It is still a truth that Ireland had an extra player on the pitch for a quarter or the game and still couldn’t do it. Scrum and line out were a good way second best and Father Time has caught sexton. Luck was a factor in beating SA and the bald fact is Ireland still haven’t won a knockout game.
What you say is 100% correct ( aside from Sexton comment as he’s been arguably the best fly half so far in the tournament) - I’m just making the point that the team last night were anything but fragileOriginally Posted by Dermobohs
Yes sextons been brilliant for us but he was out on his feet in the last 15 , time waits for no man. All blacks defence ultimately won out in the end, Ireland went thru what, 25/30 phases absolutely relentless pressure and they not only defended it they kept Ireland outside the 22 for the most part, brilliant to watch.
I still feel rugby fans and press here got carried away , we were fortunate that SA mislaid their kicking boots and a couple of their forwards dropped it at key times.
We’re along with France the best in the northern hemisphere atm but World Cup knockout is where the name is carved in stone.
Ireland ain’t there yet.
Fairly insane that they’ve never won a knockout game at the World Cup,when you put it like that it’s nearly mental block territory….
Irish by birth ,Harps by the grace of god.
8 quarterfinal appearances and 8 quarterfinal losses.
Fairly impressive. Maybe they'll go for the ten.
Last edited by brine3; 15/10/2023 at 3:29 PM.
As well as the other arguments which have been made here and elsewhere against such a scheme, there is one further point which mitigates against it.
First, the players/coaches/attendants/administrators involved with such teams are invariably part-time, or even amateur. How can they afford the time and money to spend 6 or 7 weeks on the other side of the world, even on a 4 yearly basis? And Shield games would end up being played in empty stadia around the host nation, with virtually no TV/Media/Sponsor interest or funding, and consequently lose bundles.
Of course, you might say that the RWC might subsidise them, but the competition doesn't make that much money, all of which (and more) is needed to prop up the professional game in the existing top few nations.
And in practical terms, what "hope" would that give them?
So Portugal play out a tight-fought 21 to 20 victory over Georgia in the Shield Final and then what? You can guarantee that the next time they face even a half-decent Wales or Argentina, they'll still get humped. And that's before taking on NZ, SA or Ireland etc
In other words, a few Shield games every four years will have little merit in themselves, nor will they do anything for the overall development of the game back in the countries themselves, the problems for which go far beyond the lack of eg a competition like a subsidiary Shield held alongside a RWC Finals tournament.
Agree that that would be madness, serving only to dilute the overall standard of the tournament, while making ever greater demands on the interest, finances and commitment of even die-hard rugby fans.
What rugby's top bods don't appreciate, or more likely won't acknowledge, is for all that they trumpet the success of the game at a tournament like this - and it does have many things going for it - the fact remains that outisde of a few tiny Pacific islands, rugby is only the National Sport in one country on earth, and that with a population of only 5.25m (NZ, of course).
And even that needn't have been a problem, so long as it remained amateur, or at least semi-pro. But when they sought to make the game fully-pro (to keep up with the Soccer-Jones?), fact is, it's was always going to be a huge ask. In fact, experience has shown that the only way this can possibly be done is by concentrating the game's resources in a bare handful of countries and accepting that there simply isn't enough to go around to "widen the franchise" (yuk).
Otherwise, if you are going to try to expand the game from its traditional heartlands by eg 24 team RWC, then the only way this could be done would bw by a radical (Socialist?) redistribution of wealth amongst everyone, and the abandonment of the fully professional dream.
And that ain't gonna happen.
Ever.
How many clubs? 10 is pretty few already.
Is fully centralised even legal under UEFA structures?
100% true that IRFU is in a better place than the FAI (except maybe in treatment of women where IRFU and FAI both failed abjectly, and where maybe Irish international football is currently in a better place than rugby) but equally true is that on so many levels comparisons are futile.
- IRFU has a guaranteed place in the annual European Championships
- IRFU has a virtually guaranteed place at the World Cup
- Irish provinces are able to play x-border league and cup competitions (URC is among the biggest club competitions in the world, H-Cup arguably the biggest)
- The revenues from all of the above mean IRFU is as well funded as any organisation in global rugby
- IRFU can attract high quality players under residency rules (harder now)
- Private schools do a meaningful part of the hard work at grassroots level
Of course, Wales, Scotland and Australia follow similar models and are in poor shape so Ireland’s success isn’t automatic but it has a lot of huge structural advantages over the FAI to begin with.
If this wiki page is accurate/up-to-date, only two countries in UEFA currently have an 8 team top flight, Andorra and Moldova. While there are 10 other countries which have 10 teams, all of them pretty minor, bar Croatia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...UEFA_countries
Professional rugby union is a bit of a basket-case, financially speaking, since clubs generally cannot generate enough revenue to maintain the large squads and facilities needed etc. (I say "generally", since France seems to making a fist of it due to somewhat unique circumstances)
As a result, clubs/leagues depend on hand-outs from their respective Unions, which is where the real money - crowds, TV, sponsors etc - lies. But even this is nowhere near enough to elevate all the top clubs existing before professionalism was introduced - England have had a go, but is floundering badly.
