There Are No Friendlies
By Jon_R43 September 1 2008
Our family’s first trip to the south of Ireland - taking advantage of the Tesco Clubcard points we took the car to Ireland for the week and based ourselves in Youghal, on the coast East of Cork. Key incidents in the week included (in no particular order):
Our family’s first trip to the south of Ireland - taking advantage of the Tesco Clubcard points we took the car to Ireland for the week and based ourselves in Youghal, on the coast East of Cork. Key incidents in the week included (in no particular order):
The alleged moderate sea conditions on the Fishguard/ Rosslaire ferry that had half of the family and it seemed like half the boat being sick most of the way. Getting used to the Irish road conditions (Can anyone explain how and when it is appropriate to use the hard shoulder to help overtaking and when not?)
On Monday we nipped into Cork and were a bit worried to see the posters advertising the game stating “There are no friendlies. Munster v’s London Irish” Tuesday morning reading the Irish Times, we noticed that Connacht were playing Queensland Reds in a pre-season game, so as we can’t make the Irish game in the ECC we decided to head up to Galway to take in the evening game. We stopped off in Limerick and were amazed that O’Connell Street still had all the Munster Rugby flags displayed across the street that we had seen on Sky during the coverage of the Heineken Cup final in May (Can you imagine LI flags all over Reading if we had won 2 more HC games last year!!) As we were near Galway early we drove through Athenry and took some pictures.
To the Connacht game: for those travelling in October, leave lots of time to get to the ground. The roads were grid locked at 6pm and this game didn’t kick off until 7.30. The airport is 8km from the ground so the flight arriving at 6.15 is no good for a 6.30 K.O. (LKR please note.)
The ground is very open to the elements and the pitch While the grass looked good it was quite lumpy with a particularly alarming dip on half way. We saw Morgan Turinui (remember the player who wore Irish socks at the Barbarians games this summer) playing for Reds. The Connacht side started well and led 24 – 0 at half time with lots of fast handling moves, Keatley, their10, converted 3 tries and kicked one penalty. (Has an interesting kicking style holding his hands together and squatting several times before approaching the ball!) It began to rain as the second half started and Reds won that part of the game 12 – 0! So maybe a wet evening in October would be best.
Thursday evening in a local shop buying tea and heard a radio advert for the game yet again the theme of the advert was “We don’t do friendlies!” unfortunate as I thought this was a friendly.
The team as announced in the programme was Peter H, Topsy, Delon, Maps, Tagi, Catty, Dodge, Alex C, Paice, Faan, Nick, Bob, Jon Fisher, Richard Thorpe, Chris Hala’ufia, and looking at the programme this looked like a side that could give the European Champions a run for their money. The potential difference between the sides became more obvious when you looked at the benches, Irish had mainly academy or young not yet established players with a returning Shane Geraghty the noticeable exception. While Munster had Flannery, Hayes, O Callaghan, O Connell, Peter Stringer and Ronan O Gara.
Missing from the Irish side were Peter Richards (Back still playing up and not able to travel) and Dec Danahar (Who hobbled of in the last game against Quins.) Eoghan Hickey was a late call up to the squad and spent a lot of time practising and slotting kicks before the game.
We took our place on the South Terrace (behind the posts) and got the flags out and were quickly joined by other Irish supporters. An interesting anomaly at Musgrave Park is that the two changing rooms used are at opposite ends of the ground and teams come onto the pitch from different sides so players don’t seem to mix before the game. Maybe this explains some of the early plays when players were certainly getting to know each other! After all according to Munster “there are no friendlies.” The game of course was a friendly with both the announcer and the programme making reference to the Jack Wakefield Memorial Trophy which would be presented to the winners.
Mr Lewis blew his whistle and the game kicked off .There were patches of green but the sell out crowd was of course mainly dressed in red.
The first note I have in my book says 4mins 30 - fight! Not sure what the trigger was but seemed like all 30 players were involved. When things calmed down Tony Buckley and Chris Hala’ufia were having a 10 minute break (From our family’s perspective the binning of Chris this early in his Irish career is worrying as we recall discussion on the Quins board of his disciplinary record when his signing was announced.)
