For King and Company

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ballpark A KING’S DAY TO FORGET

What’s with the Rosie? Twice now on successive weekends the jam-packed sessions for Ulster games have evaporated like leaves from Autumn trees as the winds of the Autumn internationals cuts a swathe in numbers in the  lounge. Yesterday a meagre crowd consisting of Ding Dong and Merrily on high, me, Ron the Spark, Gillian and the Chap, Johnny King, plus a few other assorted spectators gathered for Ireland’s set to with the Springboks. This was still a 100% increase in the gate that turned up to watch the Fiji game.

Worryingly the Chap Johnny King, claimed he was at the Rosie last weekend for the Fiji match. A claim soon dismissed as bogus because sparseness of the numbers meant Johnny would have had to been wearing an invisibility cloak to be in the Rosie, a device usually confined solely to Harry Potter books. It looks as if the ageing process is catching Johnny up fast. For most over a certain age, memory loss is signalled in the minutiae such as the surname of a friend or who the current Prime Minister is. In this instance Johnny forgot he spent last weekend somewhere else entirely.

A lost weekend by the sounds of it!

IRELAND CLOUD NINE – SPRINGBOKS LOST IN TACTICAL MIST

An invisibility cloak of another sort threatened to bring the curtain down on Croke Park rather quicker than the 80 minutes Ireland had to bring the curtain down on a highly productive international year. Fog enveloped the game causing the players to develop ethereal movements. There was nothing ethereal about some of the collisions which are standard for these affairs, they’re on a par with Cern and the particle collider.

SPRINGBOKS NOT ROMANCING THE GAME

I have romantic notions about South Africa as a country. It’s a place I’d like to see, from the Kruger to Table Mountain, one imagines a vast country of changing landscape topped by heat and dust. There is nothing remotely romantic about South Africa as a rugby nation these days. Despite this column’s adopted player starring for them yesterday, the Springboks are managing to supplant the Kiwis as my least favourite international rugby team.

SPRINGBOKS WEAR VICTIM HOODIES

Captain Smit epitomised the Bok attitude towards being penalised.  Perhaps he’s become a master of victimhood following his social offer of a few beers being turned down by the Lions because yesterday every penalty was greeted by Smit and the rest of the team as if it was personal affront to their manhood.

EX-PLAYER OF THE YEAR HAS CAR CRASH TO FORGET

Bryan Habana, has clearly let the player of the year award go to his cranium. Yesterday he blatantly handled on the deck in front of his own posts and referee Owens signalled a penalty before Ireland played on and subsequently lost the chance of a score of any kind. It was a yellow card and ten minutes of reflection for Habana for such a blatant act but it never materialised. He followed up this act of larceny with a piece of theatre that had the Rosie in stitches.

Conversely it was sad too as he ran into the back of Cian Healy from all of a metre whilst supposedly taking a free and collapsed as though in a head-on car collision. As if to compound his misery at not getting a return on his amateur dramatics Healy then emptied him in the tackle as Habana painfully acted out his piece de resistance in tragi-farce. Nigel Owens saw the comic potential and kept his face straight whilst issuing a reminder to both sides to behave.

Ireland of course ran the gauntlet of this and other dramatics from a team of prima donnas to keep kicking the points and their heads for a decent win.

NOT FALLING OVER MYSELF TO GET ALL OF THE JOY RIGHT

I’m not falling over myself to get all of joy and jubilation right at Ireland’s thoroughly merited victory yesterday. The Springboks were short of key players and their limited kick and chase game was thoroughly exposed by a team who could actually field the high ball under pressure. There was little else for the Boks to do despite having scrum superiority. They didn’t have the backs to exploit the scrum their defence consisted of conceding penalties rather than be bothered to do much defending. They could have been penalised far more than they were, given the number of ‘on the deck’ transgressions they committed and high tackles they dished out.

BJ DISHES IT OUT

Ireland’s scrum was once again exposed as Healy was given a lesson in scrummaging by Ulster’s BJ Botha. It was from a fast forward scrum that the South Africans scored their try with the obnoxious Burger finishing a fine move by handing off teammates left right and centre so he could boot the ball into the crowd by way of replying to the boos that greeted his Croker debut. There wasn’t a lot seen of Burger after that.  In the first half the Boks elected to run the ball down Tommy Bowe’s wing, any time they did decide to run it which wasn’t often and in the second half did likewise down Earls channel. A strange mix of tactics and though Ireland appeared exposed at times early in the game when the ball was run down the left their defence soon tightened up.