Instead the Unions had to move away from clubs and create an (appropriately few) number of regional clubs to find, develop and promote players up to the National Teams. In Wales and Scotland this has been a complete disaster, since it effectively led to their throwing the new regional "baby" out with the club "bathwater". That is, when existing clubs were starved of funding, they went into decline, without the new regions really catching on in their place.
Ireland, however, got lucky, since it already happened by chance to have a 4 team regional set-up it could build upon, the Provinces. But while this has proven to be extremely successful for those teams, even including Connacht, previously a rugby backwater, the next level down has been a completely different story. That is, while all-Ireland club leagues still exist, the gap between their standards, and those of the Provincial teams, never mind the international team, is huge, and growing ever wider. This has resulted eg at clubs which formerly used to field 6 or 8 adult teams every weekend, at all levels including veterans etc, these days struggling to field four teams, even three. (There is much more womens/girls rugby, tbf)
As a result, Ireland increasingly draws its players from a relatively tiny number of (mostly) fee-paying schools, as you say, who can afford to provide specialised, professional coaching, along with the costly facilities and infrastructure which pro rugby demands these days. And from there the best of them usually go not to their local club, but into the Academy of their Province, or to a University set-up, or even abroad for a bit. And its from theses bases that they hope to develop to international level.
As a result, rugby at top level in Ireland is far less widespread and accessible than it used to be, even if it isn't at the stage eg of American Football, which is concentrated on Schools, to Colleges, to Professional Franchises, with afaik very little played at local club level.
Which is all very well if you're a bar-stooler of a "fan", but I suspect that for many true rugby fans of the old school, the move to professional rugby has brought with it many drawbacks as well as many benefits.
And while it is not for me to say what football in ROI should do, I would be very disappointed if football in NI came to be similarly concentrated ever more around a handful of professional clubs, to the overall detriment of all the other clubs up and down the pyramid, in all parts of NI.
Am I the only person who watched the game who believed that the final pass for the first New Zealand try was blatantly forward? I was stunned that it didn't go to the TMO, that the Irish players didn't protest or that it didn't come up in any of the reports on the game. Final pass for the second one was iffy also, although marginally so
I don't know ~ Sometimes the TV pictures can give false impressions.
I find that a lot in rugby. The same way I constantly see foul throws in professional soccer.
They just get away with it
Folding my way into the big money!!!
In real time I thought the winger had a clear run to the line and was starting to groan and then it seemed to pop out of his hand forwards and I was about to breathe a sigh of relief, only to see another All Black catch it and run over the line. And then they showed the replay from close up and you can clearly see that the ball leaves the winger's hands behind the 5 metre line and is then caught by his teammate inside the line. And this wasn't a momentum thing that is allowed when a player is sprinting forwards and throws a spin pass sideways - the winger was being forced over the sideline and threw a basketball-style pass that was forward from the moment it left his hands.
What's frustrating is that the TMO is used for so many things, often spotting minute infractions from far earlier in a passage pf play - this should surely have been checked. If I'm right about this, it's a failure on the level of the Luis Diaz disallowed goal.
I think you can say that there were some fairly inconsistent and almost capricious refereeing/TMO decisions in the QFs.
I'm even hearing that Kolbe's charge down of Ramos' conversion should have been referred to TMO for starting his run before Ramos stepped forward. For the life of me I can't see the mitigation for the Argentinian head clash against Wales and the tackle on Aki looked bad.
The South African "knock-on" at 7-0 was a close call and I'm glad it wasn't referred. The ref was entitled to call it as backwards if he saw it that way and any knock on, even if a penalty and yellow should have followed, would have been marginal and the player did look to try to claw the ball backwards.
There was a head collision in the South Africa game around the 65th minute that I thought would be referred, but nothing happened.
The South African number 7 led with his elbow, although he was in possession.
The opening try is here, if you look at 0:14, their number 13 is before the mark when he releases the ball, and the 11 is ahead of it when he receives it. Strange that none of the Irish players near him on the pitch claimed it was forward though
I had the exact same reaction in real time as yourself but when it came to the replays I saw it more as 50/50 but questionable. I'd have to go and take another look but i still cant bring myself to watch the highlights. Many passes in the game look questionable but there's something to what seanfhear says in that the cameras and the speed of the game in those moments can maybe make it look more questionable than it is? I dunno. Still gutted anyway.
Here's the Irish Times' GAA Correspondent's take on things:
Seán Moran: The GAA has more to be worrying about than the exploits of Irish rugby
It’s a long time established that Gaelic games have nothing to fear from other sports’ exposure on the international stage
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gae...f-irish-rugby/
For all the disappointment unleashed by the Rugby World Cup exit on Saturday evening, the campaign was by a distance Ireland’s best showing since the tournament began in 1987.
It was of course frustrating that for the current team, the quarterfinals continued to prove an insurmountable obstacle. But for the first time ever, Ireland were genuine contenders and will in all likelihood see a team from whom little separates them, win this year’s title.