My notes then suggest some kicking exchanges between sides (ELV influence?) including one when Delon kicked out on the full. But it was OK because we stole the ball. At the next line out we lost on our own put in!! On winning the ball back Mike Catt kicked the ball to Munster who passed the ball to the right and Niall Ronan crossed the line to score a try which was converted by Paul Warwick, Shortly afterwards Munster were again attacking and a grubber kick through was carried over by an Irish defender (Was a long way away!!) and Mr Lewis awarded an attacking scrum to Munster. The ball was taken from the back of the Munster scrum and after 3 or 4 passes Sheahan was driven over the line. Warwick converted again and Munster led 14-0. The Yellow carded players then returned to the field.
Irish then had their first period of real pressure with an attack down the right flank. Topsy chipped the ball through which was knocked on by one of the defenders and Irish were awarded scrum. From the next attack Topsy was eventually tackled into touch and Munster received a throw in and I looked down to write what happened. All of a sudden there was a roar from the Irish support around me and Bob was lying down with the ball across the line. (There will be a theme in this report of me writing the previous incident down as Irish score!) I’m told as I missed it that we didn’t win the line out but their knock back was untidy and Bob got down quickly to pick the ball up and score. Conversion from wide was made by Peter Hewat 14-7 after 23 minutes.
Richard Thorpe then made a break which was kicked clear by Munster. On 29 minutes Bob went off and was replaced by James Hudson (His hand was immediately iced and it has since been reported that it may be broken.)
The game must have settled down to some kind of rhythm at this point as I have a note that there was a discussion during the game about Mike Catt’s performance on Superstars between the Irish supporters!
On 33 minutes Irish were again attacking but the ball was lost at a ruck. The Irish players were up in attacking formation and defence was limited partly because Delon tackled one player just after the ball had gone and Barry Murphy crossed for Munster’s 3rd converted try.
At 38 minutes I started to write “High kick off DA collects and drops, Richard picks up from an offside position. Munster kick for a line out.” While writing this another roar from the Irish support so I look up and Delon is running towards us and crosses under the posts acknowledging the Irish support (Bit like Catty at THE Wasps game a few seasons back, however after Juan at St Patricks Day 2 years ago would prefer our players to put the ball down before celebrating when the season really starts!) Am told again that Munster won the line out and Delon intercepted a pass and managed to outrun all the Munster defenders (including Howlett) to score.
The first half ended and we spent half time hunting for toilets I’m told there was an announcement that BBC Berkshire had been commenting on the lack of noise from the Munster support, Graham when it comes to real matches can we make sure that the stadium announcers don’t get your view of the noise in the stadium?!
There were several changes around the half time mark, Irish withdrew Catty, Alex C and Paice and replaced them with Shane, Dan and Buckland. While Munster’s changes included the introduction of Stringer and O Gara.
Early in the half Irish were penalised 10 metres for talking back to Mr Lewis, play continued with Munster mainly attacking. After 51 minutes Munster crossed the line but Mr Lewis correctly awarded a scrum as the Irish defence had got under the ball. The scrum took a while to form and after a couple of resets one of which involved a Munster knock on when nearly scoring Munster thought they had scored a try but Mr Lewis this time ruled that the scrum had come up before the try was scored.
There was another period of play that led to knock on by Irish giving Munster a put in 30 metres out. LKR tells me that Thorpe swapped place with the 10 for the second week running (Must look out for this at the weekend.) Gary Johnson (Lock) replaced Halu’ufia at 8, is our squad looking small!!
After 61 minutes Peter Hewat kicked a clearance that just ran over the try line leading to a 22 metre drop out. The restart was a short chip which was collected by a Munster player, the ball was brought down the field by Munster and moved out to their right. The ball was chipped over Peter and Keith Earls ran through to score Munster’s 4th try. After 26 minutes Irish made a break down the left wing ,the ball was lost and Munster chipped the ball over the top. From my position Buckland held his position and the Munster player ran into him however “Sir” saw it differently and yellow carded the second new Irish player of the game (James Buckland)Munster kicked to the corner but the lineout was stolen by Irish and Geraghty kicked to clear.
