I was wondering with the articulate and intelligent writing form came from DI. I now realise and understand.
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I was wondering with the articulate and intelligent writing form came from DI. I now realise and understand.
Very interesting looking at the ratings in the RTE guide this week on ratings from a few weeks ago, The Six Nations match that week against Italy was top on the channel and top 5 on the network only behind the late late show and the voice. Non-Irish six nations matches made the top 10 on RTE 2 but the real interesting number was that the Ireland under 20 game versus France on a friday night made the rankings with 125,000 viewers. Which is frankly staggering for a juniors match, it shows how pervasive the rugby popularity in this country is and extends far beyond the marquee Ireland/Munster/Leinster games.
im not sure i understand what you are getting at ET - its a fair point...
SkStu, I accept it was a stupid childish post but this thread becomes circular every 4 or 5 weeks. Murfinator comes on and says how much more popular rugby is than football. Many of us react to defend the beautiful game and then we repeat the process. It seems like its being going on for years and I'm just tired.
Perhaps we should have a rugby thread somewhere.
ah okay, i skipped forty-something pages of this thread and just recently ventured back in...
Wasn't the thread made for a popularity comparison between the two? It was contested previously that the Rugby popularity in Ireland was wafer thin with interest only in the glamour games and not really as rooted through the levels as soccer, thats the relevancy of the U20 popularity. I figured it'd surprise some people.
Sorry that you don't like it but if you don't have something constructive to add to the debate it'd probably be smart to not click the thread.
I was certainly not saying that the interest was wafer thin, though I did pick holes in the way you presented a previous round of viewing figures. The U20 figures were indeed impressive but I also thought the AskChili survey published in the Irish Times, and posted here, was interesting.
Shane Horgan on Nathan Hines
"He is so annoying to play against. He is always in the wrong position, he’ll always be scragging someone back, he’ll always be irritating someone, lying on the wrong side. That’s what he does. It’s fine saying it’s illegal or whingeing about it but it’s those very traits that we loved having when he was playing for us."
In other words, it's OK to cheat?
Personally I think you do what you get away with within certain bounds of decency in both codes, but I bet this comment won't attract any attention anywhere, yet if Shay Given applauded Robbie Keane for diving it'd be pounced upon, just like Simon Cox's appealing for the Armenian GK's handball actually was.
I hate Shane Horgan...
Where is Murfinator now? No doubt he will be quiet.
The one thing is though with the examples you mentioned, collectively Hines traits in one game add up to quite a bit, but not game changing, keane diving or us getting a penalty or the armenian goal are all game changers really.
His block for Clermont's try against Ulster was game changing. In general, though, cheating in rugby is seen as an art. There are more grey areas but it's still a fact that cheating is accepted and encouraged.
Ya but look at Neil back years ago against Munster, that was another game changer but that was moaned and complained about in the irish media and english media at the time, and given good coverage.
But its kinda seen "as part of the game" alright, where as its a dirty side show in Football, that poisions and turns people away. Its bizzare really, i just think its down to the individual humans personality at the end of the day, but there are quite a large group of same thinking people unfortunately.
With rugby, I think it's the part of the game people don't really acknowledge, and when it is highlighted, it's commended as tactical cleverness rather than derided as cheating. Accepting or embracing it as such is kind of a way of denying it or of, at least, ensuring unwanted attention will not be drawn to it, if that makes sense... I think it is a sense of denial or an unwillingness to admit that rugby players - who are, in reality, just the same as players of any professional sport - could possibly be cheats, and is similar to the more nuanced sense of denial that appears dominant within the English media with regard to diving in football.
I discussed this a bit in a piece I wrote on the English media's reaction to Ashley Young's dive against Aston Villa the other week here: http://backpagefootball.com/premier-...pretend-is-it/
I perceive a peculiar sense of English sanctimony when it comes to some admitting that diving is a part of English football. I see this denial as a veiled or casual form of xenophobia; English observers will admit it occurs, and maybe even its epidemic prevalence, but will blame foreigners or "outsiders" for its "creeping in". Of course, this is nonsense - cheating in English football isn't a "foreign" invention - so is it down to a cultural superiority complex; that cheating couldn't possibly be of English origin or, worse, inherent to sports of English origin, God forbid?!
What fuels this perception that cheating and diving is predominantly a football issue is the fact that essentially it is a non contact sport unlike rugby. Rugby players tend to only hit the deck when they are genuinely injured, while there is a lot of gamesmanship in football. I cop this image of football the whole time from Aussie Rules advocaters who see football players as being prima donnas, while due to the physical nature of rugby, they appreciate the spectacle more.
Football has got an image problem among followers of other sports and the big money and lifestyles associated with it, seems to reinforce this perception.
Football's authorities could do far more to address diving and play acting and general whingeing. Their inaction is lamentable.
wrt the contact sport bit, in rugby one of the objects of the game is to knock your opponent over. In football you're penalised for it. It's naive to think that if rugby players could gain advantage by pretending to have been knocked over (ahem, Marcus Horan) they wouldn't do it.
btw Tuesday and Wednesday's (UK) Independent letters page has had this very same debate.
DI you remind me of my brother, too much time on his hands, to read too much into things. Ah no I see where you are coming from.
I'd just put it down to good old british imperialism to be honest. I don't necessarily think its xenophobic. Its a form of arrogance.
It's not so much cheating as playing the ref. Some refs will allow tacklers to hold on a bit longer than others, whereas some will blow up instantly. Good teams and good players play to the refs interpretation of the laws.