Ireland Team Talk/Gossip/Rumour Thread IV

TommyOM wrote: »

Can someone tell me how a kick 50 minutes into a game is a pressure kick? You'd swear it was the 78th minute and Ireland were trailing Wales by 2pts.

Also can someone tell me how getting 7/9 kicks is now considered as an issue?

It's very straightforward really. It was a pressure kick because it was for the "Championship Points".

Likewise, Madigan was kicking at the death 30 points ahead yet still had pressure on the kick. Why?

The 'issue' that was raised was that Sexton appeared to have an issue with knocking over the 'Championship Points' kick. A cynic might point to the game that never happened vs NZ to see a similar blip.

To suggest that a player scoring 7/9 renders him immune from criticism is rubbish tbh. If he scored 9/9 and they all went over like a bag of scaldy lepers trying to hurdle a low wall he could warrant criticism.

Now that the logic is plainly visible, I'll say "it's one to think about but we can't know either way as the sample size is tiny. Keep an eye on it basically".

Quint2010 wrote: »

Ah yeah I know you were. I was being a bit tongue in cheek. Anyone thinks the Lawes tackle was illegal? Thought it was perfectly fair myself.

Not a chance it was fair, though it might currently be legal.

I'll preface this by saying we absolutely don't want the American Football rules, then I'll sound like I'm asking for the American Football rules, but really there's a smart answer in the middle of the two. In American Football, the kicker is protected from a tackle after the ball is moved. Any sort of collision isn't allowed afaik.

Lawes knows that the player is moving the ball, and launches himself off of his feet in order to hit him. One could argue that he is entitled to tackle the man as the man could potentially be dummying. However imo Lawes would not have tackled a standing player, lining up a pass like that if he could guarantee he'd get to him before he released the ball. Instead he has 'developed' this grey area 'hit' by ensuring that he gets his arms around the player.

Obviously I cannot judge Lawes' intent, but a more cynical fan might point out that Lawes seems to be the only person that has ever attempted this 'tackle' and has made the rugbydump clips more than once with it.



It's not late, it's not overtly high, but it's not on either imo.

Quint2010 wrote: »

I think if one of our players made that hit we would be all saying what a great tackle it was.

Mike McCarthy did something similar for Leinster before and I was pretty annoyed that he'd put himself in yellow card territory tbh.

.ak wrote: »

Ofcourse the biggest problem there emmet02 is how do you qualify the 'kicker'... Basically any marginal contact of ANY player on the pitch after the ball has gone? It'd be impossible to sanction that fairly imo.

I don't want the American Football rules!

The problem is that Lawes has no intention to compete for the ball in the above clip, and his 'tackle' is therefore not a tackle.

However, someone coming up with a law/rule for it has to balance the accidentals with the intentionals, and I think that's a very tricky thing to get right.
I also don't think we should be asking a ref or TMO to try to judge intent. It's a difficult area.

Edit to add - there's quite a few viewpoints and reasoning given in the comments section here

I don't like the tackle at all and I don't agree with people here saying that we would love to see one of our second row's doing the same.

To be honest, I have no issue with a good hard hit, but he tackled the guys spine so hard that he went horizontal and face / head neck hit the ground first.

It's half way to a spear tackle and that's not counting the impact on the back. I know he is putting in a hit that will make the 10 want to keep more of an eye forward and he is making a bit of a statement, but it's overcooked in my opinion. I saw elsewhere a rumour of citing and to be honest, it would fall into the Ben T'eo category of "it's not a red, but go easy".

Though I think what T'eo did was not even in that category. Anyway...