I then have two notes where I don’t understand refereeing. Having carded James for what didn’t look to me like a penalty Mr Lewis then penalised one Munster player for pulling Delon back when nearly through and then indicated a stamp by a Munster player giving a full penalty but neither player was even spoken to never mind being carded. From the pull back Irish tried a cross field kick but it went wrong and lost possession. Adam Thompstone (Sponsored by the R43 family and Tinkerbelles!) came on for the last 5 minutes (He’s obviously learned from his Sunbury experience and shared this with some of the other academy players as they left the changing room already using their mobiles so was not so easy to talk to!)
In the last five minutes Munster were again attacking, a scrum was awarded to Munster very close to the line, the ball went along the back line and was then chipped over by O Gara to the corner with Earls dotting down to score the final points of the game.
Tom Parker came on for the last two minutes (replacing Hodgson) meaning that Hickey was the only unused replacement on the Irish side. On the final whistle there was a mass red pitch invasion which was fun to watch but meant that Jack’s trophy was presented to Munster away from the majority of supporters.
We spoke to a number of Irish players after the game and the shirt Daniel wanted signing by all the squad this season only needs 5 or 6 more signatures to complete the squad now.
We left the game feeling that the team had competed well and that the result was probably a reasonable reflection of the squad available and the game. Looking forward to the real stuff coming up in the next few weeks I personally feel the lack of depth in the squad could be an issue for us this year if the stated aim of a top 4 finish is to be achieved.
The first five games are going to be key to how well we do and with them including Wasps, Leicester, Bath, Sale and Quin. We need to hope for a fast start on Saturday at Twickenham.
On Monday we nipped into Cork and were a bit worried to see the posters advertising the game stating “There are no friendlies. Munster v’s London Irish” Tuesday morning reading the Irish Times, we noticed that Connacht were playing Queensland Reds in a pre-season game, so as we can’t make the Irish game in the ECC we decided to head up to Galway to take in the evening game. We stopped off in Limerick and were amazed that O’Connell Street still had all the Munster Rugby flags displayed across the street that we had seen on Sky during the coverage of the Heineken Cup final in May (Can you imagine LI flags all over Reading if we had won 2 more HC games last year!!) As we were near Galway early we drove through Athenry and took some pictures.
To the Connacht game: for those travelling in October, leave lots of time to get to the ground. The roads were grid locked at 6pm and this game didn’t kick off until 7.30. The airport is 8km from the ground so the flight arriving at 6.15 is no good for a 6.30 K.O. (LKR please note.)
The ground is very open to the elements and the pitch While the grass looked good it was quite lumpy with a particularly alarming dip on half way. We saw Morgan Turinui (remember the player who wore Irish socks at the Barbarians games this summer) playing for Reds. The Connacht side started well and led 24 – 0 at half time with lots of fast handling moves, Keatley, their10, converted 3 tries and kicked one penalty. (Has an interesting kicking style holding his hands together and squatting several times before approaching the ball!) It began to rain as the second half started and Reds won that part of the game 12 – 0! So maybe a wet evening in October would be best.
Thursday evening in a local shop buying tea and heard a radio advert for the game yet again the theme of the advert was “We don’t do friendlies!” unfortunate as I thought this was a friendly.
The team as announced in the programme was Peter H, Topsy, Delon, Maps, Tagi, Catty, Dodge, Alex C, Paice, Faan, Nick, Bob, Jon Fisher, Richard Thorpe, Chris Hala’ufia, and looking at the programme this looked like a side that could give the European Champions a run for their money. The potential difference between the sides became more obvious when you looked at the benches, Irish had mainly academy or young not yet established players with a returning Shane Geraghty the noticeable exception. While Munster had Flannery, Hayes, O Callaghan, O Connell, Peter Stringer and Ronan O Gara.
Missing from the Irish side were Peter Richards (Back still playing up and not able to travel) and Dec Danahar (Who hobbled of in the last game against Quins.) Eoghan Hickey was a late call up to the squad and spent a lot of time practising and slotting kicks before the game.
