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Rugby: A New Dawn


ljkeane
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Yeah, I've got to agree with Luke, I think Ireland will be somewhat disappointed with that. I expected them to win 15 on 15 so getting drawn into a scrappy game that was only helping England with basically a man advantage for the whole game wasn't ideal. Having said that they got the win and bonus point they needed in the end.

The red card clearly was a red card under the current rules and I understand why it is with the authorities rightly worried about doing all they can to try and reduce concussions but it it pretty disappointing for the game as a spectacle. It obviously wasn't a malicious tackle, Ewels is a bit upright but I don't think it was horrific technique, he's just stopped paying complete attention for a split second because Ryan's passed the ball and there's an unfortunate collision. It feels a bit much for me for the game to be basically over as a contest for what is clearly an accident. Maybe there could be an intermediate punishment for non malicious incidents like this between 10 minute yellows and down to 14 for the rest of the match reds? They had 20 minute red cards in some of the Southern Hemisphere games trialed last year.

From an England point of view they fought hard, which was good to see, but you can't take much more from it than that. The scrums did go well to be fair. I thought Genge up against Furlong was going to be a potential concern but he actually did really well.

In the game on Friday night Wales didn't go down to 14 but they also did a really good job of drawing France into an arm wrestle that was to their advantage and managed to spend most of the game pinning France back. The problem for Wales was despite largely dictating the tempo of the game they never really looked like being able to open France up with ball in hand to take advantage. France will probably be fairly unhappy with how the game went but they managed to come away with the win.

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Yes.  I think the general impression in Ireland is relief.  But also worry that we looked so bad against 14 players.  The lack of a proper game against Italy probably didn't help our preparations but those sort of excuses aren't particularly inspiring.  I haven't seen an Irish scrum under that much pressure in years.  Or Furlong have such trouble.  And all those forced and unforced errors.  Yikes.

Still, we could have scored 8 tries if we had a bit more composure, while England didn't have much in the way of try opportunities.

We came into this tournament hoping to show positive momentum after a good autumn but instead we end up with a lot more questions now than answers.  A good game against Scotland may help a little but the real test now will be the 3 test tour of NZ this summer.  It looks even more daunting now, given how our weaknesses were exposed yesterday.  All rather dissappointing.

PS: Did anyone ever trial a 10 minute sending off and a forced substitution of that same player after 10 minutes?  So the team gets back up to 15 players after 10 minutes but obviously can't bring that player back on.  While England did really well yesterday when down to 14, a sending off means the game is a freak rather than a proper match.  So who knows what to make of it.

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4 hours ago, Padraig said:

 

PS: Did anyone ever trial a 10 minute sending off and a forced substitution of that same player after 10 minutes?  So the team gets back up to 15 players after 10 minutes but obviously can't bring that player back on.  While England did really well yesterday when down to 14, a sending off means the game is a freak rather than a proper match.  So who knows what to make of it.

This is exactly what I'd like to see happen in the future. 

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England team for Saturday. Jesus fucking Christ Jones just pick some backs in their actual positions and/or stick with in form players.

Scotland have also gone for a bit of a shock selection with dropping Finn Russell. To be fair Russell really hasn't been great this Six Nations other than for about 10 minutes against England but I'm still not sure I'd have dropped him, especially for Kinghorn who's not really a flyhalf.

Ireland in comparison have gone with a fairly sensible looking team with the only moderately surprising change being Hansen coming back in. I was pretty surprised he dropped out in the first place though.

Also for people in the UK Sky have apparently bought back the rights for Super Rugby so that's on for the first time in a couple of years.

 

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So that's a bit of a shock result to say the least. Great to see Italy finally getting a win though. They've been improving fairly steadily for a while at youth level so hopefully they'll kick on from this. Garbisi's reaction to kicking the winning conversion was just about the most Italian thing ever too. :lol:

From a Wales perspective they're probably a little unfortunate to lose but they really weren't very clinical with the attacking opportunities they had and that's been a bit of a theme this tournament.

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Not a bad game in Dublin. The final result felt a bit inevitable but Scotland actually caused Ireland and surprising number of problems with ball in hand, especially in the first 15 minutes or so, but they were pretty rubbish at taking those chances. Hogg being by far the worst culprit trying to score himself when there were 3 unmarked support runners inside him.

