Babbling 'brook

I consider the Guardian's football coverage to be the best out there. I'm not even that big of a football fan but Wilson, Liew, Ronay, Nick Ames etc are worth reading. Their rugby coverage is remarkably sleepy. Another Robert Kitson preview and I've scrolled through after 2 paragraphs. His writing i...

Makes no sense. They've applied to host European Championship fixtures etc

Policing has to be top notch

The decision to play Zebo at 15 is truly remarkable. Especially with Ross Byrne ar 10. Byrne is always fired up to face Munster and takes immense joy in scoring and winning against them, especially in Limerick. With ball in his hand early in the game, 60 yards from the Munster try line, Byrne will l...

Dublin, much like every Irish town and cuty, has far too many skangers and scumbags. I heard Leo before saying the anti social problems were caused by covid. This is complete nonsense. I left Ireland in 2009. When I go back every year to see family, the city is a f%~king dump but so many of the comm...

The shite talk is unbearable, build you up to beat you down. It's got to the stage that I turn it all off now. I haven't looked at/read one media preview of this weekends game. When it came to that part of ATH on RTE I just turned it off. I've made the conscious effort to not listen to any of it, I...

The scrum is such a mess now, I can't believe there's so much argued on these pages about. This game showed our scrum is amazing. Yeh but this game showed our scrum to be weak. Referee's interpretation plays such a vital role now. Our scrum could simply look great/awful depending on who has the whis...

Always thought Johnny Holland was a decent bloke and a good (but not amazing) pundit. One thing he tends to do is ask the presenter to fill in gaps in his information which I thought was weird. In the recent RTE pod about Conway, Holland seemed to be under the impression Conway would not be a good b...

I'd be pretty sure there's plenty of words in Zulu worse than "White C***" that Bongi could have used. Makes me sceptical of the incident if I'm honest. Not if he wanted Curry to understand him I certainly hope that no suspensions emerge from an incident such as this. Trying to police ver...

I'd be pretty sure there's plenty of words in Zulu worse than "White C***" that Bongi could have used. Makes me sceptical of the incident if I'm honest. Just read on twitter that white kant means the ball is on the English side from a SA perspective. I just had this conversation with two ...

This is the worsr RWC I can remember. Sure, 2007 or 2011 might have less quality but the hype around this tournament is not remotely close to being matched on the field. Rugby is in a weird place now where some games you see scheduled (Fra v NZ v Ireland v SA) could go on to be the greatest games ev...

RL is on a par with soccer in terms of understanding what is going on for a non-RL viewer. No lineouts. uncontested 6-man scrums (3-2-1). no rucks - a tackled player has to put the ball through his legs and roll it backwards to a team mate. if they haven't scored a try within 6 tackles, they have t...

Rassie talking about how other teams didn't rotate, mostly us and he did. https://www.the42.ie/rassie-springboks-ireland-6199607-Oct2023/ But we had 3 games, bye, game. They had 4 games bye. We used 2 matches as warm up and then had a weeks break between our critical pool games. We could have gone ...

I know it sounds obvious but we also really need more input from the other provinces now. One Ulster born player in the 23 is a terrible return ("best back-line in Europe" etc).

What happens between now ans 2027 will be interesting. It always is. 1 Cian Healy INJURED 2 Rory Best (Captain) RETIRED 3 Tadhg Furlong NO CHANGE 4 Iain Henderson NO CHANGE 5 James Ryan INJURED 6 Peter O'Mahony NO CHANGE 7 Josh van der Flier NO CHANGE 8 CJ Stander RETIRED 9 Conor Murray BENCH 10 Joh...

And now we move forward without Sexton. We have 4 years to find a new 10, probably a new 9, maybe a new centre pairing, new backrow etc. In most positions that need change or change just happens organically, I'm not worried. But 10. 10 is uncertain.

The World Cups are very cruel and to Ireland more than most. All the hard work under Andy Farrell and friends doesn't come to an end because they lost this one game, but World Cups are career and life altering, 6N is not. We can all pick individual or team errors or mistakes that ended up 28-24 but ...

Strange to be looking at Kilcoyne. He arrived off the bench in the 76th minute. Maybe if Healy was on the bench Porter could have gone earlier, but Porter was on the field for the scrum penalties. I thought he had an amazing game but 3 of 10 we conceded went against Porter. Not Kilcoyne. The winning...

This might sound silly but when James Lowe does something amazing, like a turnover v NZ or either incredible defensive play yesterday, it is down to unreal Irish passion, defense, and pressure. But when Lowe makes a mistake, he wide-eyed face is plastered across the TV as he apologizes to teammates ...

The Fields of Athenry are also not located in Leinster yet come Ireland games I will sing it with gusto. Nor will I begrudge Munster fans for singing it at their games Also. Music is what you make of it. Too many people hyper analyse songs to try and inflate their own sense of superiority and intel...

Ireland's green jersey is so unbelievably ugly. We generally have the worst/some of the worst shirts at a RWC, but this one is a disgrace. The white looks looks disgusting si hopefully we just wear that for every game. Tournament aren't won by having a nice kit but that doesn't look like a jersey yo...