We took our place on the South Terrace (behind the posts) and got the flags out and were quickly joined by other Irish supporters. An interesting anomaly at Musgrave Park is that the two changing rooms used are at opposite ends of the ground and teams come onto the pitch from different sides so players don’t seem to mix before the game. Maybe this explains some of the early plays when players were certainly getting to know each other! After all according to Munster “there are no friendlies.” The game of course was a friendly with both the announcer and the programme making reference to the Jack Wakefield Memorial Trophy which would be presented to the winners.
Mr Lewis blew his whistle and the game kicked off .There were patches of green but the sell out crowd was of course mainly dressed in red.
The first note I have in my book says 4mins 30 - fight! Not sure what the trigger was but seemed like all 30 players were involved. When things calmed down Tony Buckley and Chris Hala’ufia were having a 10 minute break (From our family’s perspective the binning of Chris this early in his Irish career is worrying as we recall discussion on the Quins board of his disciplinary record when his signing was announced.)
My notes then suggest some kicking exchanges between sides (ELV influence?) including one when Delon kicked out on the full. But it was OK because we stole the ball. At the next line out we lost on our own put in!! On winning the ball back Mike Catt kicked the ball to Munster who passed the ball to the right and Niall Ronan crossed the line to score a try which was converted by Paul Warwick, Shortly afterwards Munster were again attacking and a grubber kick through was carried over by an Irish defender (Was a long way away!!) and Mr Lewis awarded an attacking scrum to Munster. The ball was taken from the back of the Munster scrum and after 3 or 4 passes Sheahan was driven over the line. Warwick converted again and Munster led 14-0. The Yellow carded players then returned to the field.
Irish then had their first period of real pressure with an attack down the right flank. Topsy chipped the ball through which was knocked on by one of the defenders and Irish were awarded scrum. From the next attack Topsy was eventually tackled into touch and Munster received a throw in and I looked down to write what happened. All of a sudden there was a roar from the Irish support around me and Bob was lying down with the ball across the line. (There will be a theme in this report of me writing the previous incident down as Irish score!) I’m told as I missed it that we didn’t win the line out but their knock back was untidy and Bob got down quickly to pick the ball up and score. Conversion from wide was made by Peter Hewat 14-7 after 23 minutes.
Richard Thorpe then made a break which was kicked clear by Munster. On 29 minutes Bob went off and was replaced by James Hudson (His hand was immediately iced and it has since been reported that it may be broken.)
The game must have settled down to some kind of rhythm at this point as I have a note that there was a discussion during the game about Mike Catt’s performance on Superstars between the Irish supporters!
On 33 minutes Irish were again attacking but the ball was lost at a ruck. The Irish players were up in attacking formation and defence was limited partly because Delon tackled one player just after the ball had gone and Barry Murphy crossed for Munster’s 3rd converted try.
At 38 minutes I started to write “High kick off DA collects and drops, Richard picks up from an offside position. Munster kick for a line out.” While writing this another roar from the Irish support so I look up and Delon is running towards us and crosses under the posts acknowledging the Irish support (Bit like Catty at THE Wasps game a few seasons back, however after Juan at St Patricks Day 2 years ago would prefer our players to put the ball down before celebrating when the season really starts!) Am told again that Munster won the line out and Delon intercepted a pass and managed to outrun all the Munster defenders (including Howlett) to score.
The first half ended and we spent half time hunting for toilets I’m told there was an announcement that BBC Berkshire had been commenting on the lack of noise from the Munster support, Graham when it comes to real matches can we make sure that the stadium announcers don’t get your view of the noise in the stadium?!
There were several changes around the half time mark, Irish withdrew Catty, Alex C and Paice and replaced them with Shane, Dan and Buckland. While Munster’s changes included the introduction of Stringer and O Gara.
Early in the half Irish were penalised 10 metres for talking back to Mr Lewis, play continued with Munster mainly attacking. After 51 minutes Munster crossed the line but Mr Lewis correctly awarded a scrum as the Irish defence had got under the ball. The scrum took a while to form and after a couple of resets one of which involved a Munster knock on when nearly scoring Munster thought they had scored a try but Mr Lewis this time ruled that the scrum had come up before the try was scored.