Ireland didn't start the match brilliantly but they just look a very composed side at the moment. They rode out a bad period, did what they needed to do and ultimately came away with a pretty comfortable bonus point win. I don't think this Six Nations has gone quite perfectly to plan but it's been a pretty good one for Ireland and they really look to be building well to the World Cup.

I've seen a few references to Federico Aramburu, a former Argentina international, dying today but I didn't realise he'd been murdered in Paris. That's particularly awful.

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So deserved Grand Slam for France then. They've been the best side in the Northern Hemisphere for a while so you can't begrudge them finally getting a Six Nations win to go with their quality.

England were really holding on by their fingernails in the first half. They actually had a pretty good second half but despite dominating possession and territory they were only able to come away with one try while France took pretty much their one chance of the second half to score a try of their own.

ETA: Also French tv directors are really fucking annoying. When Dombrant's picked a brilliant line and almost scored a try only to be held up over the line I'd quite like to watch a replay rather than a close up of a prop trying to put in a contact lens. Hopefully it's not like that at the World Cup.

Edited by ljkeane
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 3/13/2022 at 7:18 AM, ljkeane said:

Yeah, I've got to agree with Luke, I think Ireland will be somewhat disappointed with that. I expected them to win 15 on 15 so getting drawn into a scrappy game that was only helping England with basically a man advantage for the whole game wasn't ideal. Having said that they got the win and bonus point they needed in the end.

The red card clearly was a red card under the current rules and I understand why it is with the authorities rightly worried about doing all they can to try and reduce concussions but it it pretty disappointing for the game as a spectacle. It obviously wasn't a malicious tackle, Ewels is a bit upright but I don't think it was horrific technique, he's just stopped paying complete attention for a split second because Ryan's passed the ball and there's an unfortunate collision. It feels a bit much for me for the game to be basically over as a contest for what is clearly an accident. Maybe there could be an intermediate punishment for non malicious incidents like this between 10 minute yellows and down to 14 for the rest of the match reds? They had 20 minute red cards in some of the Southern Hemisphere games trialed last year.

From an England point of view they fought hard, which was good to see, but you can't take much more from it than that. The scrums did go well to be fair. I thought Genge up against Furlong was going to be a potential concern but he actually did really well.

 

Sorry, I never responded to this.  I thought the outcome was a good win rather than the manner of it.  A bonus point win at Twickenham is never to be sneezed at.

The red card does ruin the game as a spectacle but that’s the fault of Ewels and no-one else.  There has to be a real disincentive to dangerous play.  James Ryan is 6’8, I think, and was standing fully upright at the time.  A tackle that makes contact with his head has a real problem with technique.  FWIW, I don’t believe Ryan has returned to rugby yet a month later.

Genge did really well in the scrum for England.  I thought he was blatantly angling and then the scrum was wheeling behind him — the overhead camera showed it clearly — but the referee kept giving a penalty kick in his favor.  I think the referee just stopped perceiving what was happening right in front of him.  He became convinced that the English pack was dominating legally.

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I got to watch the Ireland vs Scotland match after I returned from vacation.  The big standout for me was an excellent game by Gibson-Park.  All of the usual positives were there — ruck speed, fast tempo, darting runs — but his ball handling was better with near faultless pass execution and no knock-ons in the ruck (contrast with the match against Wales).  One minor flaw was a couple of his darting runs took him too far from support and he had to kick away rather than offload.

I don’t mean to sound too harsh on Keenan in my prior posts.  He’s solid, and a good kicker, but I see more offered by the full-backs from the other nations (other than Italy, of course).  Either surer under the contested high ball or better able to elude a tackle and create space for a clearing kick or offering more counter-attacking threat.

Overall a good 6N for Ireland with a triple crown.  Their huge points difference flatters them a bit, assisted by red cards, but they are still adapting to a new style that could be extremely potent if they can reduce the handling errors.  I just watched Leinster whitewash a weak Montpellier by using that same style.

Ireland should be stronger in the WC when they hopefully have a lot of the injured first and second row back.  But the main factor will be whether they can execute all of the passes and offloads in this high tempo carry style.

