Thanks for that....
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Thanks for that....
Here's the team I'd like to see for Georgia (fully expecting Eddie to, wrongly, pick the same team as v Namibia)
Murphy
Horgan
Trimble
O'Driscoll
Carney
Wallace
Stringer
Ferris
Wallace
Best
O'Connell
O'Kelly
Best
Flannery
Horan
Of the team against Namibia, only Hayes would be rested, the rest dropped.
I can dream I suppose...
I'd play most of the team that played namibia but I'd drop Hickie for Murphy(maybe Carney) and have Horgan come in for Trimble. In the pack I'd drop Best for Flannery.
Murphy
Horgan
O'Driscoll
D'Arcy
Carney
O'Gara
Reddan
Young
Flannery
Best
Quinlan
O'Connell
Best
Wallace (at 8)
Ferris
I'd like to see how Quinny would cope at second row, as that's where O'Sullivan used him against Scotland. David Wallace there purely for game time. Reddan represents a far better option than Boss imo
terrible pack there Joe...Thats the one area where Georgia will be strong...we have to compete up front with them.
England have dropped D'Allaglio for the SA game. Easter comes in for him.
I agree. Best has errrr not been at his best :o in recent games. He does not deserve to start. I can't see him make any other changes (Horgan excluded) if in fact he makes any changesQuote:
Originally Posted by Dodge
Squad morale will surely drop if players put in rubbish performances & continue to get picked.
I actually love the pack Joe picked. Just because its different doesn't mean it wouldn't work.Quote:
Originally Posted by PinBallWizard
At worst it gives a few lads, like Donncha, a kick in the hole.
As for R Best, you get what you see. He's more reliable than Flannery (stats back this up) but he will never be a ball carrier. Flannery deserves a chance at least as on his day he's a match winner.
Irish team has just been announced. Horgan in for Trimble
1 Marcus Horan
2 Rory Best
3 John Hayes
4 Donnacha O'Callaghan
5 Paul O'Connell
6 Simon Easterby
7 David Wallace
8 Denis Leamy
9 Peter Stringer
10 Ronan O'Gara
11 Denis Hickie
12 Gordon D'Arcy
13 Brian O'Driscoll
14 Shane Horgan
15 Girvan Dempsey
Hope this doesn't come back to bite him with injuries...
That's the problem, if we had beat Namibia well, you can rest players, if you rest players now it looks like they are being dropped and possibly singled out. Personally I'd have been looking to cull a minimum of 5 players from Namibia but O'Sullivan clearly wants his "best" XV to play as much as possible.
I'd have drafted in Murphy, Horgan, Flannery, O'Kelly maybe given Carney a run on the wing with Trimble moving in to partner O'Driscoll and given one of the reserve props a run out.
O'Sullivan's tactic appears to involve the team a team that is clearly not performing magically finding its form in the space of 6 days.
Eddie's inate conservatism kills us again.
I think with the starting line up he's picked the bench has to be given a run early, otherwise if we pick up injuries the replacements will be going in cold.Quote:
Originally Posted by endabob1
The full bench needs to be utilised, starting at half time and giving as many as possible at least 25 minutes.
Unfortunately O'Sullivan is unlikely to do this and injuries will most likely come back to haunt him.
I really, really, really, hope the poor performances are like a modern day Ali, rope a dope trick, as soon as we face a complacent France or Argentina we step up to a whole new level.
Press Release
International Rugby Board (IRB) Rugby World Cup 2007
Following complaints to the IRB about the All Blacks being allowed to motivate themselves by performing the ‘Haka’ before their games,other nations were asked to suggest pre-match rituals of their own. The IRB Rugby World Cup 2007 Organizing Committee has now agreed to the following pre-match displays:
1) The England team will chat about the weather, wave hankies in the air and attach bells to their ankles before moaning about how they invented the game and gave it to the world, but no one appreciates them.
2) The Scotland team will chant “You lookin’ at me Jimmy?” before each of them smash a bottle of beer over their opponents’ heads.
3) The Ireland team will split into two, with the Southern half performing a Riverdance, while the Northerners march the Traditional route from their dressing room to the pitch, via their opponents dressing room.
