Poms grind out crucial win
10 Feb 2013
England beat Ireland 12-6 in Dublin with Owen Farrell kicking four penalties.
Farrell kicked two in each half, but also missed two at the end of each half.
Ireland’s points came from the boot of Ronan O’Gara, who replaced the injured Jonathan Sexton in the 31st minute. The hosts also lost star wing Simon Zebo early in the game.
England won despite having to play with 14 men for 10 minutes in the second half when James Haskell was sent to the bin for a professional foul.
Farrell kicked two penalties while he was off and Ireland never looked like scoring the try they needed to win.
19 Comments
10 Feb 2013, 19:18 pm
@keocoza http://t.co/BqPjS15k
10 Feb 2013, 19:20 pm
Rocking your rugby world.
6 Feb 2013 Players should be judged on performance and not the promise of performance. Selectors, coaches, media and supporters should lose their obsession with age and the restriction of four year cycles. If you read this to the end you could be the making of rugby’s revolution. To the brandy and coke okes don’t go beyond this point. The introduction of the Rugby World Cup was to give one country official bragging rights to officially being called the best in the world. It grew quickly into a commerciaL beast whose appetite to be fed will only increase. It is no longer about bragging rights but about commerce and the supposed investment of the game in the future. But those who appoint themselves as the architects of vision are merely enforcing the limitation of their vision on whoever is prepared to emulate what is deemed to be the best, when the innovators and inspirers are the ones who define success on creating and giving something unique, which is then interpreted by the chasing pack as the standard that invariably has to be matched. Unfortunately everyone wants to be the best but society’s stone-cast, yet non sensical, set of rules cater only for contradiction because while it caters for the mind to be aspirational it provides a greater immediate seduction and safety net for the mind to favour the short term comfort of conservatism. Society’s selfish cavaliers are too often the ones reinforcing the reward and restriction that gives the majority the comfort that conservative is good because there is no risk but with cavalier could come failure. With cavalier however comes something new every time and the possibility to success. Conservatism’s failure is that it brings no new reward. The rugby media and supporters are a primary exhibit of what is aspiration and what is acceptable and the ideal of being the best is always replaced with a sense of satisfaction that not coming last is the equal of coming first. The result is the core of teams in any competition and the core of people in life are conditioned that having the fantasy of wanting to be the best and the reality of never been called the worst is the most sought after emotion. It is why core of coaches will talk about breaking new ground but always revert to what they know because it’s not deemed failure. Oh to find coaches who see the adventure in selection and strength of individual skills that combined make for the extraordinary. Those investors in teams do so out of vanity so their intention is not to want the best rugby team. Supporters and the rugby media are the most powerful investors in the coach who can talk of unchartered ground and know the adventure will be a shared one with those who determine his job security, which is the supporter and the reporter. Why do the two of us actually have the responsibility and the power of influence? Because for there to be a rugby team there has to be an owner, but an owner only wants a club if he has an audience who actually pay his bills and spend the money and his players need an audience to perform. The reporter in rugby is also the game’s story teller and without the story being told, be it in print, electronic or by broadcast, the performance is reduced to a bunch of blokes enjoying a Sunday social run around. Owners and investors need an evolving audience so they need to have a story being told. More paying support and more money allows for better player purchases and dividends. The rewards are great and the risk is the story teller’s words wreck a business and don’t seduce enough to inspire this new audience to pay more than the existing ones. Coaches are restricted – and we are the worst culprits. You and me. Our opinions, pre game, demand adventure, investment of skill and something out of the ordinary, but we make the demand of wanting to see a creation without it being allowed to stumble in pursuit of seeing its capabilities. The World Cup is all about keeping the professional game one controlled by elected officials, who get the benefits of a professional game by way of sponsorship, broadcast deals and a paying support base. It’s commercial value is restricted because those who control it use it as the controlling influence of the game. The World Cup should be a tournament within rugby’s professional identity. Currently everything else is compromised because to succeed at the World Cup once every four years allows for any amount of failure. The Word Cup is a great tournament but it should be seen as tournament and not as the pinnacle of a four year cycle. All enjoyment and adventure and logic are compromised with the possibility (not probability) of our team winning the World Cup. What then, a month later this team is playing again and the chance is there to get beaten? And that’s okay? The game should be played in the current and the obvious is wanting to do better today than was the case yesterday. Think of the madness of the statement if I told you that living was about four years of toil and restriction and just maybe you will get one day in the sun and then your reward is you can at least boast toyour friends about it. The right brag your team is the best in the world once every four years apparently has such gravitas that everything