European Cup Semi-Final: Away to La Rochelle, Sunday 2nd of May 3pm

[Keith]

But I thought there was no flu though??

No I'm talking about the fact your family got flu means masks have zero impact on viral spread.

I mean your individual example there just proves that point right? And the fact you're working in an FDI site just makes it even more impactful.

For some reason.

It's amazing isn't it...

[Oldschoolsocks]

FDI is a TLA for Foreign Direct Investment.
Does it have another meaning.
CDC date 5th May 2020, how out of date do you want to be?
Flu epidemic or season.
COVID isn't the flu but for some strange reason there was virtually no flu season in the winter just past.
Nobody is claiming that masks are a panacea but useless and/or dangerous is well wide of the mask.

No flu except for the fact that me and my whole family had the flu in November... again I work on the biggest FDI sites in Ireland.

that didn't happen

[Keith]

FDI is a TLA for Foreign Direct Investment.
Does it have another meaning.
CDC date 5th May 2020, how out of date do you want to be?
Flu epidemic or season.
COVID isn't the flu but for some strange reason there was virtually no flu season in the winter just past.
Nobody is claiming that masks are a panacea but useless and/or dangerous is well wide of the mask.

No flu except for the fact that me and my whole family had the flu in November... again I work on the biggest FDI sites in Ireland.

that didn't happen

You got me.

[neiliog93]

There was little flu for two reasons:

1.Social distancing, restrictions etc. limited flu spread.
2.When a particular virus is very prevalent, it is unlikely that another will also become endemic. This is because one virus circulating widely causes people's levels of interferon to go up, an anti-viral replication substance produced by the body, which will significantly decrease the chances of infection with another respirator virus.
3.There are bad flu years and good flu years. Last year was probably one of the good ones.

For the match, I also said we should go for Skelton when he became available and was sneered at by some, who said that Irish provinces can't afford top international second rows. Then Munster went out and got Snyman (and almost du Toit as well..).

[curates_egg]

The turning point for me was replacing Ruddock with Baird. Baird has many great attributes and will be (and indeed is) a serious player for us. He's not a breakdown guy however - we should have brought Fardy on. Its easy to be wise after the event, after all we were going well at the time, but we conceded so many penalties at the breakdown - which contributed to the 15 points we handed to them from the tee

Same feckin event and same mistake again as Sarries.

[RoboProp]

FDI is a TLA for Foreign Direct Investment.
Does it have another meaning.
CDC date 5th May 2020, how out of date do you want to be?
Flu epidemic or season.
COVID isn't the flu but for some strange reason there was virtually no flu season in the winter just past.
Nobody is claiming that masks are a panacea but useless and/or dangerous is well wide of the mask.

No flu except for the fact that me and my whole family had the flu in November... again I work on the biggest FDI sites in Ireland.

FDI, I'm still waiting.
This is starting to feel like Peter and his three denials of any association with JON.

I've a cousin prof of medicine, taught herself Japanese as a teenager, has lectured in Tokyo. She's beyond smart. A while ago she was headhunted by the CDC ( can you guess what her speciality is ) Early doors she told me to wear a mask, so I'll take her advice over Larry, Curly and Moe, you know yourself

[Logorrhea]

Could someone point me towards or link the LaRochelle match thread?

[carlow man]

The turning point for me was replacing Ruddock with Baird. Baird has many great attributes and will be (and indeed is) a serious player for us. He's not a breakdown guy however - we should have brought Fardy on. Its easy to be wise after the event, after all we were going well at the time, but we conceded so many penalties at the breakdown - which contributed to the 15 points we handed to them from the tee

Same feckin event and same mistake again as Sarries.

The exact same happened. Fardy was left out last time against sarries and we missed him badly. Same again today. Baird isnt big enough or physical enough to be pitched in against a pack that size at this stage of his career. We needed someone like him to come on at 60 mins. I accept hes better ball carrier than fardy but we needed to be cuter, not play into their hands. We really to sign a big brute of a lock to help out JR. That lad is being asked to do too much and his body will be shot by the time he's 30. He needs help, being asked to run the lineout, be the pack leader, carry over and over again, hit rucks and overpower people is too much for a player with a bit of history with hia and operations on his shoulders this early in his career.

[curates_egg]

The turning point for me was replacing Ruddock with Baird. Baird has many great attributes and will be (and indeed is) a serious player for us. He's not a breakdown guy however - we should have brought Fardy on. Its easy to be wise after the event, after all we were going well at the time, but we conceded so many penalties at the breakdown - which contributed to the 15 points we handed to them from the tee

Same feckin event and same mistake again as Sarries.

The exact same happened. Fardy was left out last time against sarries and we missed him badly. Same again today. Baird isnt big enough or physical enough to be pitched in against a pack that size at this stage of his career. We needed someone like him to come on at 60 mins. I accept hes better ball carrier than fardy but we needed to be cuter, not play into their hands. We really to sign a big brute of a lock to help out JR. That lad is being asked to do too much and his body will be shot by the time he's 30. He needs help, being asked to run the lineout, be the pack leader, carry over and over again, hit rucks and overpower people is too much for a player with a bit of history with hia and operations on his shoulders this early in his career.

We need to hire Pavlov.
It’s Groundhog Day.
Fool me once.
Some other metaphor...

Seriously though. We were buggered by injuries and were always going to struggle in the last third. But I see no point in having Fardy on the bench. That was one thing we could control. Would it have changed things? Who knows?
But we needed grunt and experience from 20-60 minutes and he is the blindingly obvious choice for that.

[neiliog93]

Next season, we'll likely have Porter and Furlong on the field at the same time, with a veteran but still effective Healy to come off the bench, along with 6'3", 132kg Polynesian Michael Alaalatoa. Then add in Leavy and/or Connors in the back row.

