Six Nations Army

[Eggchaser]

Six Nations Army

vennegoor strokes wrote:

An England fan reduced to posting up pictures of Ireland winning a trophy.

Jesus, Eggchaser, do you have a single atom of self-respect in your entire body?

England 6/5/4 Nations Record

107 tournaments, 25 wins, 12 Grand Slams, 23 Triple Crowns

Ireland 6/5/4 Nations Record

107 tournaments, 11 wins, 2 Grand Slams, 10 Triple Crowns

England World Cup History

3 Finals appearances, 1 win

Ireland World Cup History

No Finals appearances. And so no wins.

So, to answer your question, yes, I have plenty of self-respect when it comes to my nation's rugby achievements. Certainly more than you seem to have in yours. We're having a rough time of it at the moment, but I'm more than pleased for the Irish to win the Grand Slam, overall they deserved it and well done to them.

So .

[Guest]

Six Nations Army

Thanks for that, I had no idea that England's rugby team had won more trophies than Ireland's rugby team over the years.

Not entirely sure what the actual point of it was, but the effort is appreciated.

[Ek weet nie]

Six Nations Army

I think Tom Humphries wrote that to be contrary on the day and get himself more notice. Nonetheless, I agree with the vast majority of the article. If the IRFU were to radically extend their underage club rugby system to cater for non-rugby schools they could hoover up all the talented athletes in the next decade. I hope to fuck that they just stick to their core base and continue the piecemeal extensions that they have made to date.

[Ek weet nie]

Six Nations Army

I will say that my opinion of O'Gara was raised substantially by him making a beeline to Stephen Jones after the missed kick.

[Ray de Galles]

Six Nations Army

Humphries has written much the same as above in both his books and previous articles, it's not as if he's just come out with it on "Ireland's big day".

[Brandenburger Toro]

Six Nations Army

That Humphries piece;

(a) is quite clearly designed to get loads and loads of hatemail, it's why he's written that exact piece before any number of times. Not just about rugby, golf too.

(b) reads like the ramblings of a drugged horse imitating Malachy McCourt

(c) is so laden-down with ressentiment, it makes AIATL look like a clear-eyed ubermensch.

What, exactly, was it supposed to prove, other than that (gasp!) some rugby fans get cranky once in a while?

Look, I'm sorry that most of the Irish team went to private schools, and speak wrong, and didn't turn every game into a giant keepy-up competition. But still, deal with it.

[Guest]

Six Nations Army

You forgot to mention that it is a deeply treasonous article for which Humphries should have his Irish passport taken away from him.

[Ek weet nie]

Six Nations Army

Those private schools are subsidised by the Government and the percentage of pupils attending University as past pupils is way out of kilter with the rest of the schools in the country. The same private schools get infinitely more positive media coverage than GAA and soccer schools in Dublin. Added to that the old boys network for the past pupils is a force in every large Irish company and Government body.

It's a little difficult to "deal with it" when asked to laud the success of the privileged and connected.

[Guest]

Six Nations Army

when asked to laud the success of the privileged and connected

. . . whose greed and cuntishness and stupidity have just dragged the rest of us into an almighty mire of shit which will directly damage our standards of life for years to come.

Note to the overly literal-minded: I'm not accusing Brian O'Driscoll of causing the economic crisis, merely noting en passant that he and his pals are the sporting wing of the Irish boss-class which has proceeded to ruin everybody else's lives.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Six Nations Army

You forgot to mention that it is a deeply treasonous article for which Humphries should have his Irish passport taken away from him.

Oh, don't be ridiculous.

And both of you - hang on, really? The Grand Slam win is a load of shit because rich people fucked the country up?

That really *is* ressentiment. Nietzsce would have a field day.

[Ek weet nie]

Six Nations Army

I can recognise that The Grand Slam is a great achievement for Irish rugby. I have serious issues with Irish rugby as a whole though whether they are Grand Slam winners or Wooden Spoon winners. I find it easier to cope when they are unsuccessful though as the media fellatio isn't everywhere to see.

Being told that the Irish rugby team is lifting the country and dissuading the effects of the economic crisis is a severe shit sandwich to take. Now, it's not the 22 players or the management team that are doing that but it is the cheerleaders of the rich people who fucked the country up who are. That's why the bile building in my throat is so bitter and the chip on my shoulder weighing me down.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Six Nations Army

I'd agree almost entirely with that humphries article. All that bollocks about us being mature as a nation because a load of rugby fans behaved exactly the same in croke Park as they did at lansdowne road was just excruciating. It was like geordan murphy and gerry flannery had gone back in time and administered a severe kicking to general maxwell and won 1916.

There's another thing that I was always surprised about at the opening of Croke Park was that a certain vocal element of the GAA were afraid that David Beckham might be taking the field at croke park, ignoring the certainty that Ireland would certainly play england twice in rugby.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Six Nations Army

Let me taste your sweet salty tears.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Six Nations Army

I will say that my opinion of O'Gara was raised substantially by him making a beeline to Stephen Jones after the missed kick.

Aye, that was lovely to see.

[garcia]

Six Nations Army

The same private schools get infinitely more positive media coverage than GAA and soccer schools in Dublin. Added to that the old boys network for the past pupils is a force in every large Irish company and Government body.

