O'Gara and Chris White

MG

From the Guardian (Eddie Butler):

"O'Driscoll's loss of cool was nothing compared with Ronan O'Gara's. The outside-half seemed to hold a personal grudge against referee Chris White if he dared penalise him. 'We talked about this before the game,' he said to the referee after he had been penalised. 'Yes we did,' agreed the referee. 'But you were still offside.'"

Anyone know what this is about? Is there a history between O'Gara and White?

The Rooster

I dont think there's any history, but if you read (or someone can paste) his article in the Irish Times today, O'Gara clearly blames the ref for his bad performance - although O'Gara also said he thought he was having a "fine" game :cool:

MG

I think he's the ref for the Biarritz game too........

pickarooney

It wasn't too hard to read O'Gara's lips forming the words "fúcking arsehole" and "stupid cünt" on a couple of occasions after penalties had gone against his team. Just as well O'Sullivan replaced him, I'd say, though it was about three matches too late.
Anyone else get the feeling Ireland has been wasting its time waiting for ROG to come good these last few years? I can't see it happening anytime soon.

uberwolf

Ronan O'Gara / Six Nations Diary: There's no getting away from it: that's a huge, huge disappointment, much more so than the defeat to France.

We were all looking forward to it so much because it was such a great occasion, and so from a personal point of view to not even complete the game is particularly frustrating.

No player likes being taken off and I'm no different. I thought I was doing fine, to be honest, and was striking the ball well, and I would like to have been playing in the last 20 minutes when we started to get more go-forward ball. But the management have to make these calls.

It was a brilliant atmosphere, in a great stadium, and it was the perfect pitch to play on.

You've got to love playing in conditions like that. That's what makes it all the more disappointing to be called ashore.

I thought the start to the game was good. Axel (Anthony Foley) took the kick-off on the charge and popped it up to Simon Easterby, and we carried the ball well down the left through Johnny O'Connor and Drico (Brian O'Driscoll). I put a nice kick into their 22, we got a bit of pressure on them, were awarded a penalty and I managed to get us the first three points.

They missed the chance to get some impetus when they missed their first penalty. But then Gavin Henson kicked a drop goal before they scored that charge-down try.

I have to be very fed up with that (charge down) because it was such a costly seven points, although I'd like to see where Gethin Jenkins came from. I don't feel that I was slow on the ball. It's particularly upsetting because I got pinged in the second half for a rush defence but the bottom line is that it was a big seven points to concede.

Henson's penalty to put them 13-3 ahead was a great kick but I felt they still hadn't done much and then we nearly scored off a nice move out in the backs.

We got fast ball to Denis Hickie coming into the line. It was the first real crack we had off them and we worked it well but unfortunately we lost control of the scrum that followed and then Dwayne Peel took the play down to half-way, and it seemed that any time we got into their 22 we gave away penalties.

After Stephen Jones kicked another penalty for them I managed to land a long-range penalty before half-time.

When we went in at half-time we felt that we didn't have control of the ball much and that possession was scarce, but the charge-down try was basically the difference between the teams.

The game had been played at a fast pace, and fellas were sucking diesel when we came into the dressingroom. But there was no sense of panic.

The forwards were a bit annoyed that they didn't have more input, but we just felt that we had to try to play through the phases. They had basically been profiting from our mistakes.

I got penalised for an alleged offside at the start of the second half, which was very annoying.

We had talked about our defence beforehand, and using more of an outside-in defence, so to get penalised in the middle was a bit hard to take.

Jones isn't that comfortable with it when you come up from the outside in, because they like to do their loop plays in space.

I had a long-range penalty soon after that but it was wide by about two feet. I struck it pretty well but I must have been out by a fraction in some part of my technique, so I have to hold my hands up for that.

After about 50 minutes I was called ashore and it's hard to see the action in the stands from pitch level, but the forward replacements appeared to have a big impact.

After falling 29-6 behind we showed some guts in the last quarter. The last two performances probably haven't done our Lions hopes much good, but I thought Johnny O'Connor had a fine game, and took the ball on well.

You'd have to be happy for the Welsh people. You can see how much rugby means to them. I was here at the Millennium Stadium for a Heineken European Cup final once and the atmosphere was incredible that day too. I guess Welsh people are similar to Munster fans, they have that much passion for the game.

We all have to pick ourselves up for our provinces now and we go back into camp with Munster tomorrow. There's no point in sulking and it'll be good to be back with the Munster lads. The game against Biarritz in San Sebastian could be another great occasion, and we still have some unfinished business with Munster this season.

pickarooney

pickarooney wrote:

It wasn't too hard to read O'Gara's lips forming the words "fúcking arsehole" and "stupid cünt" on a couple of occasions after penalties had gone against his team. Just as well O'Sullivan replaced him, I'd say, though it was about three matches too late.
Anyone else get the feeling Ireland has been wasting its time waiting for ROG to come good these last few years? I can't see it happening anytime soon.

i respect your views on a number of topics buti cannot see where you're coming from here, Ronan has won us more matches than he has lost us, in fact i don't think i can recall 3 matches which he single handedly has "lost" us the game, I agree that he needs more competition and that Humphries might have been used a bit more in the tournament to put a little frienly pressure on him, but looking back across all his games for Ireland this is close to his only bad spell, people don't perform to 100% of their ability every week, people drift in and out of form, and he has held form for years for Ireland.

It's ridiculously unfair to say we're waisting our time with him, he's one of the best out-halfs in the game, the best in Ireland on his day, but he just couldn't find his game this tournament. He had a bad one, his career's nowhere near finished yet though!

Trojan

After reading ROGs article I must admit that his viewpoint seems quite reasonable. I'm not sure about the offside, I'd like to see it again.

I think DH might have been a better option to start, but that's life. The main concern for me is that EOS learns from his selection mistakes during this 6N. Then again, he may not concede the mistake.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

kenmc

I've always been a ROG over Humph for as long as I can remember. But I have to admit that when Humph came on, the back line started working. Don't forget that ROG won us that argentinan game back in the autumn. I've never rated Humph as a defender.
ROG was the leading points scorer in this years championship as well....

Eoin

kenmc wrote:

I've always been a ROG over Humph for as long as I can remember. But I have to admit that when Humph came on, the back line started working. Don't forget that ROG won us that argentinan game back in the autumn. I've never rated Humph as a defender.
ROG was the leading points scorer in this years championship as well....

I don't think ROG is known for his thumping tackles either. ROG did score a lot of points, but IMO all he was doing was completing the opportunities that the team set up for him. His touch kicking has improved immensely in the last few years - it is not that long ago when Humph was a far better positional player. He is still a bit quicker than ROG, and more likely to get a back line moving.

damnyanks

I think both players performed quite well when they were being switched and swapped just about every game. O'Gara had a terrible tournament but before this 6N I've always considered him quite stable.

BangBeater

pickarooney wrote:

It wasn't too hard to read O'Gara's lips forming the words "fúcking arsehole" and "stupid cünt" on a couple of occasions after penalties had gone against his team. Just as well O'Sullivan replaced him, I'd say, though it was about three matches too late.
Anyone else get the feeling Ireland has been wasting its time waiting for ROG to come good these last few years? I can't see it happening anytime soon.

nah, nah man. Just cut it there.