The above scenario plus a true enforcer second row (du Toit, de Jager, even a Damnian Browne), and we might well have won today.

[Blueberry]

Next season, we'll likely have Porter and Furlong on the field at the same time, with a veteran but still effective Healy to come off the bench, along with 6'3", 132kg Polynesian Michael Alaalatoa. Then add in Leavy and/or Connors in the back row.

The above scenario plus a true enforcer second row (du Toit, de Jager, even a Damnian Browne), and we might well have won today.

Brad Thorn.....

[curates_egg]

Baird is a phenomenal athlete. Still not sure where he fits in for us though.

Generally not that optimistic about our squad going forward in this competition. Question marks across the pitch, once we have a few injuries.
Hopefully/presumably the EPRC reverts to non-Kolpak limits next season. But still.

[MylesNaGapoleen]

- thought LAR adapted to ref quicker than we did..he blew really quickly for turnovers (for both sides)
- thought we lacked something up front when rudders went off.
- LAR deserved the win. Gutted, but, fair play.

Yeah Ruddock a big loss, certainly we needed every mm of physical lumpishness.....

fair play to LAR in the second half they bossed us. their back row is savage. final will be a good one.

[neiliog93]

Baird is a phenomenal athlete. Still not sure where he fits in for us though.

Generally not that optimistic about our squad going forward in this competition. Question marks across the pitch, once we have a few injuries.
Hopefully/presumably the EPRC reverts to non-Kolpak limits next season. But still.

Yeah, we'll still make the knock-out stages and possibly even finals, but we probably won't win it without one or two monstrous forwards. We are still amongst the best in Europe, but a very small number of teams (Saracens, if and when they return, La Rochelle, and possibly Toulouse and Racing), simply have too much for us physically and athletically.

[fourthirtythree]

Bizarre that Leinster fans are arguing about masks instead of what happened on the pitch.

There's nothing to argue about what happened on the pitch!

Bang on.

To be fair there's nothing to be argued about the efficacy of masks on combating SARS virus spread either, but more people are likely to do so. We were comprehensively beaten and that's that. There were things we could have done better, a few pieces of luck that went wrong, and a rather... stupid yellow card to be honest but the reality is the scoreline looked better than the actual game. Well done La Rochelle. Had our number.

[Oldschool]

Could someone point me towards or link the LaRochelle match thread?

Try This.
viewtopic.php?p=781333#p781333
Or this might be better.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=25678

[lummix]

Better team won today fair play to La Rochelle hope they go onto win it.

I think it was a bad decision today to bring baird on for ruddock, once he was off the pack lacked serious physicality. I think fardy has more of the dog and fight you need in a game like that.

[ronk]

In 2021 we're won 9 lost 4, and we lost our share by not playing smart enough. We put out a strong team but there really wasn't a body of form for a lot of guys and the Munster match wasn't good preparation.

It looked like the squad was getting over the injury hump after Exeter but it wasn't really to be. It's been a long hard year and it has the feel of one of those days where you get a player sent off after 5 minutes but really only fade in the last 5.

I thought it was set to be a great year for the provinces but Ulster yesterday really got me worried. We spent a lot of time playing interpros and maybe it wasn't the standard as much as it was getting stale against the same well known opposition.

There's a changing of the guard post Saracens and we're up there but we're underdogs. We also have to earn it rather than expect to get it. I still think the best path is to build with what we have rather than try to be someone else.

We'll see what damage the Lions does. But I think we should develop hard outside of there and give guys a shot (while still using Fardy etc.)

[Dave Cahill]

In 2021 we're won 9 lost 4, and we lost our share by not playing smart enough. We put out a strong team but there really wasn't a body of form for a lot of guys and the Munster match wasn't good preparation.

It looked like the squad was getting over the injury hump after Exeter but it wasn't really to be. It's been a long hard year and it has the feel of one of those days where you get a player sent off after 5 minutes but really only fade in the last 5.

I thought it was set to be a great year for the provinces but Ulster yesterday really got me worried. We spent a lot of time playing interpros and maybe it wasn't the standard as much as it was getting stale against the same well known opposition.

There's a changing of the guard post Saracens and we're up there but we're underdogs. We also have to earn it rather than expect to get it. I still think the best path is to build with what we have rather than try to be someone else.

We'll see what damage the Lions does. But I think we should develop hard outside of there and give guys a shot (while still using Fardy etc.)

It has been a very disjointed season with COVID playing a huge part in that disruption. Games called off, schedules shifted, players in bubbles along with the normal everyday disruptions of injuries - really mitigated against building a consistant selection (in either Europe or the Pro14) and a run of form. Same for all the provinces of course, and France and Britain had their own set of disruptions too.

[yellabelly1961]

The turning point for me was replacing Ruddock with Baird. Baird has many great attributes and will be (and indeed is) a serious player for us. He's not a breakdown guy however - we should have brought Fardy on. Its easy to be wise after the event, after all we were going well at the time, but we conceded so many penalties at the breakdown - which contributed to the 15 points we handed to them from the tee

Same feckin event and same mistake again as Sarries.

The exact same happened. Fardy was left out last time against sarries and we missed him badly. Same again today. Baird isnt big enough or physical enough to be pitched in against a pack that size at this stage of his career. We needed someone like him to come on at 60 mins. I accept hes better ball carrier than fardy but we needed to be cuter, not play into their hands. We really to sign a big brute of a lock to help out JR. That lad is being asked to do too much and his body will be shot by the time he's 30. He needs help, being asked to run the lineout, be the pack leader, carry over and over again, hit rucks and overpower people is too much for a player with a bit of history with hia and operations on his shoulders this early in his career.