is compromised and excused within those four years. The World Cup – and its four year cycle – has restricted a game yet those who control the game through elections and not necessarily intelligence – are convinced its been a revolution. Every value of selection has been compromised. The best aren’t always played for fear of injury. Performances lacking in pedigree are dismissed as not playing the World Cup-winning hand and no player is assessed on what he brings to the team in the week that team is selected. Players, not yet good enough, are picked now because in three years time they may have to need World Cup final experience. Players, more experienced, are questioned because age is again the restriction and the fear of not knowing whether he will be too old is deemed a worse one than the fear of not knowing if a player, picked on what could be, is actually not good enough. Professional rugby tournaments have forced the evolvement of a squad system, but the supporter is as amateur in his demand for one and only one starting XV as the amateur administrator is in wanting the players to be thankful someone is willing to actually to administer their game and give them the platform to play. The media is the worst culprit because the reports discuss a player being dropped when it is the workings of a squad system. The media influences the supporter who is in the professional game the most important voice because it’s the voice of the paying customer. Think about the power of the supporter but a confused buyer is a sucker of a buyer and rugby’s elected official only sell you the game they want to control and not the one you want to necessarily watch. They think the player is a liability because the supply is greater than the demand and they think the game is about the way they govern when it’s future is exclusive to those who support with their eyes and their cash. The numbers have again allowed to influence restriction because to start has a bragging right that it is somehow means a player is better than the guy who is the greatest exponent of closing out a win in the role of a substitute. The different skills of these two types of players have never been allowed to develop because those who govern and the majority who support resent the player earning money from a game in which the limitations of the game being strictly amateur have grown to legends of romance and beauty. No amateur player was exposed to a playing schedule the equal of a professional player. That is why one to 15 worked then but it doesn’t matter now who starts and who finishes. All that is significant about the number is that 15 stays on for the duration of the match. Age, another number, is the greatest curse because it means performance is secondary. Endorsing the romance of the amateur days only encourages the restriction in potential pleasure of a professional game. The coach needs to use a squad system to last the season but the supporter wants only the 15 best every weekend and everyone has ultimate escape of planning for a World Cup. The performance of the player is not the priority any more. It’s how that performance fits the four year cycle. The performance is no longer the celebration. How wrong. Player ‘A’ wins your team the Test match and he gets no sense of your joy because you have already accepted he won’t be around for the World Cup and instead of the joy of the day your focus is the possible pain of the big World Cup day. How absurd is that? What does that say about us that invariably our pleasure is from a possible bragging right once every four years and we condition ourselves to believe that living is about the possibility of feeling something extraordinary in four years time and that living to experience something extraordinary has the risk of death. Imagine the possibilities of sport if the worth of a team was determined by the pleasure gained through performance and not by relief at not losing. For rugby, like any sport, to ever be true to the supporter and give pleasure the supporter would have to change his mindset. That won’t happen because it’s about bragging rights and being defined by what you can tell others or what they will have to say about your team. Only to a few is it about the pleasure they derive from their emotional investment in a team whose pedigree as much about their belief in the manner of performance and not just the winning result in a performance. Super Rugby can’t rock your world if electric guitars and drums are a risk to your hearing. And when there’s no real sound to what you think looks like a great visual performance then no pie and beer should be enough of a lure to keep you coming back. If it is then eating pies is your passion not watching rugby. Super Rugby should be about the uncertainty of your heartbeat and not about the certainty of your heartburn. Here’s to your team rocking your world this season in the pleasure you get from their effort and not in the way it makes you feel only if they win. Now that’s a bragging right because you got reward for your emotional investment. We want our team to win but if we are watching it for pleasure then the winning is in that emotion. Rugby, like rock and roll, should never be compromised by restriction, especially not by an audience whose passion is for the pleasure felt in watching a performance. If you are the type of Super Rugby supporter so insecure in identity that your team has to win to give you a reason to smile and give your voice a growl every Monday morning at the office then let’s agree that we will always disagree because my pleasure is your pain and your pleasure, even in observation, is more torture than pain. To the minority who want the rock and roll, we’ve got every Saturday to live this season. To the oke so desperate to tell you how kak your team is he’s got one Saturday to live through what will be the pain of 80 minutes so he can feel relief that he will be able to tell you his team is the winner.
