Eddie O’Sullivan rolls the dice….
… and comes up with the same XV for Ireland’s final Rugby World Cup group game against Argentina. Well almost. Trimble is this week’s scapegoat and drops to the bench while Geordan Murphy returns to the first team for the injured Dempsey.
Meanwhile, the hacks scent blood in the water and futher pieces like this by Ciaran Cronin, must surely be inevitable:
One of the key skills of good man-management is the ability to put oneself in the shoes of others and come within an ass’s roar of how they might be feeling. If O’Sullivan believes that his back-up players are simply happy to get on with things in this Irish set-up, he has drastically misread the situation. They’re all ambitious players and they all want to play for their country. For many of them, though, what’s almost as important as actually playing is knowing that they have some chance of taking the field if things don’t go well in any given game, but O’Sullivan has been completely negligent in this particular area.
During the past week, one player revealed that not only were the starting 15 untouchable come match day, they were hardly, if ever, rotated in training either. Not only, then, do these fringe players not get an opportunity to state their case during a game, they can’t even catch the coach’s eye in training. The whole psychology of the setup is plain wrong. It started from the moment that O’Sullivan demarked 15 players for special treatment by allowing them to rest during Ireland’s summer tour to Argentina.
Thus, when the players on duty in Santa Fe and Buenos Aires had their holiday and came back for pre-World Cup training, the first 15 were already weeks ahead of them in the gym. Not only that.
When 45 players headed to Spala in July, the size of the facilities in Poland dictated that the group had to be split in three for training purposes. Guess how they were split? The first 15, the next 15 most likely to be in the squad and 15 who just might slip into the squad if somebody got injured. Talk about showing players their place in the food chain. It was abysmal man management but then again, that’s not all that much of a surprise considering the man in charge.
Willowfield,
That’s just the way it has always been. It was the same for all the “Home” nations – before the rebrand the England Saxons were ‘England A’s’. (BTW be thankful Ireland haven’t come up with an eually a naff name for its 2nds. “Ireland Gaels” anyone? I’ve almost certainly got a lot of Saxon lurking around in my gene pool but its a dumb name for a very diverse country – for example I’m not sure Paul Sackey, proud of his Ghanaian heritage, could wholly accurately be described as a Saxon – but English he certainly is. )
I digress – occasionally, very occasionally, the ‘B’ (or Thirds) would play too but I haven’t heard of that for decades.
There used to be a parallel 5 Nations called the ‘A Internationals’ that took place the Friday Night/Saturday Morning before the equivalent full internationals but Wales and Scotland pulled the plug on their ‘A’ teams in the late Nineties for budgetary reasons so its been truncated of late.
‘Re team selection for the WRC – O’Gara (who is definately off form). How could EOS expect him to play all games at 10 without a credible option.’
As far as I remember he pretty much played every game at 10 when he was available – the humph struggled with injuries for a lot of last season, so paddy was the alternative. Of course Paddy was away with the Ireland during the 6N and consequently missed a lot of gametime at 10 for Ulster.
Fact is, PW is the only viable alternative to ROG and has been since the Humph retired. Fly half is such an essential position in rugby – much like a quarterback in american footy – to rely on 1 outhalf is absolutely suicidal. ROG could easily have picked up an injury in his 1st game. As it is, ROG is not injured (not physically anyway) but rather is in the worst form of his career. If paddy had been given 40 min against Namibia or Georgia maybe we would know whether he is a viable option.
In saying that, O’Gara is a world class player on his day and I have no doubt he will rediscover his form of old – just not sure whether it will be this weekend…
The number of ulster players in the starting XVs selected over the past 5 years in hard to argue with – but what I would say is that the Ulster players who have been on the fringes have had little or no opportunity to prove themselves on the field for ireland and in addition have not been used effectively coming off the bench. All the top nations use 22 man squads – eddie uses 17.
Willowfield
Not a problem for me, however your attitude strikes me as a bit of pointless whataboutery, which is unfortunately not uncommon.
There is also a strong case that Ulster were the beneficiaries of favouritism by the IRFU when they were guaranteed a place in the Heineken Cup no matter where they finished in the Celtic League / Provincial Championship (as were Munster & Leinster but Ulster have been the weakest of the trio so far this century). Thus it wasn’t a level playing field for the fourth province and this encouraged an exodus of players from Connacht who wanted to play at a higher level
The huge amount of Portuguese in the mid Ulster area bodes well for the future of Dungannon and Ulster rugby if they show the spirit of their national team.
Considering Ulster has performed strongly in the Celtic league of late (winning it 2 years ago and 5th last season) I doubt whether it would have made any difference to their seedings for the heiny. For all of Leinsters fine players and indeed performances, they have precious little silverwear to show for it. Ulster have a fine rugby history – dominating the interprovincials in the 80′s and having won more interprovincial titles than leinster or munster (26 in total). Subsequently winning the heiny cup, celtic cup and celtic league titles in more recent times. They have also been by and large the best supported side in the celtic league for several years – I think maybe Leinster pipped us this year – but that was because we sent 10-15000 down to the ‘last stand’ at Landsdown Rd.
Oh and perhaps, the greatest ever rugby player – Willie John McBride, captain of the Lions, was of course an Ulsterman.
agh, from around 2000-2004 there was bugger all difference between Ulster & Connacht except Ulster were able to keep their players and get decent imports largely because of the guaranteed Heineken place whilst Connacht lost players like O Connnor (at his peak), Reddan, Flannery, Rigney, Deane, Duffy, Bracken etc and the standard of imports available dropped because Connacht were barred from even competing for a Heineken place. Humphries was the Ulster’s only native-born international class player a few years ago and they were only able to compete because of decent imports. Not a meritocracy by any means.