There was another period of play that led to knock on by Irish giving Munster a put in 30 metres out. LKR tells me that Thorpe swapped place with the 10 for the second week running (Must look out for this at the weekend.) Gary Johnson (Lock) replaced Halu’ufia at 8, is our squad looking small!!
After 61 minutes Peter Hewat kicked a clearance that just ran over the try line leading to a 22 metre drop out. The restart was a short chip which was collected by a Munster player, the ball was brought down the field by Munster and moved out to their right. The ball was chipped over Peter and Keith Earls ran through to score Munster’s 4th try. After 26 minutes Irish made a break down the left wing ,the ball was lost and Munster chipped the ball over the top. From my position Buckland held his position and the Munster player ran into him however “Sir” saw it differently and yellow carded the second new Irish player of the game (James Buckland)Munster kicked to the corner but the lineout was stolen by Irish and Geraghty kicked to clear.
I then have two notes where I don’t understand refereeing. Having carded James for what didn’t look to me like a penalty Mr Lewis then penalised one Munster player for pulling Delon back when nearly through and then indicated a stamp by a Munster player giving a full penalty but neither player was even spoken to never mind being carded. From the pull back Irish tried a cross field kick but it went wrong and lost possession. Adam Thompstone (Sponsored by the R43 family and Tinkerbelles!) came on for the last 5 minutes (He’s obviously learned from his Sunbury experience and shared this with some of the other academy players as they left the changing room already using their mobiles so was not so easy to talk to!)
In the last five minutes Munster were again attacking, a scrum was awarded to Munster very close to the line, the ball went along the back line and was then chipped over by O Gara to the corner with Earls dotting down to score the final points of the game.
Tom Parker came on for the last two minutes (replacing Hodgson) meaning that Hickey was the only unused replacement on the Irish side. On the final whistle there was a mass red pitch invasion which was fun to watch but meant that Jack’s trophy was presented to Munster away from the majority of supporters.
We spoke to a number of Irish players after the game and the shirt Daniel wanted signing by all the squad this season only needs 5 or 6 more signatures to complete the squad now.
We left the game feeling that the team had competed well and that the result was probably a reasonable reflection of the squad available and the game. Looking forward to the real stuff coming up in the next few weeks I personally feel the lack of depth in the squad could be an issue for us this year if the stated aim of a top 4 finish is to be achieved.
The first five games are going to be key to how well we do and with them including Wasps, Leicester, Bath, Sale and Quin. We need to hope for a fast start on Saturday at Twickenham.
Come on Irish!!!!!!!
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StumbleuponRe: There Are No Friendlies
Posted by: ascotintheantipodes (IP Logged)
Date: 2008:09:02:08:01:29
Thanks Jon_R,
sounded like an worthwhile game but your drive around half of Ireland would, I think, have been better still.
Next week we get serious!
sounded like an worthwhile game but your drive around half of Ireland would, I think, have been better still.
Next week we get serious!
Re: There Are No Friendlies
Posted by: Britishlard (IP Logged)
Date: 2008:09:02:09:36:31
(From our family’s perspective the binning of Chris this early in his Irish career is worrying as we recall discussion on the Quins board of his disciplinary record when his signing was announced.)
I was stood right in front of this melee. Started with a hand-bag push on Tagi (trying to retrieve the ball from a Munster player with the intention of taking a tap penalty). As is usual David Paice then decided to get involved and it spiralled from there. Hala’ufia was a complete thug in the whole episode with a least two cowardly punches to the face of a particular player. The yellow card should have been red. Lets hope that this is the last we see of this from Hala’ufia. We do not need this kind of thuggery.
I was stood right in front of this melee. Started with a hand-bag push on Tagi (trying to retrieve the ball from a Munster player with the intention of taking a tap penalty). As is usual David Paice then decided to get involved and it spiralled from there. Hala’ufia was a complete thug in the whole episode with a least two cowardly punches to the face of a particular player. The yellow card should have been red. Lets hope that this is the last we see of this from Hala’ufia. We do not need this kind of thuggery.