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28 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

The red card does ruin the game as a spectacle but that’s the fault of Ewels and no-one else.  There has to be a real disincentive to dangerous play.  James Ryan is 6’8, I think, and was standing fully upright at the time.  A tackle that makes contact with his head has a real problem with technique.  FWIW, I don’t believe Ryan has returned to rugby yet a month later.

I mean I don't know what Ewels' is height is but considering he's an international second row I'm guessing he's 6'5 plus. It's not like he planted his shoulder in Ryan's face, it was a clash of heads. As I said his technique is more upright than is ideal but if he tucks his head to the side it's a perfectly legal tackle. I think the reason he didn't do that is because he's distracted following the ball, it's easy to say just don't do that but it's a split second natural reaction.

I do get that concussion is a serious concern for the authorities and rightly so but the nature of a sport with people running into each other at speeds means there's going to be some accidental collisions. I think there needs to be a balance between heavily discouraging any head contact and the realisation that it is going to happen sometimes anyway and completely disrupting matches because of it isn't ideal.

Edited by ljkeane
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The Heineken Cup group stage was a bit hard to follow this season with the weird format but it should kick up a notch now the knockouts start. It's a bit unusual for rugby to have two legged ties for this round of 16 but it'll be interesting to see how teams play it.

Leinster looked pretty good last night. There's, unsurprisingly, a pretty similar feel to the Ireland team in how they play. It's going to be a tough ask for anyone to beat them this year I think although they'll probably be happy Sarries are in the Challenge Cup this year. Connacht played reasonably well but I think they needed at the very least a win in Galway to have any chance of progressing.

Of the other ties Toulouse-Ulster and Montpellier-Harlequins and Munster-Exeter all look pretty tasty.

Also Scotland and Lions legend Tom Smith has died aged 50 from cancer. I thought he looked like he'd lost a lot of weight when presented the match ball at one of Scotland's recent matches and obviously this was why. Sad news.

 

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For those ho don't know, Activate is an RFU initiative of the last few years, about prehab exercises to prevent injuries - including concussions.
More info here for anyone interested.

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2022/04/05/bjsports-2021-105170


 

Quote

Abstract:

Objective The efficacious Activate injury prevention exercise programme has been shown to prevent injuries in English schoolboy rugby union. There is now a need to assess the implementation and effectiveness of Activate in the applie setting.

Methods This quasi-experimental study used a 24-hour time-loss injury definition to calculate incidence (/1000 hours) and burden (days lost/1000 hours) for individuals whose teams adopted Activate (used Activate during season) versus non-adopters. The dose-response relationship of varying levels of Activate adherence (median Activate sessions per week) was also assessed. Player-level rugby exposure, sessional Activate adoption and injury reports were recorded by school gatekeepers. Rate ratios (RR), adjusted by cluster (team), were calculated using backwards stepwise Poisson regression to compare rates between adoption and adherence groups.

Results Individuals in teams adopting Activate had a 23% lower match injury incidence (RR 0.77, 95% CI 0.55 to 1.07), 59% lower training injury incidence (RR 0.41, 95% CI 0.17 to 0.97) and 26% lower match injury burden (95% CI 0.46 to 1.20) than individuals on non-adopting teams. Individuals with high Activate adherence (≥3 sessions per week) had a 67% lower training injury incidence (RR 0.33, 95% CI 0.12 to 0.91) and a 32% lower match injury incidence (RR 0.68, 95% CI 0.50 to 0.92) than individuals with low adherence (<1 session per week). While 65% of teams adopted Activate during the season, only one team used Activate three times per week, using whole phases and programme progressions.

Conclusion Activate is effective at preventing injury in English schoolboy rugby. Attention should focus on factors influencing programme uptake and implementation, ensuring Activate can have maximal benefit.

 

Edited by Which Tyler
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4 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

Nice! I was in the shed, right in front of where Dow got injured unfortunately. Heard her screams loud and clear.

You'd have been right next to my friends (and driver that day) then. My knee isn't up to standing in the shed for 3 hours these days.
Sarah had to take out her reflink as the crying and whimpering was getting to her.

On our side, we thought the ref had indicated a head injury, so we were really worried when the paramedics came on, and even more so when the England water-carrier stopped the match after the try after the restart (no-one had a reflink around us) - wasn't until half time that we found out it was her leg.

Edited by Which Tyler
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