4) Unfortunately the Committee was unable to accept the Welsh proposal to form a choir and sing Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual”.
5) Argentina will unexpectedly invade a small part of opposition territory, claim it as their own “Las In-Goals-Areas” and have to be forcibly removed by the match stewards.
6) Two members of the South African team will claim to be more important than the other 13 whom they will imprison between the posts. These two will then go about selecting the best parts of the pitch to settle on and claim that they have been there for centuries.
7) The Americans will not attend until almost full time. In future years they will amend the records to show that they were in fact the most important team in the tournament and Hollywood will make a blockbuster film called ‘Saving Flanker Ryan’.
8) Five of the Canadian team will sing La Marseillaise and hold the rest of the team to ransom.
9) The Italian team will arrive in Armani gear, sexually harass the female officials and then prepare pasta dishes, which they will flog to the crowd for a fortune.
10) The Japanese will shock fans buy demonstrating how to capture a whale for scientific research by harpooning an opposition prop.
11) The French won’t have a pre-match display and will simply hide in fear in the dressing room for the whole match.
12) The Australians will have a BBQ on their side of the field and invite the opposition over before the game. The food and alcohol will be in abundance and by the start of the game no-one will remember what they came to the stadium for. After some streaking, the singing of dirty songs and the occasional chunder everyone will go home thoroughly convinced it was a bloody good night.
13) The Moroccan team will quietly pray during the
first half and then launch suicide attacks against the opposition after the break.
Unfortunately, this strategy works well for the first game only, after which Morocco is forced to withdraw from the Rugby World Cup due to lack of players.
14) Samoa will prepare a huge feast in the middle of the pitch by digging a large hole and filling it with burning embers. They invite the opposition over by saying, “We’d like to have you for dinner”. It’s only when the opposition get to the pit that they realize
there is no meat and that they are the dinner!
Hopefully, with these policies now in place, further problems is this area of the game should cease to exists.
Regards,
Syd Miller
IRB Chairman
THE INTERNATIONAL RUGBY BOARD
Huguenot House 35-38 St Stephen’s Green Dublin 2 Ireland
Tel: 00 353 1 240 9200 • FAX: 00 353 1 240 9201
Funnier when it was last circulated in 2003........;):D
Strangeirish. I'm lost for words.
Oh yeah; Bring back Flannery and the rolling maul.
Ah sure a bit of regurgitation never hurt anybody.:)Quote:
Originally Posted by OneRedArmy
just back from Bordeaux. After watching Slovakia the night before and in a deep depression I thought at least we'll rack up the points against Namibia....... awful. O'Gara had an off day and Hickie couldn't catch a cold. We'll be lucky to get out of the pool now - all depends on how they react in the Georgia game because we need some sort of momentum going before heading up to Paris, they must know by now that the french are gonna come out guns blazing and if we're not prepared we could get a beating.
O'Sullivan has created this situation all by himself. Because his first choice team in such shocking form he really has no other option than to pick his best team for every game now. While his strategy of long squad training sessions has worked for the 6 Nations (Ireland train so much together they like a club side) it may be flawed for the WC where the squad would have to spend 4 months together if they get to the final.
:(
BTW i noticed TV3 got massive TV viewing figures for Sundays which is a surprise until you realise anyone without Setanta only had the other option of UTV. Watching Sport on UTV makes TV3 appealing :eek:
Georgia look very useful ....
Bonus point in last minute for Argentina. Bugger :(
Quote:
Originally Posted by joeSoap
I was referring to kicking a ball in Italy, I thought that was fairly obvious
Not obvious to quite a few of us though...must be getting old.;)
Well, after tonight we now have the top three teams in the group having played a shocker. Argentina, in both games, have shown me absolutely nothing to be scared of. To me France are going to be the tough nut. I can't see us beating them, so ideally we lose to them by 7 or less without conceding 4 tries, and beat Argentina by more than 7 without conceding 4 tries. Assuming we all get max points against the minnows, that would leave it:
France 15pts.
Ireland 15pts
Argentina 14pts.