As well as this, the IRFU have actively discouraged returning Irish international players in Britain from signing for Connacht to keep the status quo to the extent that at least one high profile player remained there.
And WJ Mc Bride was the greatest ever rugby player…..from Ballymena.
#
“Time for Northern Ireland to have its own team. The beggars won’t give NI men a lookin at present.
Union Jack and God Save The Queen and feck what the beggars think of it.
A NI team would beat the beggars these days.
Posted by thumbelina on Sep 26, 2007 @ 04:31 AM”
Well if the south are beggars, what the fuck is the north? Your own prime minister across the water called you lot “spongers”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wilson#Northern_Ireland
So it’ll be the beggars against the spongers then, you fucking cretin.
Thomas – you call it “whataboutery” – I call it equity.
Michael Robinson and Martin – thanks for the info. It’s appreciated.
“There is also a strong case that Ulster were the beneficiaries of favouritism by the IRFU when they were guaranteed a place in the Heineken Cup no matter where they finished in the Celtic League / Provincial Championship (as were Munster & Leinster but Ulster have been the weakest of the trio so far this century).”
Yeah right. The Celtic League has only existed since 2001/2.
Ulster’s Record (For the record)
2001/2 Semi Finalists
2002/3 Semi Finalists
(both years decided by play off system)
2003/4 Runner’s up (winner’s Celtic Cup)
2004/5 6th
2005/6 Champions
2006/7 5th
Hardly weak, by any stretch of the imagination.
Munster and Leinster have also won the League once each, during the first two years it was contested.
Ulster have also won the Inter-Provincial championship more times than any of the other three provinces (26 times) but that’s so last century now. Like many other posts on this thread some factual accuracy would be welcome.
Still standing up for the Ulstermen and Irishmen
There is no doubt that Ulster has been a lot weaker than Leinster and Munster since 2000.
Just compare the Win-Draw-Lost records in the Heineken Cup group stages and how far each team has progressed in the competition
Munster – W 39 D 0 L 9 – 3 x Final, 3 x Semi, 2 x QF
Leinster – W 36 D 1 L 11 – 2 x Semi, 3 x QF
Ulster – W 20 D 1 L 27 – not progressed beyond group stages for last 8 seasons
I’ve asked before without reply but is Mike Gibson involved in the admin at all these days ? One of the finest centres I’ve ever had the pleasure to watch. As a kid staying up to watch Lions on tele in 71 he was superb.
Michael you’re right. I’m movin to Limerick tomorrow. Thought we were talking about the main inter-celt battleground, not the Anglo-French invitation league – I stand corrected. Let’s invade Las Malvinas, that might put them Argies off a bit.
Irish by birth, Ulster by quirk of fate.
Dewi, All I know about MG is he was a practicing solicitor in Belfast at least up until a couple of years ago. Probably still is. Aside from still following the game and picking up well deserved awards, AFAIK he isn’t involved directly in the admin of the game
billymac, the H Cup is where it’s at. Full strength teams and the Celtic League do not go hand in hand.
As for my earlier posts, I think you missed my point – I wasn’t arguing over respective records, just that the playing field wasn’t never level to begin with as regards H cup qualification.
“Ireland’s call was introduced to make Ireland more inclusive – many unionists on this site and others recognise that although it’s not perfect the IRFU has made an effort.”
It Was Sammy:
Ireland’s Call isn’t the issue here. That was a good move.
But any good moves have been undone by the IRFU’s attitude to that game in Belfast.
Suddenly the protocol about ‘the anthem of the host country will be played’ was forgotten and the game was treated as an away game.
How can a game in the jurisdiction that you claim is yours (from a rugby point of view) is an away game?
This was an insult to the unionist element of the support for the team.
For decades ASS was played in Dublin, and recently the justification was that it was the anthem of the host country. But it seems that is only the rule for games in the ROI. When a game is in the UK part of the island, the rule was dumped. In order not to upset the Irish nationalist element of the support.
The problem is it isn’t their team. It isn’t an Irish nationalist team, and it isn’t the ROI’s team. It’s supposed to be an all-island team. Not that you could tell of course.
I say go neutral all the way. No playing of ASS when games are in the ROI. It should be Irelands Call only, no matter if a game is home or away. That is the anthem of the team. No other anthem is needed.
Anyway, it’s only 3 days until elimination of the IRFU’s wee ROI-centric team. Bring it on.
Ireland’s Call is played along with Ambran na Bhfian in the Republic of Ireland.
Outside the Republic of Ireland only Ireland’s Call is played.
As Spongerland is a part of Spongeeland …. .
Harpo,
I agree with you about no anthems flags or other such trappings. The Belfast thing showed the stupidity of the IRFU”s current position. The truth is it would impossible for an Irish Republic team to play after GSTHQ – it would be like asking Ian Paisley to share power with Martin Mc Guinness – well perhaps thats not a good example – but it was a step too far although it is hypocritical as Prods have to listen to a song about their army getting shot at.
It would be great if games could be played in the north and if the stadium (Bobby Sands memorial park – only joking) ever gets built then hopefully Ireland can play there witout any fuss.
I genuienly hope that Ulsters apparent talent at sub-international bears fruit and they can enjoy a period over-repressentation the way Munster does at the moment. What goes-around-comes-around.
Harpo, Willowfield- congratulations on successfully hijacking a sports topic.
The whole flag/emblems problem stems from the fact that Unionists simply dont know what they want from the rugby team. I dont agree with their point of view, but by definition Unionists don’t see the island of Ireland as a nation.
At the same time however, they wilfully support a team that plays in international matches under the guise of ‘Ireland’- granting legitimacy to the view that Ireland is indeed a nation on some level.
If they cant figure out their own position without any contradictions in the first place, how can the IRFU be expected to passify them?