Trap may well have Ireland at a plateau in terms of their football and development but the fact is that there probably isn’t much more improvement to come from this team, especially given our lack of options in centre midfield and up front…
Lads here bigging up Kerr when i thought we were quite mediocre under him, granted we gpt a gppd result in Paris when France were down to their bare bones who had Dacourt and Mavuba in midfield and Squllaci and Givet at the back…we fucked away 4 points against Isreal that IMHO wouldn’t have been lost under Trap and Cyprus absolutely played us off the field in Nicosia, only for Shay Given it would have nearly have been as the trip there the following campaign…Kerr had also far more strength in depth and a more experienced squad, the vast majority of which were playing more often than not in the EPL
“They stumbled across” ? Come on ta fuck, you can do better than that.
Irish Rugby has a top level of professional sport on a smaller pick. Irish soccer has a amateur/semi-semi pro has a failed league. It also has a poor national team made up of sub standard professional players.
Irish Rugby demoted its top level to accommodate professional rugby, Irish soccer did what? Irish Rugby at least has produced a competitive team with a couple oif world class players.
Soccer is Ireland is a piece of piss, no matter what way you look at it.
I’m certainly not bigging Kerr up but find it hard to justify how under Trap we definitely wouldn’t have dropped points to Israel. We gave repeatedly lost leads under Trap same as in Israel that night. The home game against Israel was just a night where everything went wrong after a great start. Tactically I can’t see how Trap would have done anything different that night, bringing on a big man and hoofing it forward is the main tactic these days too.
Ultimately Kerr failed because when it came to the crunch particularly against Switzerland both times they crumbled. Switzerland were a better side than recent second seeds Bulgaria and Slovakia though. I’m not sure how much better the players Kerr had were either. Andy O Brien was a decent player for him thought he had a lot of good games, Cunningham probably had stayed on too long but Dunne was in the worst excesses of his honey monster phase and we had noone else. Harte by then was shit, the midfield partnership when Roy Keane wasn’t around was two from Kilbane, Holland or Kinsella. Robbie Keane was diabolical for Kerr. Clinton Morrisson is way worse than Doyle is now. Kerr strangely opted for Carr ahead of Finnan if memory serves correct but jokers like Doherty and Elliot got gametime back then too. Only Duff and Given would have been at the peak of their powers back then at club level.
The new found interest in rugby is similar to the Brits in the track cycling or whatever that cunt of a thing is called. Yet Ireland are still pretty shit at it at least the Brits actually win things. Rugby is a minority sport and they have killed the club game to promote the needs of the phoniest rivalry in modern sport. How Mick O Driscoll, O Callaghan, O’Leary etc make a living from the game is as wrong as Glenn Crowe getting the 3k a week imo
This thing that they killed the amatuer/AIL game is the greatest crock of shite ever. People will always go to see the best players available if its within travelling distance. AIL Club rugby was very well organised and was drawing good crowds, with the odd great crowd, to what was the best show in town for a rugby fan. I went to Con and Dolphin quite a bit in the early years when the then Munster players played all the time, as that was their main outlet. Then professional rugby came and put all the best players together. And of course people started to go watch the best players play.
AIL rugby as it is now gets the same crowds as any other rugby of the same level anywhere in the world, bar maybe NZ, gets. A team mate of mine who played AIL recently moved away and now plays the highest level of amatuer rugby in England, the crowds, the standard and the preparation and facilities for the teams are not that different.
Irish soccer went pro, and they made a fucking complete balls of it. I like soccer, and had started to go back to watch City play from early 2000’s on and off, the standard was gradually improving, as the players were pro/semi-pro and it showed. Teams wanted to put the ball on the ground and play a bit, well some teams anyway. It was reasonably priced and a great way to start a friday night. Then they got carried away and over paid individual players, who weren’t all that, and fly-by-night business men ran clubs into the ground. The FAI/League let this happen.
The AIL in contrast is well supported financially by the IRFU, and there is a clear link between the AIL and the professional game. Young players ply a trade in the AIL with occasional upgrades to Provincial/Provincial “A” teams. The clubs didn’t like it for a while, but got used to it. Its now looked upon as a chance for an even young player to move up.
Most people who throw this old nugget out usually haven’t an anti-Munster/success/bandwagon kind of attitude, but generally don’t like the game anyway, and it never ceases to amaze me how much time they waste running it down. It usually just shows insecurity about their own sport and its position in Irish society.
No, i blame everyone, initially the clubs. But where were the standards, where was the advice etc. The FAI ignored everything, without ever realising that they would eventually have to pick up the pieces down the road.
I mentioned the clubs, and the fly-by-night businessmen as well, so i wasn’t laying the blame at the FAI’s door only. But they should be leading by example.
My main point anyway is that the people running the FAI & the IRFU (and internal provincial set ups) are so far apart in terms of business practice and games promotion its not even funny, its embarrassing for the FAI. History has shown that, there is no way of talking around it.
The European Cup wasn’t the invention of the IRFU, it was the only lifeline that kept the game going here and the Magners League came out of that. Before then the IRFU had pretty much killed off the provinces. They presided over a club game where nearly every single club in the league was loss making. Where the prestigious Dublin clubs all had to do land deals to pay for southern hemisphere imports to act as player-coaches. Where Trinity finished bottom of the AIL for a couple of years in a row so relegation was turned off because Trinity have history and Ballynahinch didn’t. Where the best players didn’t play in the AIL but played in England.
