Heineken Cup - General Discussion Thread

GerM

irishbucsfan wrote: »

Joe Worsley retired from rugby.

A great player in his day.

So underrated and always took a bit of flak this side of the water. He was a fantastic blindside in the traditional sense. Immense workrate, smashed anything that moved, rucked like a mad man, decent in the line out. If it wasn't for the untouchable Richard Hill, he'd have well over 100 caps for his country.

GerM

Having looked at the squad that Racing are sending to Edinburgh, Michael Bradley has a fantastic opportunity to do something special this season in Scotland. Win this game, and it will more than likely come down to a straight shoot out between themselves and Cardiff. Both of them got surprising wins last weekend. Taking away those that are currently injured like Steyn and Fall, Racing are travelling without the likes of Germain, Bobo, Estabenez, Lo Cicero, Nailiko and club captain Cronje who all started last week and also Durand and Vaquiin who were on the bench. I really detest when teams devalue the HEC like this.

BoarHunter

GerM wrote: »

Having looked at the squad that Racing are sending to Edinburgh, Michael Bradley has a fantastic opportunity to do something special this season in Scotland. Win this game, and it will more than likely come down to a straight shoot out between themselves and Cardiff. Both of them got surprising wins last weekend. Taking away those that are currently injured like Steyn and Fall, Racing are travelling without the likes of Germain, Bobo, Estabenez, Lo Cicero, Nailiko and club captain Cronje who all started last week and also Durand and Vaquiin who were on the bench. I really detest when teams devalue the HEC like this.

Racing have one and only one Target this season : TOP14. They don't give a damn about the HCup. They invested a lot over the last seasons to be in Stade de France for the shield.

They certainly don't want to have a key player injured away in Scotland for a game they don't care about.

I think Montpellier won't push to hard on away games either especially that they are trailing in the league.

TOP14 this season is going to be Hectic especially with 9 matchs played during the WC period some teams are desperate to catch up : MHR, Biarritz and Racing for exemple.

This will be an English/Celtic cup this season I think

GerM

Matt Williams has started a weekly HEC article for the IT. The first one actually doesn't really talk about the HEC but it was a poignant and well written article that one or two may enjoy as much as myself.

Matt Williams wrote: »

Lonely grave in France puts rugby in perspective

FRENCH NOTES: In the first of a series of Monday columns, MATT WILLIAMS recalls the poignant death of an 18-year-old relative who became one of the countless casualties of the first World War

MICK RYAN was an athletic and elusive fullback with a powerful left boot. He regularly dropped goals with that deadly left from 40 metres. He was fast. He won invitational open age races running in both the 100 and 200 metres. Physically he was stocky, 5ft 10in with dark brown hair and piecing blue eyes. He was an extrovert by nature and by all accounts a bit of a larrikin with a ready smile and cheeky sense of humour.

Mick was killed under a barrage of German bullets on the Somme in 1918. He was 18 years old. The Armistice was just five weeks away. Mick Ryan is my great uncle. As is the Irish way, he was christened Joseph Michael, but to all he was and remains Uncle Mick.

The Joseph part proved a hard nut to crack when I was searching for his grave on the Somme. The key was to trace the Ryan’s adopted home of Trangie in western New South Wales. If they were looking to upgrade from Limerick, they got it very wrong.

The cemetery near Albert in northern France is kept in immaculate condition. About 200 graves in perfect rows of white stones. At each grave there was a majestic rose in late bloom. The battle that killed Mick was on this spot. The Australians were attempting to retake the town. The dead were buried where they fell. It is a killing ground.

The French tricolour and the Australian flag were flying over a marble altar engraved with the words “Lest we forget”. I am not a man who cries often. I have only shed tears a few times in my adult life. I remember tears at the deaths of my father and my brother. At Mick’s grave, a man who had been dead 50 years before I was born, I wept like a child. I am not really sure why.

The waste of life; the stupidity of Mick lying about his age and signing up for war at 16-years-old; the pain of his family left behind; the frustration of never really knowing him or his full story, or maybe the regret that my grandfather, Mick’s brother, carried his entire life for letting him go to war. Perhaps it was that I know how joyful life can be and understand that Mick was robbed of his future.

Mick’s father John was born and bred in Limerick. Family legend has it that he played for Shannon although I can find no evidence of this. What I have found is that his family knew great hunger in both Ireland and western New South Wales. There was little formal education, little money and little food. His four sons and four daughters were good sportsmen, hard-working and resourceful. Those that lived made great success of their lives. They were church-going, avid Irish republicans.

Why would the child from a deeply republican family join the first World War? A war the Irish saw as a British war? Mick’s choice was not political or ideological. It was the choice of an adolescent looking to escape the drudgery of rural Australia.

Mick thought it would be a short, romantic, glorious adventure from which he would return to tell the tale. It was a sojourn out of the grind of an uneducated working life.

My grandfather, Jack, was a shearer, miner and a fencer before making his money as a bookmaker. The soul-crushing manual labour of his youth tilted his politics to the left. He neither smoked nor drank. In early life he sent his money home to support his sisters and mother. He supported any family member who fell on hard financial times. He had a hatred of banks and governments. He would fit in well today.

