actually it’s the Principality Stadium now. Millennium is sooo 20 years ago!
Should Rugby Australia be compensated for Mack Hansen's Ireland call-up?
I think this could be a case of “Careful what you wish for” because this is clearly a reaction to a recent move by World Rugby to limit rugby immigrants from playing for lands not their own.
Ireland on Saturday had four players (out of a squad of 23) not born in Ireland. They were Jamison Gibson Park (NZ), Bundee Aki (NZ) Joey Carberry (NZ) and Mack Hansen (Aus).
Of those Carberry is the least controversial case as he qualifies on both ancestry and residency, having moved back to Ireland from New Zealand with his Irish parents as a young child. Hansen qualified immediately because his mum is from Cork but the other two have not a drop of Irish blood between them and qualified to play based on living and playing in Ireland for three years.
That was the old World Rugby rule and as Ireland approached it systematically by offering contracts with Irish provincial teams to interested players from the SH (and got quite a few choice recruits as a result) the lawmakers were lobbied to put a stop to this sort of thing and so they increased the residency requirement to five years.
What this will do is encourage recruiters from Ireland (and I suspect from Scotland and Wales as well) to focus more on players who qualify on ancestry grounds. There is no shortage of O’Keefe’s, O’Malley’s and Gilhooleys in Australia with very obvious Irish heritage and it doesn’t seem to be too hard to unearth guys with non-Irish surnames who qualify down their distaff side.
The advantage, to both player and recruiter, is that people with “ethnic” qualifications can play immediately, whereas those from places like County Samoa now have to commit to five years continuous residency with no guarantee that they will be contenders for national places after that time.
Personally, as an Irishman, I had no problem with people like Aki, Gibson-Park and earlier examples like CJ Stander coming over here to play for Irish provinces and claw their way on to the team. I think it is preferable, no disrespect, to someone saying “Hang on, I think my Granny was from Roscommon” and claiming their place on those grounds. Bundee and CJ were and are legends in Connacht and Munster respectively because they put down roots in the place and committed themselves for years. The fact that Stander post retirement has gone back down to the sunshine of the Western Cape has not changed that one iota.
Look out for all those aussies with Irish names –of which there are millions. If they show any early promise, the IRFU will be sniffing around.
Should Rugby Australia be compensated for Mack Hansen's Ireland call-up?
Sometimes you gotta love it when a plan DOESN’T come together! 🙂
Nike make TV ad for England victory that didn't happen
Speaking of great players of yesteryear, as we were, I just noticed that Andy Ripley, the England and Lions Number 8 of the 1970s died about a week ago at the age of 62.
Maybe not the greatest player ever but with his long flapping hair and leggy gallop he was certainly memorable. Especially with the ball in hand in full flight.
RIP
Selecting my all time Rugby World XV
And just some other facts from this game:
1) Ireland’s highest ever points total at Twickenham. 32, beating the previous highest total of 26 set a mere 48 years ago. Remember it well!!
2) Ireland’s record margin of victory at Twickenham (17) beating the previous margin of 13 set a mere 58 years ago.
Incidentally in both of those matches, the star player was a chap called Mike Gibson. The match in 1964 was his international debut and he was sensational. (google Pat Casey Try England v Ireland 1964 for some grainy black and white footage of a move he started that still stands up well to the best of today’s play)
3) The only time Ireland have ever outscored England by four tries ever
That’s a lot of guilt for poor old Mr Ewells to carry around with him.
Oh well. It’s St Patrick’s Day later on this week. God was always going to be on Ireland’s side in this one.
Gone in 82 seconds: Record-breaking red card paves way for Ireland's win over plucky England