They got a bit lucky and they have a professional league out of it and they’ve done well to keep that going and to generate interest. But it’s all a bit of a false hype. I’ve played the game to a high enough standard and it’s not difficult to get to that level. It’s very easy to call yourself “world class” in a sport where there’s a limited number of top class players. The game might be complex in terms of rules etc but it’s not some extraordinary achievement for Ireland to have a short spell where we’re better than Scotland and Wales at the game. That’s about the sum total of what we have achieved.
And I can assure you that this rugby bubble will burst. There simply aren’t enough people who care about the game. It’s getting to become a tv game, played by few but watched by a large tv audience. The parochial nature of provinces will attract decent crowds for another while (and I’ll repeat - they are well run apart from the decision to try and kill Connacht) but without playing numbers rugby will remain an elitist sport played by a few and enjoyed by more.
You’re not very up-to-date on this subject Rocko. Connachts foreseeable future has been assured only this week. It may be that you got to a decent level because you were a good player/athlete? It always seems easy to those who have talent.
Player numbers are up over the past 10 years, and i think you are comparing Dublin rugby with the rest of us. Rugby is far from Elitist around the country. Bar one Cork club there isn’t an upper class team in the Republic.
I agree with you its not a massive feat to be ahead of Wales etc, but i was talking about individuals, like BOD, Bowe, ROG etc.
Rugby will have to bring down their prices for the provincial game, and the mass exodus to Cardiff etc may be a thing of the past, but home games will always bring in the crowds. They will find ways of bringing in people. Its not like the stadiums are empty for the club game.
I think you are over reacting to the whole Aviva debacle. And you are hanging around with Bandage too much as well maybe.
Are you taking my take on the FAI/Irish soccer administrators etc as a personal insult or something, have you a vested interest? Serious question, i’m just trying to tease it out.
And finally, the HEC certainly had a massive strong Irish input from day one. Tom Kiernan was one of the main drivers for one.
I’m not really talking about the current situation regarding Connacht - it’s more along the lines of what I said previously about the IRFU being fortunate that the provincial structure landed on their laps and it made professional rugby a viable economic venture here. Prior to that rugby clubs threw loads and loads of money at brutal players and the game was ridiculously underfunded. I know plenty of guys who played professional rugby 10-12 years ago who were genuinely not that good at all. Second string players with AIL Division 1 teams who dropped down a couple of divisions when they turned 30 and earned 50 grand for a bit of playing and a bit of coaching. With a couple of hundred at the games. It was unsustainable.
Anyway that’s not the position they are in now, my point is that I don’t think the IRFU had the vision or the expertise necessarily that turned things around but I do agree that they’re running the game well now and that they have been a decent part of the ERC. I just think circumstances helped, the English clubs going out of Europe for a year probably helped actually as it gave the Irish clubs a foothold and the professional game is healthy.
But I don’t think the amateur game is healthy enough at all. I played all my rugby in Leinster and it was all completely elitist. Clubs like Barnhall, Suttonians etc were kept down because they weren’t tied to schools.
Long before the Aviva debacle I’ve been making this point. I don’t think rugby is struggling too much at that level anyway. It’s the grass-roots where it’s not happening from what I can see. It’s not a very sustainable sport to play for guys in their mid to late 20’s anyway. It’s becoming a game for students because unless you have the time to put into the gym you’re not on a level playing field. More and more I’m noticing lads who play when they’re in college, then they get a job, can’t find the time and they give up. That can happen in other sports too but the heightened physical nature of rugby means that it’s harder to play against those lads if you’re not keeping up with them. So you have professional players at the top, a group of elite amateurs below (with a very high percentage of students in there) and then drinking clubs below that. I don’t think it will thrive much longer with those numbers.
Finally, I should point out that I haven’t defended the FAI here at all so I think you’re confusing the arguments I’ve actually made with those you expected me to make. I think the FAI are an utter shambles and have made an awful mess of the domestic game. They’re a brutal organistaion but comparing the IRFU favorably to them doesn’t say much at all.
But you’re arguing with the guy who wouldn’t play Keane for Ireland anymore.
Agreed on the last point, but i didn’t make the original comparison, look at the thread title.
On the bigger bolded part. You are right, but that has been the way for years and as you mention is the same in a number of sports. But with rugby you are bang on, it seems for the most part, you either make it, or you play lower level club. And it suits students. But having said that, the AIL Champions only had 3 or 4 students, and had quite an older team, full of Sales men and Accountants.
I have often made that point, and again, i think this is probably more of a thing in Dublin or in the Elitist clubs thing, where many of the guy involved are very career minded. Many guys i know who may or may not have made it at pro or good AIL, just play 5-a-side since college. Many of these guys went to the Rugby schools and are “Professionals”. To be honest though, i think most of these choose a good social life than packed it in for Career or educational opportunities.
I don’t think what you are seeing is a very new thing, maybe its just your age (similar to mine) and the people you are around are seeing these things. Its not new, believe me.
I would stress though that its completely different in the rest of the country. Far closer to a GAA club. I lived in Arklow and went out with some of those lads on occasion, they were the exact same as the town clubs in Munster. Closer to GAA set ups than the Dublin clubs.
Ahem, Wales won more Grand Slams than Ireland and regulary win in Paris, also I seem to remember Scotland almost beating us in the quarter fnals of the last World Cup while the Irish were an embarrassment, ourselves and France brushed them aside easily in the group stages.
