Is Irish rugby truly the beacon of inclusiveness it is purported to be?

stephen_n wrote: »

I wasn't sure which schools were and weren't fee paying in the north, thanks for that, so probably more than 50% of the team then come from non fee paying schools.

Fee paying for secondary age pupils in N.I. is limited to those who are boarders afaik. This was an attempt to prevent people gaining places for their children at certain schools simply because they had plenty of cash. The boarding element made it more difficult and more expensive. Methodist College once had a boarding department of some 300 pupils but this was discontinued a few years ago so 'Methody' no longer has fee paying pupils in the over 11 years of age. There are fee paying prep schools afaik.

A friend of mine sent his rather thick son to Campbell College as a boarder while living only 2 miles away just to get him a place. He may as well have stayed at home for all the good that he gained from it. There is still an element of the private sector of education but it is much reduced. All the local players would most likely however have attended a grammar school as rugby isn't really played in State Secondary schools to any great extent.

Sid Waddel I salute you. Probably the most effective take down post I've ever seen.

ThisRegard wrote: »

I agree with your point in general, but I wouldn't class all of both Tallaght and Clondalkin as poor. While there's probably a higher proportion of what's classed as disadvantaged areas in both, there's also a good proportion of people who are quite comfortable.

I'd say he means a new area for the game to break into more so than a poor area.

It's funny that the GAA diehards that regularly dismiss rugby as an elitist sport, happen to neglect the fact, that the Dublin football & hurling panel are compromised of leafy suburbanites, some of which were schooled in the dreaded rugger strongholds of 'Rock, 'Nure ect. Summerhill and Darndale, they ain't.

Actually the majority of inter-county players across the country are from 'well-to-do' households, are college/university graduates & hold down well paid jobs.

The truth is, that Soccer (football) is the only true 'sport of the people' and even then, we can't field a team of decent Irish born players.

But who really gives two flying F's?! We are fattest nation in Europe, I don't give a s*** what sport young lads & girls play, as long as they aren't sitting around all day doing nothing.

jony_dols wrote: »

It's funny that the GAA diehards that regularly dismiss rugby as an elitist sport, happen to neglect the fact, that the Dublin football & hurling panel are compromised of leafy suburbanites, some of which were schooled in the dreaded rugger strongholds of 'Rock, 'Nure ect. Summerhill and Darndale, they ain't.

Actually the majority of inter-county players across the country are from 'well-to-do' households, are college/university graduates & hold down well paid jobs.

The truth is, that Soccer (football) is the only true 'sport of the people' and even then, we can't field a team of decent Irish born players.

But who really gives two flying F's?! We are fattest nation in Europe, I don't give a s*** what sport young lads & girls play, as long as they aren't sitting around all day doing nothing.

We can field a team of decent born Irish players. Unfortunately they are competing in the most competitive sport on the planet.
The comparison for Irish rugby is to the league of Ireland not International soccer or the premiership.

seachto7 wrote: »

Are folks suggesting there are no or vet few university educated players in league of Ireland football?

No one suggested that. Soccer was said that we cant field a decent team of Irish born players. Which is nonsense.
Irish rugby talent is more comparable to the League of Ireland than the National side in soccer.
Soccer has global competetiveness. Rugby has nothing near it. The skills and elite fitness to play soccer are not replicated in rugby to the same degree of challenge to the participants.

Jawgap wrote: »

Soccer and rugby (and GAA) requires different types of fitness - to compare them is to suggest you don't understand fitness. Soccer doesn't require a quantitatively different level of fitness at the elite level than rugby - it requires a qualitatively different type of fitness. Soccer player aren't typically benching 140/150kg! Likewise props aren't running sub 12s for a 100m

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-CnMQdofzo

I understand they are different sports with different fitness requirements. What I meant by 'The skills and elite fitness required are not replicated to the same degree of challenge to the participants'
First part of that, skill. Soccer requires you to kill a ball with one touch, pass with one touch, pass the ball with accuracy to the other players dominant leg. Ireland - Poland game, Aidan McGeady killed a Randolph 65 yard kickout with one touch. No gifs the next day, no comments in the media, why? It's the kind of elite skill you need as a basic to play at International level. Tell me one Irish rugby moment of skill on the ball in this years world cup from the Irish team that would take as long to master?
Secondly on fitness.
Look at the Irish players fitness in relation to the fittest guys in their position in rugby.
There are no such drastic differences in soccer.
Mike Ross/Cian Healy - Owen Franks
Devon Toner - Brodie Retallick
Jordi Murphy - The explosive Shalk Burger
Dave Kearney - Drew Mitchell
Cian Healy being clearly off fitness and being allowed to bulk up as he has done would never occur in soccer. You are either elite fit in soccer or you are not playing.
There is an elite running mobility and speed for rugby that only a few of our players have.
Our national soccer team and the players in the league of Ireland like in Dundalk are by contrast posessing more of the elite speed and stamina required for soccer.
Which makes sense as there is such a small pick of athletes for rugby.

