Babbling 'brook

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...

Sad news, such a skilful player, lovely to watch. As Triminjus said 'He makes the game look easy. This guy is CLASS.' Clermont will live in the memory, but my outstanding memory of him will be his match-turning cameo against Bath in the Rec, when he came on and gave us a spark at centre and enabled ...

Leave it to Beaver. Surely time for a reprieve!

Double post.

I would be very, very surprised if O'Leary was ever used at international level again. He had fundamental flaws in his game that he got away with during the 2008-09 era breakdown interpretations, when it scarcely mattered how quickly you passed the ball to the 10, because the ball was going skywards...

Murray is looking increasingly like the most important player in the Munster team this year. He still has some kinks to iron out of his game - he can spend too long faffing about at the ruck, as we all know - but he showed on the Lions tour that he is a pretty complete player when he's at his best. ...

What silliness. Obviously a reference to the ground and not the fans, only an idiot would fail to see it. It's a great banner. Witty, smart, and a little bit of a take-back of a stereotype that has followed us around for years but is now long sice dead. It says that we're comfortable enough in our o...

The cut of the shorts is all wrong. They really do look like soccer shorts. At the risk of getting into homoerotic territory, rugby players should wear short shorts.