Re: There Are No Friendlies
Posted by: LI Lynn (IP Logged)
Date: 2008:09:02:12:02:28
It must have been the Argentinian prop he hit, I saw his face afterwards and it was not pretty, let's hope this is not the start of something more we can do without this type of behaviour
Re: There Are No Friendlies
Posted by: hooray Henley (IP Logged)
Date: 2008:09:02:12:12:15
Hmmmmmm.
Obviously we don't want the boy to continously end up picking up splinters but a good hard enforcer is something Irish have sadly missed over the last couple of years.
Perhaps if he could just be a bit more clever about it!!!!
Obviously we don't want the boy to continously end up picking up splinters but a good hard enforcer is something Irish have sadly missed over the last couple of years.
Perhaps if he could just be a bit more clever about it!!!!
Re: There Are No Friendlies
Posted by: Eilidh (IP Logged)
Date: 2008:09:02:12:15:27
I blinked and the first I saw was David Paice ploughing in - aha! now I see the full picture
Re: There Are No Friendlies
Posted by: markie-Ireland (IP Logged)
Date: 2008:09:02:12:24:53
He hit Buckley I thought, this is the lad that swatted Simon Shaw away in the HC game with Wasps.
From a non LI perspective (green tinted spectacles) I would have a number of concerns leading into the new season. I am most surprised from some of the LI fans I spoke to that you took this as a possitive performance. Munster fielded a quite a weak team and a lot of the academy players stepped up to the mark.
1st - Scrum, for the size of the pack that started the game against the relatively small starting Munster 2nd's they struggled. Once the big saffer (hairy fella) went off your scrum disintegrated as the slightest of shoves.
2nd - 6 & 7, did they turn up? I dont know the guys names but they were out classed by a weak Munster back row
3rd - Still trying to maul, I know the ELV's are new but trying to maul??????
4th -Lack of direction, without Catty I didn't see creativity. The only moves were to spread the ball out wide. I was disappointed with Shane G but will concede the benefit of doubt with his fitness.
Plus points:
Line out - Solid as ever, I am worried that this will be your main source of possession
Topsey looked handy when he had the ball
Hewitt - This guy is class, I would select him for Munster over Dougie Howlett anyday. Only let down is kicking from hand for distance.
From a non LI perspective (green tinted spectacles) I would have a number of concerns leading into the new season. I am most surprised from some of the LI fans I spoke to that you took this as a possitive performance. Munster fielded a quite a weak team and a lot of the academy players stepped up to the mark.
1st - Scrum, for the size of the pack that started the game against the relatively small starting Munster 2nd's they struggled. Once the big saffer (hairy fella) went off your scrum disintegrated as the slightest of shoves.
2nd - 6 & 7, did they turn up? I dont know the guys names but they were out classed by a weak Munster back row
3rd - Still trying to maul, I know the ELV's are new but trying to maul??????
4th -Lack of direction, without Catty I didn't see creativity. The only moves were to spread the ball out wide. I was disappointed with Shane G but will concede the benefit of doubt with his fitness.
Plus points:
Line out - Solid as ever, I am worried that this will be your main source of possession
Topsey looked handy when he had the ball
Hewitt - This guy is class, I would select him for Munster over Dougie Howlett anyday. Only let down is kicking from hand for distance.
Re: There Are No Friendlies
Posted by: Britishlard (IP Logged)
Date: 2008:09:02:12:54:37
Quote:markie-Ireland
Plus points:
Line out - Solid as ever, I am worried that this will be your main source of possession
Winning line out ball is all well and good but we need someone to do something with it. If we have these fantastic attacking players why do we keep making aimless kicks down the field. At least find the touch line so we can challenge for it (and then do another aimless kick). Where has all the flair gone? Who is our line breaker?
I would add Tagi to the plus points from Friday. He has power and pace and needs to be utilised more as an attacking force.
Re: There Are No Friendlies
Posted by: markie-Ireland (IP Logged)
Date: 2008:09:02:13:46:12
I would agree about Tagi, with more support in the first half he would have scored/setup a try. Instead he found himself alone.
Didnt see anything of him in the second half.
Didnt see anything of him in the second half.
Re: There Are No Friendlies
Posted by: Seamus! (IP Logged)
Date: 2008:09:02:16:19:07
Very interesting write-up.
Thank you :-)
Thank you :-)
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