Susan Hated Literature

I’m speechless. I have no idea what to say after that match. The first half was so horrible. Unless you were French^[1] of course. What is with Ireland and first halves in France? Remember 2 years ago? Although this was worst, because right up to the final whistle the hope was there.

And let me tell you hope is a killer.

French fuckers.

Still, lets look at the positives; the scrum. Yes, I said the scrum, imagine that, an Ireland scrum that was going forward. That dominated the French pack! That led to a penalty try. The forward pack had a great second half. ROG too had a great game, kept us in touch, barely, in the first half. But on the wings^[2] we’re a bit “who’s supposed to be playing there”. I also think that the lineout, at first, wasn’t great, but it did improve as the match went on. BOD was his usual hard-working self, but Trimble was very quiet. I don’t think he is good enough for the likes of France. Interesting to see who O’Sullivan will select for the next match against Scotland.

Sport really is a roller-coaster isn’t it?

Final score, btw, was France 26 - Ireland 21 and I officially hate Vincent Clerc.

I was at Croke Park today. As a witness you’d think I’d therefore have some clue what was going on, but, omg, wtf was that?

The first half was okay. We made some chances and really should have been further ahead. But the second half was just plain poor. The lineout was atrocious. How is it that Munster can be playing so well yet many of the very same players are so just not doing anything in the green shirt? I can only blame Eddie O’Sullivan. I’m rolling with the bandwagon here, I know, but honestly, I can’t come up with any other explanation.

Gordan D’Arcy’s injury was unfortunate as he wasn’t bad, but he has’t been anywhere near his best in a long while. In the “A” game Bowe played well, I wonder will O’Sullivan call him into the squad for the next match?

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Today is James Joyce’s birthday, so I could have used one of his quotes as a title, but I decided instead to go with a line from George Hook, grump extraordinaire.

Ooops, almost didn’t post today. That would have been a disaster considering my ambition is to post every day this week. I know, I could have remained silent on that and no one would have known about my near failure, or indeed my failure tomorrow, or whenever it comes, but then I wouldn’t have had any opening sentence for this post. And that would have been a real disaster. After without an opening sentence I wouldn’t have gotten very far in this whole post, would I?

Can’t have a second sentence without that first one.

Was at footie this evening. We’re playing twice a week now. Once indoors, once outside. When I say we… well, I’ve missed the past few Thurs due to “other commitments”, jayzis, you’d think I had a life or something interesting^[1] like that.

Luckily enough we had a grand total of no injuries today. Which was nice as last week there was an incident involving a football being kicked and a football smashing into someone’s face. Not mine, which was good for me. But straight into the glasses of the person who was hit, which was not good for him.

I’ve also decided to upload a couple of batches of photos to flickr and have discovered that I haven’t stuck anything up there at all this year. My god! That’s shocking. I’m thinking that most will have to be private, what with the drinking and the actual peoples there, but sure if you don’t know me you wouldn’t be interested in pictures of me and my good friend Mr. Alcohol.

Also, and hugely importantly, the Six Nations kicks off this weekend^[2] Are we thrilled with excitement^[3] Me and de mudder are heading to Croke Park on Sat to watch Ireland kick Italy’s ass. And if we don’t win, convincingly, we’ll instead have a “wee chat” with Mr. O’Sullivan, so we will.

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Title from Titanic, see the link there? Disaster movie, but this post is instead a fabulous avoidance of disaster!

For those that may not know^[1] ; Ireland got knocked out of the RWC at the weekend. It wasn’t unexpected. After scraping the bonus point against Namibia, not getting one against Georgia, and losing to France, it would have required a miracle to get past the pool stages. We’d have needed to win by 7 or more points, score 4 tries, and make sure that Argentina didn’t score 4 tries. And, considering the poor performances that the team had been putting in it never seemed likely.

Course you still hope.
Cause what is the point if you don’t?

But in the end Argentina won, and won well, 30 to 15. Maybe that scoreline would have been closer had we not had to chase the four tries, maybe we would have won if all we’d needed was to beat them by a single point, but that is irrelevant. We lost. We came home.

And the post-mortems will continue for many months. Why did we perform so badly? What happened to the team that could run and pass and “had a chance”? Why did we struggle to get our game going?

Some have argued that the players didn’t want to win that much, that they are all paid so much money that they didn’t have the passion of earlier and perhaps less talented teams. Pschaw I says to that. Pschaw^[2] Did you see BOD when he scored that try against Argentina? I think maybe^[3] he would have liked to win.

He had a good game. As did Paul O’Connell, despite some missed lineouts. And Geordan Murphy had an okay game, considering the support runners he was getting^[4] and the options he was presented with^[5] and the whole performance of the team was considerably better than earlier in the tournament.

But we should have started the RWC like that, and progressed. Instead we dug ourselves a huge ginormous hole by starting sluggishly.

In a way the tournament was like an extended version of our recent games. We start poorly, realise that we are in deep shit and start to play. Trouble is we just didn’t have the time or confidence to get out of that hole. And so the 2007 RWC is over for Ireland. And for many of those players this is the last RWC they’ll get to go to. Over the hill now. And what a sad way for Denis Hickie to finish his career. And possibly many others.

The debate about whether we should blame the players more or whether management should take responsibility seems to have been ignored in the rush to shout that Eddie O’Sullivan must go. I’ve always been quite supportive of Steady Eddie, but I’m back-tracking now, not that I think he should be fired in some knee-jerk reaction^[6] but for the IRFU to be describing this as some sort of blip? Are they insane?