It's a little difficult to "deal with it" when asked to laud the success of the privileged and connected.

totally agree. it's funny but i grew up not understanding where i actually stood in ireland's social pyramid until i went to university and encountered lots of guys who had been to private schools. they all know each other's schools and until then i had been astonishingly naive about how seriously school ties are taken. i mean, i was familiar with the public school system in england through reading, but i didn't understand that ireland worked basically the same way.

the most offputting aspect of rugby in ireland is schools rugby. these little pricks think they are celebrities, and they fucking are, because the national media - run by their parents obviously - covers it like it was a real sport and the adult world in the form of the old boy networks constantly reinforces this impression. you can imagine the type of people the system churns out.

anyway, rugby won't expand its social catchment area because that's not the point of rugby. it's a badge of belonging to a certain social class and it will be a long time before professionalism has changed this, in ireland at least. the people involved in it might think they want to be "the heartbeat of the race"*, but if they really were the sport would lose its lustre, it would be like... football or something. really rugby is quite happy to float in a bubble far, far above the great unwashed. 17,500 turning up to see the 2009 grand slam winners can be compared to more than 100,000 who turned up to see the 2002 world cup losers, even though they knew joe duffy would be MC.

* i'm 99% sure it was the "race", not the "nation" that tom mcgurk reckoned rugby was the heartbeat of in 2007. i think he meant the irish race but maybe he was referring to the white race? i think it will be some time before we have a black man in the irish rugby team so i suppose rugby can continue being the heartbeat of both races for a while yet.

[Guest]

Six Nations Army

Tom McPlagiarist did indeed say on RTE after the Ireland-England game two years ago that "rugby union is now the heartbeat of the race". And he meant it, too.

John Waters said in his book years ago that "there is no class system in Ireland; everyone just knows their place". A nice little quip but, like almost everything Waters has written since the late 1980s, completely wrong. This is an intensely class-structured country, one where the Leinster Schools Senior Cup -- the thing Garcia was alluding to in the 2nd paragraph of his post immediately above -- gets more coverage and prominence in the country's premier newspaper than the GAA club championship finals do, year in year out, even though several times as many individuals are more interested in the latter than the former. That's because, over here, rugby is the sport of the people who really matter.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Six Nations Army

As is evidenced by, among other things, the string of best-selling books Paul Howard writes about GAA club championship players.

The public simply cannot get enough of those.

[Guest]

Six Nations Army

Well-heeled rugger buggers are a bit more ripe for satire than GAA players, to put it mildly.

Howard himself hates Irish rugby and will have been cheering for Wales on Saturday.

[Ek weet nie]

Six Nations Army

Ah, the Leinster Senior Cup. Matches shown live on Setanta with Jim Sherwin commentating featuring touchline reporters, summarisers and post match interviews. The two broadsheets in the country doing commemorative 20 page pullouts with all the blue stock advertising that can be found in Ireland. Full write-ups of all games in the competition. Star players analysed and future international careers discussed.

When my school won the soccer All-Ireland it got a two-column article for the final. When we won the Dublin GAA Football title we got a bigger write up but that just focused on past players Niall Quinn and Kevin Moran. Needless to say there's a fair bit more competition in both soccer and GAA in terms of numbers of participants.

[Eggchaser]

Six Nations Army

vennegoor strokes wrote:

Thanks for that, I had no idea that England's rugby team had won more trophies than Ireland's rugby team over the years.

Not entirely sure what the actual point of it was, but the effort is appreciated.

I'm glad to have been of service.

Now, back to cleaning my commemorative Jonny Wilkinson plates...

[Bored Of Education]

Six Nations Army

Yes, congratulations to Ireland, they were the team that deserved it. No matter whether the 6N wasn't a classic, we didn;t care when we won a non=classic and neither should they. I doubt whether they are seeing back to back wins in all reality.

As far as France not turning up is concerned, when haven't we been waiting for France to put in a prolonged effort in any competition (genuine question, now I think about it)

Can we still think that O'Driscoll is a gouging cunt though?

[A Doctor Speaks]

Six Nations Army

Surely Ireland were the best team, this year, for once.

And that's an end to it. The stats.don't lie!

[Guest]

Six Nations Army

George Lee had a programme on RTE last night about the economy.

At the end of it, he was sitting in Croke Park. But instead of talking about Gaelic games, he showed images of the rugger buggers and their recent wins there, then began going on about the success of the brand and how much we could achieve as a nation if we followed the rugby team's example.

All this was intoned by him while sitting in CROKE PARK.

Jesus fucking christ.

[garcia]

Six Nations Army

i thought the most egregious example of this was in your paper last week actually

mcwilliams:

We are in exceptional times so we need exceptional measures. Like a good rugby team, you never learn nor win by doing the same thing all the time. If plan A is not working, shuffle the pack, try plan B,C or D until you find something that does the trick.

Nothing can be ruled out. In rugby parlance, we are sticking with the conservative economics of Eddie O’Sullivan, when what we need is the inventiveness and freshness of thought of Declan Kidney.

[Guest]

Six Nations Army

Yeah, I saw that while it was being laid out on Friday night and thought to myself: "McWilliams is going to look such a tool if Ireland lose tomorrow."