Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

I'd rather they labeled failure as failure. Of course I'm not advocating for personal abuse of the players, but don't try to dress up failure as success

I think that's pretty fair, TRC.

But equally, I'd argue that too often, you try to dress up success as failure, when you make comments like "we lost when it mattered". It completely overlooks our actual achievements like, for example, our 4th ever Grand Slam.

Of course that matters.

There's a reasonable middle ground here.

I suggest you may need to change your podcast / content diet, then.

The ones I subscribe to - Second Captains and TRK - had a lot of the type of content you are talking about. I'd be very surprised if the 42 didn't. (Mind you, I stopped listening to Off the Ball when that went to the subscriber model).

The best stuff is often paywalled, but I think that's fair enough if you want the type of quality content you are talking about.

Murray Kinsella himself was on the Second Captains episode post-QF elimination and was very insightful about it.

Lots of stuff about how NZ won the kicking battle, specifically with the types of kicks. How Will Jordan's try was from a shortened lineout, which they hadn't done in the over 12 months. (and credit Schmidt with identifying something in our defending). That's just stuff off the top of my head.

Why is everyone giving this crap oxygen? Let him be miserable alone, misery loves company.

It's heavily implied when you say the RWC is "when it mattered".

This is a strawman of it's own; nobody is saying it makes up for it. But they are achievements in their own right. Achievements that you imply don't matter. They do.

What's the point in engaging with you? When results are good you'll be here to **** all over it and tell everyone it doesn't matter. And when results go badly you'll be here to say I told you so.

Ireland have the same number of 6N championships since 2012 as Wales, 4 each. In that period Wales have been to a WC semi. I’ve been thrilled with Irelands success over those years but no one would say Wales are a top team while many on here seem to think we are. Rankings aside top teams consistently perform at the World Cup. An no mistake, our record against the heavy weights is excellent outside the wc but honestly those results just prove we could do it when it counts, not that we can.