Will the knock-on effect be to divert youngsters towards the oval ball and away from the O’Neill’s football and sliotar?
Such intimations of a threatening new world conditioned some of the responses within the GAA community towards Ireland’s new status, from the aggressive belittling of rugby and jubilation at their defeat to over-wrought anxieties about losing “market share” to the rising tide of a competitor sport.
Firing the imagination of youngsters is a good start but there are equally issues for rugby in its excessively gladiatorial collisions and parental concerns about concussion.
Maybe it’s the sport’s narrow social base and established stereotypes, but rugby attracts a level of visceral hostility, hugely disproportionate to its represented failings.
Did anyone watching really care that the rugby world is a little thin for a tournament with so many teams? Is it reasonable to expect that a team covering two jurisdictions would insist on the national anthem of one rather than the other and then revile the compromise?
Is it really a rejection of nationhood for rugby supporters to sing a protest song about republican violence?
Why should the eligibility rules for players bother people any more than Fifa’s ancestry provisions, which we have been happy to exploit down the years? After all, someone playing and living in Ireland for a number of years has at least as plausible a claim to represent the country as someone who has just been alerted that their grandmother was born here.
Above all, why get worked up over any of it? If it’s not your cup of tea, put the saucer down.
Rugby’s narrow base is undoubtedly expanding in terms of public interest. Saturday night gave Virgin Media Television its biggest ever audience. It might even do the unthinkable and outrank The Late Late Toy Show in this year’s ratings.
It’s a big progression more than 20 years since the Ireland-England Six Nations finale in Lansdowne Road with both teams going for a Grand Slam, which attracted only the fifth-largest sports broadcast audience for 2003.
The majority of GAA people don’t really get worked up by the threats supposedly posed by other sports, but the advent of the split season has triggered certain anxieties about abandoning traditional championship months and leaving the field open to competitors.
Allowing that the final audit on the new calendar hasn’t yet taken place, it’s difficult to pinpoint where the damage has actually happened. If the All-Irelands were still in September, they would have been tussling for publicity with the rugby matches and although there would have been plenty of room for both, as there was in all such cases until 2015 – by 2019 the All-Irelands had started to shift – there would still be a dilution of profile.
Anyway, it was a core belief of those proposing the spilt season that relinquishing media attention for the weeks in question would be worth it for the life it would breathe back into the GAA’s club activities, involving the vast preponderance of players.
Yes, some counties have been dilatory about utilising the additional weeks but the concept has only been in operation for a couple of years and responses are still evolving.
The GAA has been in a more worrying situation than this before. Thirty-three years ago, at the high point of the Jack Charlton era, Ireland reached the quarterfinals of the Fifa World Cup. On the face of it, that was a far greater challenge than what has happened in recent years with rugby.
A successful national soccer team reaches parts of society inaccessible to both rugby and Gaelic games – a reality conceded by the GAA in 1990. Nonetheless, watching half a million people on the streets of Dublin celebrating the team’s return must have made for uncomfortable viewing on Jones’s Road.
You never say never, but it looks increasingly possible that Irish soccer may not again attain such heights even if things improve on the current gloom. But that doesn’t change the sport’s status as the most played in the country.
In the days of Italia 90, the GAA wasn’t as prepared for the eruption of interest in another sport but it responded, albeit by accident, when Dublin and Meath provided their own epic saga over four matches the following summer. Subsequently, the development of Croke Park captured public imagination and Gaelic games thrived.
The tempo of football and hurling is different – steady and tribal. In other words, there will always be All-Ireland finals but there won’t always be high-profile performances at World Cups.
To command exceptional public interest, rugby and soccer require a degree of international success that can’t always be guaranteed.
None of this is based on complacency or a view that the GAA is invulnerable. Clearly it has its challenges, ranging from concerns about deciding on the long-term shape of its season to the imminent integration process, to anxiety about the future of football and its apparently inexorable transformation from spectacle to aesthetic black hole.
Croke Park can concentrate on these matters, however, without fretting about losing ground to other sports, simply because of their high-profile involvement in an international tournament.
So, it’s perfectly appropriate and neighbourly to wish them well and commiserate when things don’t work out.
Wow. That really is forward!
I thought it at the time but didn’t see that angle in the crowded pub.
Ultimately though, they had 14 players for 1/4 of the match and we couldn’t put them away
(To get back to the thread title)
It's all very well (and understandable) that the IRFU is trunpeting the TV viewing figures for the NZ game etc, but is anyone able to guess how many Irish rugby fans are actually out in France for the RWC? And how that compares with the numbers of football fans who went out to France for Euro2016? (Technically at least, you might even add the GAWA/NI fans to that latter figure, to make it an all-island comparison.)
Although the Euros in June/July is a bigger pull than the RWC in September/October weather-wise and holiday season etc, arguably it's one way of sorting out the barstoolers from the genuine followers.
Generally Rugby supporters have more money than your ordinary Irish People ( I said generally )
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