Ireland Team for student 4 nations

fanofrl

announced on RLI web site
http://www.rli.ie/article/students-prepare-for-4-nations.html

Head coach is now Brendan Guilfoyle.

Good looking selection. Some strong lads from UK coming in. Still pleanty of home grown players too. A few experienced heads and some good young talent if you google a few of them.
Carmody was supposed to have been brilliant in the states with Ireland A, O'Mara is a high level player, Taylor is with the Ireland senior team, Boyle looked good in the varsity game.

Good new coach and a strong looking team.

big barrie

gillfoyle played a game in cork sun afternoon , the students were already in scotland they have a match at 5pm mon , the last training session for them was is dublin last sunday no gilly, the session was taken by a mate of his ed nash ,gilly did not go to the regionals in the uk as he was in the usa , so as far as i make it, he will if he makes it on monday to glasgow ,he will be meeting about 7 or 8 of the panel a couple of hours before kick off whom he has yet to meet.

billy slater

thats sad to hear really that they havent received proper training especially with the money thats been invested from the rfl to rli now. no mention of how or why howard left is awful. you received no reply to your post big barrie because some of the people on this only like to talk about so called positives in rli and wont comment on anything that highlights rli failings for some reason even though surely these failings need to be addressed. oh the match against scotland was monday and ireland lost but rli are too busy to show the result. ill let you know the score of next game when i find.

billy slater

the result is up now for scotland v ireland students on rli now. they lost 40-28

billy slater

england 52 ireland 6.

billy slater

a poor result against wales for the students but in fairness i dont think rli can be blamed for the player that was arrested for drunk and disorderly behaviour. it was after their last game and players were obviously allowed a night on the town and each individual is responsible for himself.
does anyone know how many teams are in the 9s comp.
and are clubs happy that a season startin on may7th could be over on may21st. im not sure im right there and im open to correction if there are return fixtures as i just dont see them posted on rli.

big barrie

looking at the panel named , looks like they done away with the home grown squad of 2010,now its back to the ex pat situ, still the same result, they trounced scotland at the regionals 28 . 0 . did not build on it , well after sacking ed nash after one training session said his coaching was not up to standard . does any one know why a young salford based son of irish parents left the squad took his full irish kit and went home telling nobody . it was also stated that the young debutant student that was arrested spent the night at her majestys pleasure for his own safety.

fanofrl

big barrie wrote: »

looking at the panel named , looks like they done away with the home grown squad of 2010,now its back to the ex pat situ, still the same result, they trounced scotland at the regionals 28 . 0 . did not build on it , well after sacking ed nash after one training session said his coaching was not up to standard . does any one know why a young salford based son of irish parents left the squad took his full irish kit and went home telling nobody . it was also stated that the young debutant student that was arrested spent the night at her majestys pleasure for his own safety.

Apparently the squad had 11 irish born and 9 english born.
All of the 2010 squad who were still students would have been invited to the trials this year.(some were probably not still students)
I heard the Scotland team only had about 3 or 4 of the team from the regionals in it, the rest from England.

I have it from a reliable source, the reason given by the player who left after the second game was because he was on the interchange and felt he should be getting more game time (obviously must have thought he was better than the starting players). This is terrible behaviour that lets his family, country and university down. If I were his Irish dad/mum, i'd kick his arse.

fanofrl

big barrie wrote: »

does any one know why a young salford based son of irish parents left the squad took his full irish kit and went home telling nobody . it was also stated that the young debutant student that was arrested spent the night at her majestys pleasure for his own safety.

where was this "stated" ?? newspaper? web site? social media?

big barrie

there are 5 players who play rugby league in ireland , 2 are starting this year that were on the panel , both o keefe and farroll live in ireland never played league here before, they had to learn the game playing against 3 nations. the other from what i see taylor ,carr eagles , o connell tullamore. and 2 titans . though on the rli facebook theres a post about how to get your international career started. would not take much notice of it .

fanofrl

big barrie wrote: »

there are 5 players who play rugby league in ireland , 2 are starting this year that were on the panel , both o keefe and farroll live in ireland never played league here before, they had to learn the game playing against 3 nations. the other from what i see taylor ,carr eagles , o connell tullamore. and 2 titans . though on the rli facebook theres a post about how to get your international career started. would not take much notice of it .

Erraught is N D Eagles. McCreery is Ballyfermot Bears.
Carmody and McCaughan both irish born and went to England for uni.

Where was it stated about a player being arrested ?

big barrie

fanofrl wrote: »

Apparently the squad had 11 irish born and 9 english born.
All of the 2010 squad who were still students would have been invited to the trials this year.(some were probably not still students)
I heard the Scotland team only had about 3 or 4 of the team from the regionals in it, the rest from England.

I have it from a reliable source, the reason given by the player who left after the second game was because he was on the interchange and felt he should be getting more game time (obviously must have thought he was better than the starting players). This is terrible behaviour that lets his family, country and university down. If I were his Irish dad/mum, i'd kick his arse.

as you said invited to trials, there was an even amount of players divided among the selectors to contact , howard rang no one , so there are 7 students waiting for a phone call.

big barrie

fanofrl wrote: »

Erraught is N D Eagles. McCreery is Ballyfermot Bears.
Carmody and McCaughan both irish born and went to England for uni.

