McKenna's a journalist of the year award recipient, something which he mentions about every 5 minutes.
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McKenna's a journalist of the year award recipient, something which he mentions about every 5 minutes.
I don't come from a rugby background but this thread is ridiculous.
Rugby has a lot of self-righteous ********s who love to put down football, but so does the GAA. I've met a lot of them. They **** me off royally.
However, it is a good game to watch. While the Irish rugby team finds a way of ****ing up at every world cup, they have world class players. Our club sides are very professional. They offer hope to the football clubs that with good management, we can bring through great talent. The academies of Shamrock Rovers and Bohs give me great hope for the future that we can do the same in football rather than hoping the brilliant talent can come through at a club like Liverpool or City every ten or fifteen years.
The Irish soccer team has churned out mostly abysmal performances over the last ten years. Not so much results in that period, but we have been horrible to watch. The irish football team is the biggest show in town and hopefully in a few years time when Troy is firing us to a world cup quarter final, the country will come to a standsfill. However, right now you can't blame the public for sufferimg from ptsd from watching McClean et al. I feel the same. The Irish rugby team have played some great stuff in that period. They didn't reach their lofty goals at world cups but at least they had them in the first place rather than aspiring to a plucky draw away to the likes of Denmark or Switzerland.
To mock the rugby team is small time and is every bit as horrendous to stomach as the smug rugby crew or the eqaully obnoxious GAA element.
The real war is childhood obesity and getting kids out playing sport whatever the code. Lets not turn on ourselves.
I don't think anyone here has mocked the rugby team though. I mock certain aspects of rugby but I don't mock the team as I agree that that'd be petty.
I’ve recently come back from the RWC in Japan and have also been to a few recent soccer away games including the Swiss game.
The soccer fans could learn a hell of a lot from the rugby fans.
Tell us more.
3 weeks in Japan I didn't see one lad spewing up in the street, I didn't hear any of the IRA songs, I didn't see rubbish strewn on the streets outside pubs where we'd been drinking, I didn't see arguments or scraps between our fans in the stands.
Also saw a bit more entertainment on the pitch!
It's not all by any stretch, but it was something I noticed.
Quite a few people on this thread happy to see Ireland beaten, (which they've admitted) which is nearly as bad. I can't understand how anyone could take delight in an Irish team losing in any sport.
What makes Ireland's WC performance so disappointing is they went into it with expectations to go a long way in the tournament. None of the we're just happy be here or win or lose we're on the booze nonsense.
Finally anyone who uses that bitter hate fuelled so called journalist Ewan McKenna to back up their beliefs has already lost the argument
People can support (or not) who ever they want. I don't support the rugby team.
I have supported them in the past, but there is something unlikable about this team and their behaviour in the last few years.
Don't get me wrong football has it's fair share of c**ts too. Thankfully we haven't had many passing through our national team.
Out of curiosity, do you understand why some Irish people loved seeing Conor McGregor getting the head bate of him last year?
Conor McGregor goes out of his way to be obnoxious. It's part of his act to sell PPV events and make money. He thrives on not being liked
Sean O'Brien is only one I can remember, who has done anything controversial of the rugby lads and that was after a winning a trophy. He didn't even travel to the WC.
I don't know if winning a trophy can be used as a reason for ****ing on a random person in a bar.
I wasn't a big fan of the behaviour of the captain last year in Belfast - without getting into a debate over the rights and wrongs of it, I'm sure some people on this forum have no issues with what he did and their entitled to that opinion.
100% this. The same people who will hop on any bandwagon going (hockey, rowing, cricket) without knowing a thing about the sport or the individuals on these teams and then turn around and slate the rugby/football team (delete as appropriate) as a bunch of whatevers. Boils my p!ss. I get that you can like some sports - and their cultures - more than others, I just dont get how you can cheer against or be ambivalent towards the Irish flag during a sporting event.
I couldn't put it better myself.
All the Irish football fans on their high horse taking pleasure at the Irish rugby team's failure don't seem to realise it was such a big deal because they had genuine belief they could go a long way in the tournament.
Our provincial teams compete with the best in europe on a consistent basis and Irish rugby are able to produce home grown talent in this country for the national team, something the FAI rely on british clubs to do.
Anyone with a genunie interest in improving Irish football should be looking at what Irish rugby is doing (especially at underage levels) to introduce it to Irish football, rather than sneering at them under some stupid outdated idea that all their supporters are D4 lads or all from posh old boys from private schools
Whatever the merits of this overall debate, it's daft to "congratulate" the IRFU for producing home grown talent.
Football is played professionally in nearly 50 countries in Europe
The competitive & economic landscape is massively different between the two games.
Rugby has the luxury of automatic entry to the annual European Championships equivalent, and virtually guaranteed entry to the RWC, and virtually guaranteed passage to the QFs
Rugby has the luxury of a X-border closed club league with foreign TV money from the UK and South Africa; the LOI doesn’t
Rugby has the luxury of virtually guaranteed access to the Champions League equivalent – so even more money
IRFU can tell its players not to go abroad or they won’t play for Ireland (which is lucrative). FAI can’t.
So Rugby has a guaranteed pathway into the very top of the professional game; the FAI can’t guarantee anything like this. The FAI deserves criticism for neglecting the LOI, for sure, but this is a material point and a better funded LOI will only go so far in reducing our reliance on the UK system, unfortunately
The Irish Times is saying the IRFU needs to poach GAA players because its reliance on the schools sasytem isn't producing enough talent!
I admit my interest in rugby's success has diminished in recent years, mainly to to its patronising tone towards football. I think Japan has really hurt though and maybe the penny will drop that both codes are up against it on a global level and a bit more balance will return.
Not to mention the demise in stature and media exposure of the actual Irish rugby clubs. God be with the days when you'd put the feet up to Cork Con v Garryowen live on Sports Stadium. I don't think they even read out their results on the sports news these days. Small price to pay for the opportunity to belt out The Fields in the south of France I suppose.
But I'm with Stu & co. in terms of the bottom line. It doesn't boil my p!ss but I do think it's pretty sad taking pleasure in an Irish team's failure on a big stage.
Not so much at international level, but I genuinely want Limerick teams to do as badly as possible in every other sport, to make Limerick FC a more attractive alternative. Me originally being from Clare has a lot to do with that I suppose.
The IRFU have a significant leg up also in terms of raising Corporate money.
The old School tie's from Blackrock, Gonzaga, Terenure, Belvo, Micheals etc practically run this country and are happy to have their companies pump sponsorship into the IRFU.
It doubles down then for the big companies like bank of Ireland who sponsor ALL the provinces because they know the corporates will be happy to accept an invite to a game of rugger.
I do hand it to the IRFU in terms of the decisions they made when they went professional , boosting the Provinces and paying players (money and blackmail of losing Irish place) as if they had simply pumped money into the clubs it would'nt have worked.
Maybe an AIL football made up of Dublin , Norn Ireland, Munster, Leinster and Connaught would be the way to go :)
Don't forget the IRFU can effectively sign players too - like Jean Kleyn, who qualified for Ireland purely because he'd been playing for Munster for the last three years.
(For the record, I've no interest in rugby because I think it's an ugly, tedious sport, and I just can't bring myself to sit through ten minutes of it, let alone a full game. Others don't agree with that obviously, which is fine.)