Jack learnt to fight by minding the money of his fellow shearers on Friday nights before they went into the local town to drink their wages. Jack would hold part of their money for them so they did not spend it all. When they returned, well jarred, to get the balance to continue drinking he would refuse. That’s when the fight started. He never lost a fight and the scars on his knuckles reminded me to never try to take him on.

In the early 20th century, travelling troops of boxers would arrive in country towns and challenge the locals for a prize. One such troop contained the legendary Australian boxer Les D’Arcy. D’Arcy was a former blacksmith and the child of Irish parents. He was the hero of Irish Australia at the time.

Jack put his name and money down to fight D’Arcy, who heard on the ‘bush telegraph’ that Jack was fighting for money for his family, who were in a tough place. To the absolute horror of the promoter, D’Arcy nursed Jack through three rounds so he could win the substantial prize money. In the last seconds D’Arcy let go one real punch that connected perfectly with Jack’s chin.

It should have sent Jack to the floor. But D’Arcy held my grandfather upright in a clinch until the final bell and whispered in his ear: “Jack, don’t come back for a rematch”. Jack said he could always remember the promoter yelling at D’Arcy and Les simply winking at Jack as he smiled.

Jack played rugby with a passion. In 1919, one year after Mick died, Trangie won the Far Western New South Wales rugby competition. Jack told me it was one of the saddest days of his life to win without Mick at fullback. Before he died he gave me his winning medal. It is attached to the end of his watch chain. If my house was on fire I would brave the flames to save that medal.

As I write this I am living in France and coaching Narbonne and I have been thinking of Mick. Thinking of his family who received the telegram, which simply said “killed in action”. The body was never going to be returned. There was no chance to visit, to talk, to rationalise the death. The Australian War Memorial online service has digitised all servicemen’s correspondence from WWI. I have read my great grandfather’s letters pleading for information about his son. Ninety three years later it is still hard to read. The pain of the father is clear and present.

I attended the Remembrance Day ceremony in Narbonne last Friday – the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month – to mark the ceasefire. The carved words on the memorial reads “Narbonne a ses enfants”. Narbonne has her children. My family feels we don’t have ours. Mick seems lost to the last three generations and no matter how hard we try we can’t get him back. He is alone in France.

In the 1890s, Ireland held no future for Mick and his family. They fled to a primitive, hot and flint-hard rural Australia, only for Mick to sacrifice his young life in France. Like Mick, I am Irish Australian. Yet my Australia is a sanctuary, a land of abundance. For more than a decade Ireland has provided me with wonderful opportunities and experiences.

Coaching professional sport in France is not a job, it is a pleasure. The three lands that are Mick’s story have become intricately woven into my own journey but our experiences of those lands could not be more different.

This weekend I watched the children of both Ireland and France play a game of rugby. It is a game I love, but still only a game. Somehow the matches this week did not seem as important to me as other Heineken Cup days.

wixfjord

Sarries will now play the Biarritz home game in London!

http://www.planetrugby.com/story/0,25883,3551_7313499,00.html

Podge_irl

Apparently there was an argument over which stadium in CT should hold the match. Seems like a bit of a major screw up though to a degree outside of Saracens control.

OldRio

GerM wrote: »

Matt Williams has started a weekly HEC article for the IT. The first one actually doesn't really talk about the HEC but it was a poignant and well written article that one or two may enjoy as much as myself.

Great piece. Makes you think how lucky we are.

keane2097

Anywhere to watch back last weekend's games online? Or even to download them? Don't mind paying if necessary.

irishbucsfan

Saracens cancel their Cape Town game.

Not hugely surprising, very unpopular move and not well rationalised

ed7890

keane2097 wrote: »

Anywhere to watch back last weekend's games online? Or even to download them? Don't mind paying if necessary.

There's highlights here anyway

Munster Match

Connacht Match

Ulster Match

Leinster Match

I think all the matches are on that guys channel

Taco Corp

Saints v Scarlets on shortly. Likely to be a saints win although Scarlets had a good win last weekend so you never know. Anyone think a shock is on the cards?

Saints Scarlets sure to be the pick of the non-Irish games this weekend!

thomond2006

I've posted a link in the stream thread.

Foden has pulled out, Pisi starting at fullback.

nice start!

thomond2006

What a start for Scarlets! :eek:

Liam Williams Try!

ongarite

Nice one, Saints in trouble already.

Taco Corp

Scarlets try already. 3 mins gone

ScrubsfanChris

I left the room for 2 minutes

thomond2006

Cardiff 10-0 London Irish; 8pm k/o

Scarlets doing really very well here. Saints look shocked so far

thomond2006

Awful kick from Lamb, booted it miles dead with a lot on it.

Scarlets well on top, they do need to score again though while they are on top IMO.

surely Northampton have a better kicker from hand than Lambe on the pitch?

KevIRL

Edinburgh 17 Racing Metro 10.

Quite the start there

ongarite

HAHAHA!!!

Offside surely?

thomond2006

What a fluky try for Scarlets!

ooops

Fitzgibbon courting controversy. Who'd a thunk it?

thomond2006

Ball went forward off Scarlet hand no?

wixfjord

Jesus that's an awful decision from Fitzgibbon.

Guy:Incognito

Did he ground that ? Seemed to slide along with the ball on his arm then stand up.

KevIRL

KevIRL wrote: »

Edinburgh 17 Racing Metro 10.

Quite the start there

17-17 now