I'd settle for that.
I think Argentina will win the group. Irelands pack will need to go up about 10 levels to get any ball, the Pumas will push Ireland all over the pitch. I would be amazed if we get out of the group and if we do I think it will be at the expense of France and not Argentina.
I'm actually quite fearfull about getting a bonus from Georgia going on what I saw last night.
I think we will get the bonus point against Georgia.
They only have a few days to recover from last night's match and, hopefully, they'll tire more quickly against us than they did against Argentina.
My only worry for the game with Georgia is losing players to injury for the games against Argentina and France.
Did anyone else notice that although the feed is the same the Setanta picture was much sharper than the tv3 picture? (I'm on NTL Digital)Quote:
Originally Posted by pete
yep, monutdfc. Funnily enough though, the first game I watched TV3 was far sharper than ITV and Setanta, but last couple of games the TV3 picture was noticeably worse than the others
I reckon we will take a bonus point off of Georgia a lot more easy than Argentina did. Argentina will struggle to score buckets of tries against anyone simply because outside of 12 they have very little to offer. Get under Contepomi's skin early on and they offer nothing outside of 10. The flip side of that is that they won't concede too many tries either.
If we don't go buck ape in the first 20 mins against Georgia, then we'll probably put 50 + points on them I reckon. We will concentrate on winning the game first; ie taking kicks at goal instead of kicking for touch, keeping the ball alive as long as we can to tire them out (and they will tire) and hit them for tries in the second half. That guarantees our bonus points and keeps us 100% on track. You can rest assured that performances against France and the Argies will be upped immensely. My only concern is Best at hooker. Bad thrower, not as dynamic aroiund the field and only has the nod on Flannery in the scrummaging dept, where let's face it, we're probably going to get done anyway.
Ireland to qualify ....no problem!!
I agree. The schedule for Georgia is fairly unfair.Quote:
Originally Posted by ifk101
I think O'Sullivan is scared of the Argentina scrum & because of this I think he has persisted with Best at the expense of Flannery.
Listening to O'Sullivan on TV last night he was very good at explaining what was wrong in the last game but never suggested why his experienced players could not detect this on the pitch. Does anyone else think O'Driscoll a bad decision maker for captain?
On rte sport at 7.30 this morning O'Driscoll said the players were shocked by how physical the Namibians were.:eek:
Says it all about our preparation.
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.
The Georgian Greco Wrestlers will plough through our Spice Boy backs unless they stop smelling themselves.:(
Quote:
Originally Posted by onceahoop
They a big strong team alright, but thats it, no skill
You don't need skill to knock people over and if they don't fancy it that's what'll happen. The Irish team have been noted for their defence in recent years apart from a few blips. Even Denis Hickie has improved. But when a Captain comes out and says they were surprised by the physicality of the opposition I get worried. I expect a big improvement on Saturday.
Very true, it's basically admitting that they under rated them which in any professional sport is an accident waiting to happen. The minnows will always give it everything, especially in the first game which is essentially their World Cup Final. They should have expected the Namibians to give it everything and nothing less IMO.
let's hope we impress tomorrow. Let us not forget that we are in effect still in pre season whereas the southern hemisphere sides have been playing competitive games for months now. I expect our lads to perform.
I heard one Irish player being interviewed (Marcus Horan?) saying that many of the mistakes the team made in the Namibia game were of the type that the team can remedy in a few days training, dropped balls etc.
I think Hickie was still concussed after that massive hit hence all the dropped balls!
Hickie was concussed, and the reason they didn't take him off was because of the three week rest after concussion rule which would have effectively ruled him out for the rest of the World Cup. This is both dangerous and stupid in my opinion.He was clearly in distress for quite a while after that knock.
You have to wonder if that concussion rule is counter-productive.
Georgia have made 11 changes to their team for Saturday, if we don't win this easily, we're in big trouble.
Expect to see a of subs if we get a big lead. With France up in a week there are a lot of lads who need game time, particularly if as I suspect we pick up a few injuries in this game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Schumi
what would be an acceptable win margin? If we win. 30 points? 40 ?