Maybe it is just that they want to get O’Sullivan back, to pick his brains, behind closed doors and try and figure out what went wrong before coming out and saying what is what, I don’t know. Maybe they’re hoping to persuade him to “agree terms” and don’t want to force their hand yet? Who can tell.

But this isn’t something that can be solved with a quick fix. I’d've had no problem^[7] with us going home had we played to our potential and still been defeated. But, *shrug* we didn’t. We seemed lacking in strategy. lacking in skills. Lacking in just about anything that a rugby team needs to play. And I haven’t even mentioned the whole substitution fiasco.

Of course the RWC isn’t over yet. There are still a whole heap of teams left in the competitions. And I’ve made my decisions and I shall be supporting: France when they play^[8] the All Blacks ; Argentina when they play Scotland^[9] ; Fiji when they play^[10] South Africa ; England^[11] when they play^[12] Australia.

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Title was something one of the commentators said after we started so well and people began to think, hey, maybe, just maybe…

Talk about entertaining rugby matches. Okay, so we might not have had the “free-flowing champagne” rugby that certain quarters yearn for, but for sheer tension and not knowing what was going to happen this opener to the World Cup was more than sufficient. And 17-12 to Argentina! I’m delighra.

Although maybe I shouldn’t be. Will we now face a backlash from France. Had Les Bleus suffered their version of the “Croke Park nerves” that we suffered in the Six Nations, and if so will they try to do to us what we did to England? And is this just the boost that Argentina need? Now that they’ve proved “they exist” they’ll be aiming to push on and win all their pool matches.

I still have a good feeling about this RWC. I think we’ll do well. I was flicking between the coverage on TV3 and Setanta Sports and so caught both Denis Hickie and Eddie O’Sullivan giving their reaction. Hickie was his usual sensible self, saying that it would really affect the players, they have to concentrate on their own matches and playing the game the way they want to. They don’t want to have to worry about what other teams are doing. And O’Sullivan seemed to come away with positives. Of course there are also the negatives. How will our scrum hold-up against the French? Their maul was also quite impressive. Still, if they use the same full-back I’m sure ROG will fling up a couple of garryowens just like Argentina did. I don’t think that the Pumas will try the same thing against us, although I would like to see it, Dempsey would have a field day.

Roll on Sunday.

Yesterday at work Bhí cúpla caílíní ag suigh in front of the desk. Psychology students. And as they were studying they were chatting^[1] and got on to discussing suicide.^[2] Now I’ve always felt that suicide is something of a selfish act, because lets face it, it is the people left behind who have to deal with the aftermath. But at the same time, if someone is contemplating suicide then obviously they have problems.

But one of the girls was dead certain that it was only ever selfish people who committed suicide.

Some of the others made half-hearted attempts to persuade her that usually those with suicidal tendencies weren’t ag iarracht daoine eile a gortaithe but she was having none of it.

And her a psychology student! Lack of understanding of what.

Since the O’Gara-incident^[3] I’ve been reading a few comments from those on both sides of the argument. And it never ceases to amaze me how vitriolic people can be in defence of something they know nothing about.

First of all nobody, apart from those actually involved know what happened. You can watch all the you tube vidjos you want, they don’t show what happened. And they don’t show the mental processes of what went on. They do however show Donncha O’Callaghan being punched in response to him holding on to a jersey, is this acceptable behaviour I wonder?

But for all the people screaming that Eddie O’Sullivan should resign and utter a grovelling apology to all Scotland? Well, ye can dream on. Not going to happen. Do I think O’Sullivan should’ve said what he said? No, not so soon afterwards, not until he knew as much as possible. However, presuming that what he said was true then he would have been remiss if he had said nothing. As for the Scottish players? Well, they are all innocent until proven otherwise, and nothing has been proven. So therefore, they are innocent.

And comments about smoke and fire are never welcome.

If it ROG really was choked deliberately, and if the players think that that happened, I think we’ll all find out about it the next time Ireland play Scotland.

Then again, life is so much more entertaining when you leap to conclusions without thinking. Let’s all shout Dúnmharú! nó iarraidh dhúnmharaithe without thinking. Accusations are what make the world go round after all, don’t you agree.

fx: gollum-type-voice “dúnmhartóir! fuathaím thú”

Well now, what to say about Saturday’s rugby? Do I use the old “a win is a win” cliché? Or the fact that Ireland won despite not really playing well is a sign of a good team? Or do I moan that they didn’t prepare and never looked like the team that played against England?

Or do I skip all that and ask did a Scottish player try, allegedly, to kill Ronan? Or what was Eddie hoping to achieve by bringing that up in a press conference? Or should I simply despair of RTE’s commentators who didn’t see the incident at all. Supposed to be watching the match they made no mention of ROG going limp on the pitch, or of John Hayes putting him in the recovery position, or of that seeming to be the reason the ref blew up when he did? Maybe they have the excuse that they were watching the play continue, but that doesn’t really work because Ronan was at the bottom of the pile of bodies, and I could clearly see that something was very wrong. As could everyone else around me. And we were watching in a pub, with not a fantastic view.

Or maybe we’ll just ask, how upset would you be if you were Welsh? Or should you have known that it’d take longer than ten seconds to make it to the line-out and so you should have gone for the draw?

Talking points that I’m sure will fill column inches.