Hugo McNeill on radio one on about the Irish provinces being tired and having to face into playing each other now. the most pampered teams in the heinehen cup they are FFS. wake up Hugo
Thatâs nothing to do with anything really. Sure when they were winning heineken cups Ireland were getting trounced and Wales have been brilliant while theyâre club teams were being flattened.
Yes mate it was in the context of the match I was talking about. We should still get out of the group but would face an away quarter and I wouldnât fancy our chances of going to one of the stronger teams and winning. To be fair we are absolutely cursed with injuries-OâConnell, Stander, OâDonnell and to a lesser extent Earls would have made a difference today.
I thought Brian OâDriscoll was quite a weak analyst yesterday. Will Greenwood hardly let him get a word in. I suppose though Greenwood has that winners mentality evidenced by the World Cup winners medal which OâDriscoll will never win.
No. I did that before and I was swamped with fellas taking potshots at me. I donât aspire to be a tipping king and take all the flak that comes with that responsibility.
A bit harsh there mate but probably fair comment on his analytical skills.
âWeâ, whatâs this fucking âweâ about? Are you on the team you prize donkey? This is what makes me delighted to see this crowd beaten today. Work will be a pleasure tomorrow as I sew it into the greatest fans in the world. :licklips:
We as in the collective I. Sew it away you slow witted dullard-Irish by birth, Munster by the grace of god. I will never walk alone.
:lol:
George Hook: An open letter to Joe Schmidt
Dear Joe,
Please forgive the uninvited mail, but I know it is a principle of coaching to seek information from any source and this is meant as a suggestion to help what I see is a recurring problem for Leinster and Ireland.
The set piece has cost you and your team dear. On Saturday, almost every scrum could have ended in a penalty against Leinster, and the line-out inaccuracies turned a possible win into a loss in Clermont.
Despite what I am sure was an intensive weekâs practice, there was little improvement at the throw-in at the Aviva.
You were not to blame for the scrummaging shambles you inherited. This was a product of criminal disregard by the IRFU and successive national and provincial teams who were in denial for over a decade about our failings in the front.
The sticking plaster solution of mercenaries from the southern hemisphere culminated in last yearâs disaster at Twickenham. I sympathise with you in trying to pick up the pieces.
However, the scrum and line-out are fairly simple technical issues to coach, while the line-out in its simplest form is hardly different from throwing a dart at a board.
However, you must be held responsible for the line-out failures.
Interestingly, nowhere in the raft of experts employed by Irish rugby can I find a throwing coach â an amazing omission given the cost of failure in that area of the game.
If Sean Cronin and Richardt Strauss were golfers, they would never hit a fairway.
Throwing to the line-out is like hitting a golf ball; it starts with the grip. Your hookers grip the ball incorrectly.
Cronin, since his arrival in the big time, has been a suspect thrower and it appears that nothing has been done to help him. Interestingly, Bernard Jackmanâs international career was ended by his inability to find a jumper.
May I offer my help? I have no wish to either join the coaching team nor interact with your players, but I can show you how to get help to solve the problem in a matter of weeks.
Even Brian OâDriscoll using the correct method could be better than the current incumbents. Interested?
Yours sincerely,
George Hook
:lol: A man whoâs job it is to throw the ball can arrive âin the big timeâ without being able to throw the ball right
All credit to Hook, he is one funny cunt & he doesnât even know it :lol: 
According to Dan Carter this is a very difficult skill and equivalent to trying to throw a basketball into the hoop from the halfway line on a wet and windy night. Fair enough I suppose but I canât imagine why the lumpen No2 has to throw the ball in all the time. Why donât the team find out who is the best thrower and let him do it. At one stage in the 80s the French team had the scrum half throwing in and the hooker catching the tap down, which made some sense and in the old days the winger always threw in the ball.
A very valid point Fagan. Surely the best lineout thrower can be anyone in the pack? The hooker would surely be a better lineout lifter.
Another serious issue with Rugby is the scrum, most of the penalties awarded for collapsed scrums seem absolute guess work by refâs. And worse still, when it does stay up the cunts of scrum halves bypass the hooker with the feed anyway. Makes a farce of the position of hooker really. :rolleyes: So basically a hooker is in the team to throw the ball into the lineout these days. :strokechin:
A pompous, arrogant, self obsessed cunt alright but not a funny cunt
As the convention is for the hooker to throw, theyâre typically the best thrower and certainly the most experienced. In a professional pack, all the players would be capable of lifting well
Itâs appalling alright. I donât understand why more isnât made of it either, the commentators barely mention when it when a hooker messes up a straightforward throw-in. Itâs hard to think of a parallel example in another sport where a straightforward but important task that can be mastered with proper practice is delegated arbitrarily to one individual irrespective of their aptitude for it.
At a general level rugby hasnât really evolved very far tactically. You get the occasional instance now of forwards standing in the backline but defences are invariably given the same look every time with players standing in a certain order and being marked by opponents standing in an almost mirror image, allowing for some drifting. I think a properly innovative coach who wasnât afraid of changing things could be very successful by dispensing with conventions. Even rugby league has evolved a little more, with different players stepping in to play scrum half etc depending on the situation and the first receiver isnât always an out half type unless itâs a kicking play.
I think youâre being a little harsh saying itâs a simple repeatable task Rocko. Itâs throwing a ball to meet a target at a specific time and place. The target varies in length, height and when heâll be there. Youâre trying to carry out this delicate task after significant athletic effort while the opposition also gets to try and intercept. Lineout success stats for pro teams would typically be greater than 70%.
To compare to some other sports:
- Soccer players regularly miss the goal in penalties let alone have penos saved - consistent length each time with a far greater target area
- Basketball players often miss free throws with consistent length, and they donât have to time the throw for the basket to meet it
- Baseball pitchers regularly âwalkâ guys through inability to throw through the strike zone and all they do is throw
The 70% success rate includes times when the throw isnât contested (another odd strategy in my opinion - canât see why you wouldnât contest every throw except those on your line).
Some decent points there but but the relative difficulty for baseball and basketball is much greater. Baseball pitchers are pure specialists so youâd expect them to be a bit better but if you asked them to just throw the ball at a nice medium pace youâd find they wouldnât be giving up many walks. The size of the hoop, plus the trajectory required, makes it a far more difficult task than throwing into a lineout.
If you asked a high school American football QB to throw a ball from a standing start in his own good time with no pressure to the sort of area that hookers throw at then theyâd never miss.
I know there can be pressure from the opposition (though not often enough IMO as I said) and wind etc but thereâs simply no excuse for throwing it in crooked or for the ball clearing everyone in the lineout or being caught waist high by some lad lifted way off the ground. There will always be some throws that are taken away by good defending but I think itâs striking how many are just wayward throws. If you canât throw the ball straightish for 10 metres or so without error then you simply shouldnât be assigned that task because somebody else must be able to do it.
Teams donât get jumpers in the air to oppose if they donât react quick enough on the ground. Thatâs why you see so much movement these days before the ball is even thrown in as the receiving team try and get a jumper up unopposed.
I think another point that should be made is the risk/reward aspect of it. If you throw to the front or middle then your chance of successful execution is much higher but that has to be balanced with the fact that ball from the back of the lineout is much more useful for launching attacks, particularly from the backs. When Leinster lost those lineouts in France, it was back of the lineout moves that had been called.
Ulster will win fuck all.