Babbling 'brook

Voted for Heaslip. Sheer bloody-minded will to win on his part almost dragged us to a European final. Not too many players have had stellar campaigns but he has been a big player all season. Toner & Cronin had solid campaigns.

I noticed during the England Match, that the choke tackle was not really used. To me it looked like the English players were making a determined effort to get nice low body positions so they wouldn't be held up, but I do wonder if in fact it was an Irish ploy to not utilise the choke tackle and ins...

Sexton didn't break into the Leinster team until he was 23 and that was because Contepomi got injured. This is one of the strangest misconceptions I see / hear repeated ad nauseum, as though Sexton made his debut in the Heineken Cup semi final against Munster. Sexton broke through when he was aroun...

The pass was forward. This business of the trajectory of the ball should only be relevant where the passer has momentum, which he gets from running at pace, which means the pass will drift forward over the ground even if thrown backwards relative to himself 'backwards out fo the hands'). If a player...

On the Folau thing, I think it would have been a penalty but the referee was playing advantage and went back for the original penalty, which was from a more favourable angle than the would-be-Folau incident. I don't think you'd ever get a penalty try for an incident like that, there are just too man...

The mid-game/half-time interviews are so bad. It's such gimmickery, they offer nothing in the way of insight. The lines of questioning are laughable and what are the coaches going to do other than offer platitudes? When Munster were losing to Ospreys earlier this season they managed to get a mid-fir...

The game in Bath swung when we brought on Eoin O'Malley. We dominated them for most of the game in spite of playing ordinary stuff, but kept letting them off the hook. O'Malley unlocked the door and we scampered up the pitch to score the match-winning penalty after he put somebody through a gap. We ...

I'm very surprised that Munster haven't made changes in midfield, but that could be tempered by the change Saracens have made at ten. Foley is very concerned at having his only two out halves on the pitch at the same time, for 80 minutes. One of them gets crocked, we're in serious trouble. Sounds l...

Lads, the Munsterfans loons are really not worth the airtime. And it creates the impression that we think they are all like that, when most are not.

I'd say we have 1 world class player (North) two who have been world class in gethin and adam but age and injuries have taken their toll on them Then we have a group of international quality players who can be very good if they are on top form halfpenny,cuthhbert,davies,roberts, phillips ,alun wyn ...

Have a look at this clip and see what it meant to Heaslip as Paddy Jackson strolled home for the 2nd try. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-XGWHmIVeo Arms raised, back bent over. Pure delight. It's a great shot (even before the Williams-Kearney incident). You can what it meant to them. Yeah, the bod...

Bit of a mess this. Main issue is that Penney had them building towards a very specific gameplan, so question is do they try to keep going down this road (then who to bring in? Someone else from Canterbury rugby ethos?) or go down a different route (effectively throw the last two years development i...

GM, some of that could be squad development for the sake of it. Jack McGrath had a really good cameo and himself is only getting a feel for this level, would we really be better off leaving him out altogether for Kilcoyne for a match? If anything, I'd prefer to see McGrath start one match, which wou...

This will be a hard game, very hard. Difficult to see how we can win without O'Brien, but the good news is the quarter finals are like a different tournament. The Six Nations can turn everyone's season upside down. In the past it's worked against Leinster, with the players needing to be de-Kidneyed,...

I can never understand the line that 'rugby's a tough game and these things happen'. The opposite is surely the case. Because it's such a tough game the players have to be protected as well as possible, and for that reason stamping on the head has to be severely punished. Awful match by the way. The...

Do they have to be all-seaters for the tournament? I'm not sure they do. I remember sitting on a grassy knoll in Rotorua watching Ireland play Russia.

I don't think Kilcoyne has exactly been ripping it up this season. He was anonymous in the defeat to Edinburgh. By contrast, McGrath has been winning great reviews for his performances. I always had the sneaking suspicion Kilcoyne was a touch overrated down south. Good player, but not quite the best...

(15-9): J Payne, A Trimble, D Cave, L Marshall, T Bowe, P Jackson, R Pienaar; (1-8): T Court, R Best, D Fitzpatrick, J Muller (Captain), D Tuohy, R Diack, C Henry, R Wilson; Replacements (16-23): R Herring, C Black, J Afoa, L Stevenson, I Henderson, P Marshall, S Olding, M Allen No Bigus Nickus! If...

That wasn't really the story of the game at all Oldschool. Paulie did play, and Murray did start but he was probably Munster's best player by a distance. In fact he set up the first try by ignoring Paulie, who everyone expectd to get the ball before charging 50cm over the gainline. Murray skipped hi...

Didn't we reach the semi final of the HEC in 2009/10? Lost to Toulouse in France after a Brock James meltdown in the RDS QF. Topped the league that season too. Ospreys beat us in the final in the RDS. Didn't win anything but hardly bombed. You're right, we did. We didn't quite bomb, but we really s...