davegrohl48 wrote: »

I had said earlier the National rugby team is only comparable to League of Ireland. In terms of mastery of their sport I believe that to be the case.
If scrummaging is so difficult how come guys like John Hayes can take up the sport in their late teens?
Simon Shaw started rugby at 16, anything comparable in soccer? Good luck with trying to find a league of Ireland player who didnt play soccer till 16.
Sorry to burst your bubble but soccer is incredibly more difficult to earn a contract as even a league of Ireland player.
So yes there is a scale of measurement to compare the sports. How much skills practice required from a young age and how close to your upper levels of fitness do you need to be at.
As to the poster who has seen 11 year olds kill a ball with one touch, Yes playing against other 11 year olds. Aidan McGeady killed a ball travelling 65 yards with a Polish defender close to him.
The national soccer team isnt anything close to the same conversation in mastery of their sport as the Irish rugby team.
We dont have enough players playing or practicing skills long enough per day for that to be the case. New Zealand practice catch-pass far more than our players at the same age.

New Zealand as far less rugby players than we have football players. So I presume that a League of Ireland footballer is better at football than the All Blacks at rugby? By your logic this is the case

I played senior rugby in school and would be on the pitch at 6:30 in the morning doing bleep tests and circuit training while in the gym at the same time on other days. That was for an amateur schools team so don't try and tell me you have any idea what the fitness of a professional rugby player is because you don't have a clue

davegrohl48 wrote: »

I said the Irish rugby team is only really comparable to League of Ireland players not International soccer players.
Yes I have an idea of the fitness required for professional rugby. Iv read plenty on sports science for many different sports.
New Zealand are elite in fitness and skill, Ireland are not. We have a few elite players in terms of both fitness and skill.
To play league of Ireland I think is vastly underestimated in difficulty by yourself actually. It would take much more hours of skills practice than to make the Irish rugby team as a back. I'll even leave forwards out of it.
I have known two league of Ireland players and they practiced incessantly skills from a young age. One retired now and one still playing.
I played Gaelic football at club level you seem to think your schools experience somehow gives you insight? Never hear a GAA player at club level claim to have some insight into inter county level fitness.

There is a serious amount of waffle in there. What does 'elite in fitness' even mean? As I said you appear to have made up scales to suit your argument. Elite players in fitness and skill is such a broad, generalised, wishy washy term

I played Leinster underage so I have a fair idea in a small window of what a professional set up does full time.
I'm fully aware how difficult League of Ireland is, you're the one belittling the abilities of the national rugby team on no evidence.
You keep using your opinion as if it's fact that a LoI player is better or whatever you're measuring than an international rugby player. You know two league of Ireland players, hardly a massive sample size. Do you think all rugby players take the game up at 16? Most have like footballers been playing since they were tiny. All sports have situations where someone comes along late to it.
The GAA aren't professional so I don't know why you're bringing that into this.

jacothelad wrote: »

I love rugby with a passion. As I approach my 70s I don't feel and never have felt myself to be a second class rugby citizen because we are ignored by people too thick to notice or too arrogant to think they've 'got away with it.'

Good post and fair enough if you can see past it, although identity, representation and symbolism are important to people, whether that be national, social, cultural, political, religious or whatever. That's why we support Ireland and not, say, New Zealand or Brazil. It doesn't necessarily mean people are lacking in intellect; nobody, no matter how socially-aware, enlightened or intelligent, likes the sense that they're not being properly respected. National identity is simply another thing that gives meaning to people's lives and provides them with a sense of community/being part of something, and that's fine. The trouble is obviously when it lapses into malice/ignorance/intolerance towards or encroachment upon the identity of others.

Would you also describe those who decide IRFU policy as being "of little intellect and low self esteem who need to shore themselves up with something to wave"? They choose to use particular exclusive flags and anthems over possible others, after all.

You say: "Yes, we don't get a completely fair crack of the whip but the thing is this, by saying nothing or not making any waves it keeps us above those who think we haven't noticed." That's fine, but I assume you would appreciate a real gesture of parity that was volunteered rather than forced, as opposed to viewing it as patronisation? A unionist on Twitter informed me he would feel patronised by such a gesture, but I find that hard to understand; isn't it the present situation of hollow tokenism that is patronising?

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Some truth in it. I actually came from original a Soccer background and I am actually ok at it but find it hard to watch a game. Skill level very high but the other issues put me off the sport. How many middle of the road people are happy to bring their young kids to Bohs V Rovers match? Compared to say a Leinster V Munster game or Dublin V Cork game.

