Scotland A vs Ireland Wolfhounds, Fri 28 January 7:30pm

O'Hare try. The embarrasment.

Jeez thats disappointing. Anyone put their hands up?

Any good performances ?

It is possible that he gave Hagan & Buckley a half each to make a case for inclusion.

Word on the street is he went off with a hamstring injury

It's probably a good thing it wasn't televised.

JustinDee wrote: »

This is why a coaching team is appointed. Its their job.

I never said anything about coaching the team.

Kidney has been/is/will the coach of all these players to some extent during the next few weeks. There is more than a week to go before the Italy game, I don't see what he could be doing tonight that is more important than attending this game in Scotland?

JustinDee wrote: »

I guess he just doesn't care, wouldn't have anything covered and stayed at home in case he missed Bob Geldof on the Late Late Show.

Bob Geldof is irish qualified after all.

I don't remember EOS being in any of the previous A games we had when he was in charge.

phog wrote: »

Andy is the Scottish coach, the game was on in Scotland and he has probably a smaller pool of players to choose from so may need to have a direct involvement in their A setup.

BTW - in Cheika's era over Leinster I was at two Munster A v Leinster A games where Cheika wasn't there and he is credited with the success of the stream of players coming through in Leinster so having the head coach not atteding all A games cant be that bad.

Were those games on the same weekend as Leinster games?

If Ireland were playing I wouldn't mind as much. I just wonder what Kidney was doing tonight that kept him away from going to watch the players he's being paid to coach? Maybe Cheika didn't attend Leinster A games, I'm not saying Kidney is the only head coach who doesn't bother with these games.

During the '09 Churchill Cup the IRFU and Irish media went on about Kidney's attention to detail and his slavish work ethic, pointing to his attendance at the competition. Where is that now? Was he at John Hayes' bedside trying to rush him back for a start against Italy?

Well in a moment of lunacy I decided to head down to Galashiels after work to take in the game. Very disappointing stuff from an Irish perspective - no sign of a gameplan, or any real drive to win the match. I honestly couldn't pick out one Irish player who improved their standing based on their performance tonight.

Scotland were limited enough but were really up for it. They had a typical Scottish game plan, stuck to it and absolutely dominated us up front in the second half. What little ball we got out to the backs was wasted through poor handling and basic errors. We deserved the beating we took.

Here is a very bad quality video of the last Scottish try, but it sums up our performance on the night nicely - two minutes of throwing it back and over around half way without getting anywhere and then a turnover and a quick Scottish score.



The game and the ground had the feel of a local club match. Instead of a typical PA, there was a lad in the middle of the stand with a laptop and itunes open playing different tracks after the scores. The players had to walk through the middle of the crowd in the stand to get to the pitch and so on.

But the SRU deserve great credit for the way they had the fixture set up - free parking, free admission and a free match programme for everyone who turned up with the option to throw a few quid in a charity box but only if you wanted to. Couldn't imagine our men in suits ever offering that for an A game!