Where was it stated about a player being arrested ?

innersangtom.com

big barrie

fanofrl wrote: »

Apparently the squad had 11 irish born and 9 english born.
All of the 2010 squad who were still students would have been invited to the trials this year.(some were probably not still students)
I heard the Scotland team only had about 3 or 4 of the team from the regionals in it, the rest from England.

I have it from a reliable source, the reason given by the player who left after the second game was because he was on the interchange and felt he should be getting more game time (obviously must have thought he was better than the starting players). This is terrible behaviour that lets his family, country and university down. If I were his Irish dad/mum, i'd kick his arse.

dear moderator why was my reply removed from this thread. i will put it up again with extras that you wont like

big barrie

fanofrl wrote: »

Apparently the squad had 11 irish born and 9 english born.
All of the 2010 squad who were still students would have been invited to the trials this year.(some were probably not still students)
I heard the Scotland team only had about 3 or 4 of the team from the regionals in it, the rest from England.

I have it from a reliable source, the reason given by the player who left after the second game was because he was on the interchange and felt he should be getting more game time (obviously must have thought he was better than the starting players). This is terrible behaviour that lets his family, country and university down. If I were his Irish dad/mum, i'd kick his arse.

there was a facebook request on thursday 21st for a player to go to scotland for fridays match against wales posted on a personal site not on the official rugby league of ireland page ,if you were not a facebook friend of this selector stroke manager then you lost out , it stated that due a defector and an injury ,he had only 18 players this request was taken up and the guy played against wales. question 1, who payed for his travel and accomadationat such short notice. q 2, had he no faith in the 5 replacements already there, q3,what about players who just missed out on the trials.

fanofrl

It apperars these students have been really let down this year. The coach Nicky Howard abandons them the week before the 4 nations with no explanation coming from anyone including the RLI web site [see post by Billy Slater]. And now it seems he also did not contact players either.

The next coach appointed lasted one day (in fact, half a session as i heard he hadn't a clue) and was sacked.
The next coach appointed who is an employee of RLI missed the team's last training session as he was playing union [see post by big barrie]. This might be somewhat understandable if he didn't know he was to do the job till the last minute.

(I also heard this week from a source outside the RLI circles) that the team manager (who is also general manager of the RLI) missed the training session in Dublin the week before, as he was coaching a union team who were playing.

It sounds like student rugby league is bottom of the pile in a lot of people's eyes.

This is a shame as most see it as the future. Instead of using washed up union players in the summer, why not target the fresh young union players in university and convert them to RL while they are young.

How long will the RFL continue to fund this ?

NDeagles_man

Things were certainly not ideal for the students this year but fair play to them. They stuck with it and did themselves proud under far from the best circumstances.
It is dificult for the RLI who largely rely on volunteers. If the head coach departs with no explanation to anyone, it really leaves every one else in the stink. In fairness to the development officer who missed the only chance of a training session with the team, I know he was only drafted in a couple of days before the tournament and had already committed to play his game with Y.Munster. He could have just said no to coaching and then not been criticised but in fairness, came in at the last minute and did his best. The lads on the team understood this and were grateful.
The lack of preparation however is largely due to not even thinking about student rugby till a couple of months before it started.
Wales, Scotland and England all started preparations last year.
Hopefully, on this side of the pond we can learn from them and start "planning" ahead, instead of reacting to things as they come upon us.

billy slater

well the development officer who missed the training session cant be blamed especially if it was only late notice. its only a 9to5 job he has and even going to the tournament in scotland was beyond the call of duty so lets give him some credit for going and trying to help

big barrie

billy slater wrote: »

well the development officer who missed the training session cant be blamed especially if it was only late notice. its only a 9to5 job he has and even going to the tournament in scotland was beyond the call of duty so lets give him some credit for going and trying to help

who is hiring and sacking these coaches in the one go. for example nash was asked to coach the students and was dismissed after his first coaching stint with them . kelly gone, howard gone ,nash gone . irving gone .

NDeagles_man

big barrie wrote: »

who is hiring and sacking these coaches in the one go. for example nash was asked to coach the students and was dismissed after his first coaching stint with them . kelly gone, howard gone ,nash gone . irving gone .

In fairness, these 4 names acannot be compared in the one go.
Irving was not a coach but primarily the General Manager and he left due to genuine personal circumstances and was not sacked. As far as I know he remains on great terms with the RLI and still does a lot of voluntary work for them.
N.Howard (as far as anyone knows) just quit. If he was sacked then everyone in the RLI is being very tight lipped about it.
To be fair to D.Nash, he was judged on a session that he was asked to do at short notice (after Howard left) and maybe was he not given the right info on what was required of him. The bottom line is that from what you hear from people who were at that session, it was totaly inapropriate to the team's requirements. As I said, this may have been harsh on Nash if he were not properly informed so it would be wrong to criticise him but understandable that he did not stay. Maybe it was wrong for him to be put in that position, especially when the guy gave up his time to travel to Dublin to do it.
As for Andy Kelly. one would assume this would have been the decision of the general manager of the RLI and the RFL manager for europe.

billy slater

just one point on the d nash thing. i can assure everyone his knowledge of rugby league is top class and he is an excellent coach judging by his time with treaty city titans

NDeagles_man

It was good that some of the student players who were new to R-League have joined clubs and played this week end:-
C.Farrell with the Exiles, N.O'Keeffe with the Eagles and A.McCreery with the Bears.
And N.Neville has returned to RL (with the student regional team) and played with the newly reformed Dragons after several years out of the game.