There's little glamour to League of Ireland games. The league is marginalised and stigmatised, not only by the media and public, but by those responsible for running it; John Delaney once described it as his "problem child". I think there are other factors at play in the failure or refusal of the broader public to embrace it rather than this idea that the game of football is morally inferior. See the numbers of Irish football fans who travel to the UK to watch live football every weekend, who tune in on Sky and who attend internationals and insignificant money-spinning spectacles like the "Dublin Derby". There's interest there, and potential for it; the domestic "product" is just seen as sub-standard.

We don't want the cr*p from Soccer creeping into Rugby.

Soccer isn't infiltrating or creeping into rugby. If there are aspects of rugby you find unpalatable, that's rugby's responsibility. You can't blame soccer. In all professional sports, there are rules; some of those rules might be more conducive to "bending" and thus such "bending" might be more apparent in certain sports, but it happens in all sports where and if it can. There's no real benefit to diving or simulation in rugby (like there is in soccer) as its a hard-hitting, all-contact sport, so pretending you've been touched with force isn't going to win you any advantage with the referee as such is a permissible and inherent aspect of the game. There are other means of "rule-bending" or "cheating" though and they do occur. That's not the fault of soccer.

Another post worth noting by a Foot.ie poster who grew up surrounded by rugby:

Stuttgart88 wrote:

3 Plymouth Albion (Championship equivalent, professional) rugby players charged with sexual assault last year. Barely any media fuss. London School of Economics rugby club publish highly misogynistic promo material in rag week and get suspended. Durham Uni rugby team suspended for singing songs about rape. Richmond rugby team members run naked on London Underground. And so on. Not to mention how World Rugby institutionally locks out lesser nations.

Great sport, but the idea that it's morally superior especially in this new professional era is daft. That's not to say there aren't areas where I think it can claim some moral superiority, but in its totality, no way. How many kids around the world are saved from drugs and gun crime by rugby, for example?

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

I can't stand this motion towards being more critical of the rugby team. The logic seems to be that Just because footballers get hounded 24/7, so too should the rugby players.

I think those making the argument are more accurately saying, "treat all sports fairly/equally", rather than, "pillory rugby too with over-the-top tabloid criticism, just like the football players have to endure".

twinytwo wrote: »

The secondary school i went to, when we asked about playing rugby we were told " there will be no british sports played in this school"

I only ever played the game during a fourth or fifth-year PE lesson back at St. Columb’s in Derry when another teacher who was a fan of the game took our class for a week so we could give it a go. Even then, and we all found this comical (if not a bit petty/insecure, although we all have our cultural or social hang-ups and draw lines somewhere), one of my classmates, who was a member of Ógra Shinn Féin at the time, had his mother write him a note to the teacher requesting permission that her son be allowed to abstain from that day’s lesson on the grounds that he didn’t want to be subjected to having to play a “foreign game”. Indeed, he sat out the lesson. Of course, though, the following week, he was all togged out on the all-weather pitch in his Liverpool gear and back to partaking in our weekly session of soccer.

ThisRegard wrote: »

Excellent point. I've no idea why the author mentioned unionist and nationalist representation, it's ridiculous. Does he want to go down the religious quota route rather than picking a squad based on merit?

That's a grossly unfair misrepresentation of my argument. If it's so ridiculous/trivial/unimportant, why do the IRFU have such a hang-up over real symbolic representation for all? I'm just pointing that out. I haven't concocted something or introduced something imaginary into the field of play. The IRFU claim to be inclusive of all on the island, but the reality in terms of symbolic representation doesn't match up with the assertion. Of course, team selection is based on merit, but should representative symbolism be chosen on the basis of who shouts loudest? Of course not. The team is 15 of the best players from wherever on the island they happen to be from, but they represent the entire island rather than just one culture on it, no?

Jawgap wrote: »

As I mentioned earlier that just demonstrates a lack if awareness of skill and fitness and how they apply to different sports.

GAA footballers by your measure must be atrocious athletes given they've never even made it to the group stages of an international competition.

No I believe it demonstrates international soccer is a massive step above international rugby in terms of skill and degree of difficulty of becoming a participant.
So when talking about rugby, sorry to burst your bubble but its not a truly elite competitive sport.
So rugbys 'soccer conversation' is league of Ireland level not the National soccer team.
This is the elitist nature of rugby, every nuance must be deemed skillful. Ye want it to be in the conversation with international soccer, well it isnt. Globally its a minority sport with the primary requirement being size, speed and power. It is not as skillful as the pedestal ye place it on. I repeat, several players have played at International level taking up the sport in their late teens, purely because they were big and powerful. It is not a globally competitive sport at all.