Cheika and Borthwick🤣
And before you give me any tedious crap about them making the Semi-final, that would be the worst argument I can possibly think of.
You need better bait
Clearly not.
The award wasn't being judged from your sofa. 😁
And O’Gara
Waiting for someone to mention Eddie Jones ahead of Farrell. 😁
🤣🤣🤣
And before you give me any tedious crap about them making the Semi-final
They made the semi-final
What a painfully stupid argument.
Connacht had Blade and Marmion at the time, Cooney move meant he was given a chance of first team football which he wasn't guaranteed of with Connacht.
Cooney wasn't near squad selection in Connacht and went on to play and be selected in multiple squad. Win for IRFU.
Borthwick had a record loss at home in 6 nations, lost to Fiji. Coming 4th in 6 nations behind Scotland. You should have thrown Gregor name into ring as well
Rawalui lost to Portugal in the group stage because of poor coaching.
Nienbar is he the head coach? not according to Rassie
Cheika? maybe you need to explain that one
Foster has done a good job but the hammering by SA hurt his options
Lagisquet based on what? been the plucky team losing games? if so Ireland should have a long list of winners
In the Jean Kleyn thread, when someone suggested
Winning a World Cup makes one world class.
You replied with:
So if Jordie Barrett got that kick, then Kleyn wouldn't be a world class? That's how it works?
Which begs the question, if Scott Barrett hadn't held up Kelleher, presumably you would think Farrell is world class / coach of the year material? That's how it works?
It's almost like reducing arguments of any context and nuance to "he/they won/lost" is overly simplistic...
I mean, beating Fiji and drawing with Georgia is far beyond what Portugal would have hoped for. Lagisquet did a phenomenal job. He should have been nominated.
The rest you have accurately covered.
Borthwick clearly used the 6N block to prepare for the World Cup because of how little time he had to prepare. Who cares about a warm up game. They hammered Argentina with 14 men, topped their group, beat Fiji when it mattered in the quarters, pushed SA to the absolute brink in the semis, and beat Argentina again to come 3rd, massively exceeding everyone's expectations of them.
Rawalui got Fiji out of a group containing Wales and Australia to make the quarter finals. Maybe not a massive surprise but still a very good World Cup for Fiji.
Nienabar. Won the World Cup. Don't think that one needs explaining.
Cheika. Probably the most questionable on this list, sure. But made the semis, beating Wales who were favourites in that game.
Foster. Out-coached Farrell in the quarter final. Hammered Argentina in the semis and was a whisker away from winning the whole thing. Hardly needs much explaining.
Lagisquet. Portugal were expected to lose every game. But drew with Georgia and beat quarter finalists Fiji, massively exceeding expectations.
All of these coach's teams exceeded expectations more than Farrell's Ireland
There definitely seems to be something a bit off that we have 5 players on the world team of the year and have the best coach in the world but couldn’t win the only game we had that truly mattered in a World Cup year despite having an extra man for 25% of the game.
The champions could only beat the same team by a single point, despite having an extra man for 50% of the game (accounting for 2 SA yellows).
Sometimes the margins are just so small and you end up on the wrong side of it. It doesn't mean there's something structurally wrong.
I'm also sure that anyone who actually works in or around the highest levels of the pro sport in Ireland would not have viewed that game as "the only one that mattered".
The Grand Slam game mattered IMO
So did the SA group game and all the other games we won.
It's coach of the year, not coach of the World Cup.
Farrell lost one game this year, how many other can say that?
Winning a Grand Slam I think Ireland can rightly claim was exceeding expectations as we have won it so few times. The rest you are just trying to make a case because they didn't do as shite as people expected. Why not throw Gatland into the mix while we are at it sure?
The only person I would have a case for is Nienabar but he is stuck in that mad setup with Rassie and that I would expect hurt his chances. He is not seen in rugby as the head coach, Rassie is, Rassie rules himself out because he says he is the DOR. From reports one of the reasons why Nienabar wants to go solo and get the recognition he deserves
Yes Lagisquet and Portugal was exciting to watch but coaching wise I would have questions. So yes the players outperformed but if Portugal had a better coaching setup could they have done better? to me I believe they could have
Fiji came into the competition ranked 7th in the world, higher than wales, australia and england.
No on will deny that getting to a RWC QF is an achievement for Fiji, they went about it the hard way. Losing to a muck welsh side, losing to Portugal, falling over the line against Georgia and beating the worse Australian team in living memory, one which was patently sabotaged by its own coach. i would argue that Fiji didn't actually play to their potential in this competition. The game was there for them against England with 10 minutes to go and they couldn't take it. What raiwalui has brought is set piece solidity and a modicum of control, which they unfortunately lose when muntz was ruled out.
they ended the year with 5 wins and 5 losses.
i love Fiji for their mix of power and flair, but my god if they could get their sh!te together they could be unstoppable.
Its a 'simple' argument.
Grand Slams can be discounted given the woeful level of the teams. Aside from France the other 4 couldn’t be any worse
Same for the Rugby Championship, I presume? Aside from NZ & SA, the other 2 teams are shite.
So Borthwick in the running for world coach of the year because his team got to the semi final according to one poster.
But his team is so shite that Irelands grand slam can be discounted according to another.
I thought the union would fire Borthwick after the world cup. He's probably done enough to keep his job. We shall see how England do in the 6nations.
A 6Ns will or at least should always be our target, it's an annual event. It's a high prestige tournament and aside from all of that it's a cash cow for the Unions.
In saying all that, there's no reason why we can't target a RWC, we have a summer & autumn round of friendlies where we can try combinations or up & coming players to develop them and use in a 6Ns and or a RWC
There are a few posters here whose main 'contribution' to this forum is to **** on any achievements by the Irish rugby team and to contort everything into arguments that diminish those achievements. The consistency or coherence between those arguments tends to fall apart as soon as you look them, because that's what tends to happen when you have a 'viewpoint' and try to make the data fit it (and ignore what doesn't).
The less we pay attention to these posters, the better.
I think Cooney was actually ahead of Blade at the time. Marmion was still first choice, but the other two were pretty close to eachother. In the 2016 final Cooney was on the bench. He was generally getting picked ahead of Blade in 2016. The three of them was probably the best depth that any province has had at 9 for a while.
You're right about the move being for 1st team rugby. That was definitely a benefit to ireland in terms of having more game time going to our 4 best 9s.
Never said they didn’t but by far and away the biggest game of the year was that quarter final and Ireland didn’t get it done. Grand slams you have a go at every year, group games are so uncompetitive that you probably only have 2 meaningful ones and you can afford to lose 1. I won’t even mention the other friendlies as important.
I think any team that only gives the World Cup winners 1 spot lacks credibility.
Handre Pollard didn’t miss a single kick in the World Cup. Not one. And given that they won their 3 knockout games by a point had he missed even 1, there’s no World Cup.
South Africa won their 3 knockout games by a point. They also had a tight game in the group against us that they lost.
You telling me it’s all just small margins and random variance that they got on the right side of the 3 of those that actually mattered but not the one that didn’t?
That’s head in the sand stuff.
It's almost as if the margins at the very top level are tiny
I mean... clearly, yes, they could very easily have been on the other side of any of those 3 matches. That is the literal implication of a 1-point margin.
On the balance of probability, you'd have to say that if those 3 matches were played again, at least one of them would likely go the other way.