10 Feb 2013, 19:24 pm
Rocking your 2013 dragons.
10 Feb 2013, 19:24 pm
Another painful game to watch. Even with three kiwis, a samoan and a saffer in the team I couldn’t enjoy watching the English win. They certainly didn’t look like the 2003 team that people have been reminiscing about a lot recently.
But the Irish have looked ordinary for the last three halves. They’d better watch out for Scotland who have shown some flashes of, I don’t know what, but potential at least, especially at home. And they picked up a few injuries – not sure how serious though.
10 Feb 2013, 19:35 pm
congrats to the english rugby team…
rest of the world must watch out for these guys come 2115…
10 Feb 2013, 19:35 pm
@gonzo-3: hahaha @ “Scotland who have shown some flashes of, I don’t know what, but potential at least,”
typical keewee
10 Feb 2013, 19:38 pm
@gonzo-3:
Farrell was great though… very cool head and a superstar in the making.
England had two great matches in a row (AB’s and Scotland) and they did what was expected of them today – Dublin on a cold day is never easy… to me they seem well on course to challenge for the world cup at home in 2 years time- the fact that they have people who were borne in other countries playing for them cannot be hold against them… boundaries are open these days… thats how it is, countries with money and opportunities will always attract people.. nothing we can do about it.
10 Feb 2013, 19:41 pm
Another stale old game. Conditions were a bit **** but it was just a replay of the France vs Wales game. There is still a very big gap in the way the referees tell teams to use the ball. Jaco Peyper was very quick to tell them and blow the whistle, while this French ref hardly ever told both teams and gave them ages to clear the rucks.
Scotland have upset England on a few occasions and they might just do it again. Did anyone hear the commentator saying Nigel Owens is the best ref in the world.
10 Feb 2013, 19:46 pm
@Robzim-7:
well said…
10 Feb 2013, 19:54 pm
@gonzo-4: Come now Gonzo, are you sure its got nothing to do with that big bitter pill your still trying to swallow? I really did not like last world cup’s England team but these guys and their coaching staff got their feet firmly on the ground,and they definitely earned respect in a positive way all around the world.
10 Feb 2013, 19:57 pm
@Captain Birds Eye-8: I am glad i was not the only one perplexed by that statement.
10 Feb 2013, 19:58 pm
both of these teams have played better.
10 Feb 2013, 20:01 pm
Weather was horrible never going to be an exciting game with ball in hand
England showed a different side played the conditions betters Youngs/Farrell kicked very well and Goode/Brown solid under the high ball
Cian Healy should be banned for a long time nearly broke Dan Cole’s ankle with a violent/brutal stamp
10 Feb 2013, 20:22 pm
@john123-13: your team learnt very well from the all blacks, they infringe at the breakdown with g.ay abandon & that ref today just let them…they never release the player, they continously roll on the wrong side, they hardly ever support their own body weight when pilfering – ashton on o’gara – they flop over their own ball carrier to seal the ball.
if u can get away with it, go on.
10 Feb 2013, 21:18 pm
@Robzim-7: Fair call, the ABs can’t string together more than two great matches so an ugly win in the conditions was a good result – doesn’t mean I have to enjoy a tryless game though.
@jet jungle-10: It probably has everything to do with it. Can you believe every time I log on to youtube, they recommend to me highlights of the England/NZ game…”just thought you might like to relive the moment”
10 Feb 2013, 21:22 pm
@gonzo-15: you should take it as a compliment
10 Feb 2013, 21:24 pm
Ireland are cheats at the breakdown not England. Ireland’s “choke tackle” for example how are the support runners suppose to come in when Ireland aren’t releasing the tackler?
11 Feb 2013, 02:18 am
Officials in the NH are a joke. There should have been two red and three yellow cards. Where is the five second rule?
11 Feb 2013, 02:47 am
When Ireland choke tackle they have 1 player in front of the tackler and one behind its impossible for the support runner to come in unless the player goes to ground but then once you have made the tackle you have to release the tackle which Ireland dont do they get the turnover and nothing gets done
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