I agree with much of the Editors views on the game as published on this site, (never thought I’d say that)! For Ireland the victory is of course sweet but shouldn’t mask a few problems such as the scrum going backwards faster than an alco lowering a bottle of Mundies. For all Cian Healy’s gusto in the loose, he needs to scrummage first and foremost and clearly that is a problem as is Hayes at tighthead. Ireland seem unable to trust Court et al but surely these guys need to be tested in the way Sexton has been if they are to find out about them.

PREHISTORIC IRELAND

The running of the ball close in by forwards which culminates after two phases in David Wallace running full pelt into a wall of tacklers is prehistoric and after he did it the first two times and failed, a new tactic should have been tried.  Strangely Ferris is rarely utilised in this way by Ireland.  Variations in rumbling the ball by the forwards, a Munster tactic that works against less vaunted teams should be adapted and turned into something new as there were a staleness about Ireland’s tactics in this area.

OFF FORM IRELAND

In the backs, for all D’Arcy’s decisive defensive industry, he clearly demonstrated why Ireland don’t need him if they are going to attack through wider channels. Even converted Leinsterman Phil ‘the dub’ Matthews mentioned D’Arcy’s lack of distribution.

O’Driscoll for all his talismanic qualities and endgame heroics is fading out of games rather too much for Ireland’s good health. He rarely touches the ball in attack, mid game. Instead he pops up like a rather grandiose coda to perform a try scoring event or a last ditch tackle effort to remind us he hasn’t gone away you know.

Tomas O’Leary had something of a mixed game and his box kicking was abject, his decision making suspect at times. It’s perhaps a loss of form or possibly a sign of his limitations but Ireland need to seriously consider their options in this area. So whilst all in the Ireland garden appears Rosetta, it masks deficiencies which could be exposed during the 6 Nations.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE TRIES GONE? DEWI MORRIS HEADS ENQUIRY INTO MISSING TRIES OF MASS DESTRUCTION

If anything this autumn has demonstrated, it is how few teams can score tries. Dewi Morris on rugby club headed his own version of the Iraq war enquiry, trying to identify were the tries have gone, as if they were dodgy weapons of mass destruction and a phenomenon that existed in the imagination of the IRB only.

Dewi finished his limited enquiry, which had terms of reference covering the Guinness Premiership only, by demonstrating how tries can actually be manufactured. A clip showing players with the ball running away from the contact zone and the ball carriers being supported by players willing to take and make the off load demonstrated how it is possible to make a try. Bit like making Smash or Mary Baker buns really!

NOT JUST THE IRB’s FAULT

Current trend amongst pundits is to blame the IRB’s tinkering with the laws for the current dearth of five pointers.  For my money it’s also coaches who are advocating risk free rugby that are partly responsible, hence rugby’s Guinness Premiership suffers more than most.

On the International scene Scotland not so much exemplify the risk free approach as a limited ability in their strike force. Watching Scotland play must be like watching a coolant system reducing room temperature at 1 air change per 80 minutes.

Wales have an excuse of sorts in that they’re missing some of their strike force. France meanwhile like Wales were on the wrong end of hammerings by teams who perfectly demonstrated how to score tries in abundance. All is not lost therefore but coaches need to adjust their horizons.

GATLAND GUN MISFIRES REPEATEDLY

Listening to Warren Gatland’s patter is like listening to a randy male at the Young Farmers club, they’re mostly all talk. The Gatland gun, fresh from witless comments about Welsh disliking Irish players, claimed his team would do a number on the Australian scrum and then rattled on about Wales going to no. 3 in the world rankings. Based on yesterday’s evidence he was probably correct in not specifying which century this ground breaking event will take place.

I always thought Gatland’s appointment as Lions coach was flawed in that it was based on the previous year’s performance rather than on current form. So it proved, as I think some serious errors of judgement were made such as pre judging team selection before the party had even left the UK for South Africa. For example it was pretty clear Byrne had been pre pencilled in at full back and that Kearney wasn’t foremost in the selectors minds. As he demonstrated belatedly in South Africa and again yesterday, Kearney was the man to take apart the Boks aerial game.

Gatland’s scatter gun comments are right there with Peter De Villiers more moronic mutterings though De Villiers have more comic potential just as Habana might well consider a career after rugby in slapstick.

As BJ Botha might say, ‘right that’s it, I’m off to Homebase’.

Chat soon.







3 responses to “For King and Company”

  1. Johnny King

    Guilty as charged. I put it down to PTSD – I was at home alone with my 4 year-old and 5 year-old while their mother was in Galway enjoying the floods. I have tried (obviously successfully) to blank the weekend from my mind!

  2. Young Man

    What’s happenned to Old Man? Did he forget to send his predictions in? A senior moment perhaps? Alzheimer’s? Who’s the daddy now?

  3. YoungMan

    No one except for my self and Mr mcKnight at the last AB game. Maybe its the absence of pie

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