A whiff of Cordite

[LeRouxIsPHat]

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/ ... -1.4442187

How does the IT Sports Editor allow their resident rugby clown licence to write such rubbish? Irish rugby has three genuine pillars upon which it stands, and Cummiskey plays the smarta#@e when he conflats them with three of the biggest challenges our game faces.

He hates the game or writes as if he does. He deserves no respect and little attention.

He's like a parody of a New York film critic who just sits in the corner sneering at everyone else. He writes as if he hates rugby but was asked to cover it because someone else called in sick and is passive aggressively ensuring that he's not asked to do it again...a bit like I do when my better half gets me to do certain chores actually

[LeinsterLeader]

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/ ... -1.4442187

How does the IT Sports Editor allow their resident rugby clown licence to write such rubbish? Irish rugby has three genuine pillars upon which it stands, and Cummiskey plays the smarta#@e when he conflats them with three of the biggest challenges our game faces.

He hates the game or writes as if he does. He deserves no respect and little attention.

I don't get it. Is he being sarcastic? Is he being serious? I have a feeling he's going for both but I don't know where the 'serious' ends and the 'sarcasm' begins.

Maybe it's just me

[Dexter]

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/ ... -1.4442187

How does the IT Sports Editor allow their resident rugby clown licence to write such rubbish? Irish rugby has three genuine pillars upon which it stands, and Cummiskey plays the smarta#@e when he conflats them with three of the biggest challenges our game faces.

He hates the game or writes as if he does. He deserves no respect and little attention.

Totally agree. First thing I do on an IT rugby article is check the writer, so I don't accidentally start reading his rubbish. I've been ignoring his pieces for a long time now.

[LeinsterLeader]

Is he the one who walked into a bar in Japan after the World cup and Rob Kearney told him to "Get the Fook out!" (or am I getting him mixed up)?

[joooooe]

Is he the one who walked into a bar in Japan after the World cup and Rob Kearney told him to "Get the Fook out!" (or am I getting him mixed up)?

The very same. Whereas the rest of the world saw it as evidence of the respect in which is regarded within rugby, Gav C probably used it to add some more weight to that chip on his shoulder.

[backrower8]

The Sports Editor at The Irish Times sees rugby as a necessary evil which gives GC room to ‘express himself’.

[CiaranIrl]

This gives a bit of context to the old 'get the fook out'...

https://www.the42.ie/rugby/

[fourthirtythree]

This gives a bit of context to the old 'get the fook out'...

https://www.the42.ie/rugby/

I think you mean this. Which does explain it. Kearney had a shite time from the press and Ireland supporters who forgot the 6N Zebo played in we won nothing and he didn't score and when Rob came back in 2019 we won everything.

https://www.the42.ie/rob-kearney-book-e ... 5-Dec2020/

[CiaranIrl]

This gives a bit of context to the old 'get the fook out'...

https://www.the42.ie/rugby/

I think you mean this. Which does explain it. Kearney had a shite time from the press and Ireland supporters who forgot the 6N Zebo played in we won nothing and he didn't score and when Rob came back in 2019 we won everything.

https://www.the42.ie/rob-kearney-book-e ... 5-Dec2020/

Sorry, yes, that's exactly what I meant! Not entirely sure how my copy / paste failed there...

[blockhead]

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/ ... -1.4442187

How does the IT Sports Editor allow their resident rugby clown licence to write such rubbish? Irish rugby has three genuine pillars upon which it stands, and Cummiskey plays the smarta#@e when he conflats them with three of the biggest challenges our game faces.

He hates the game or writes as if he does. He deserves no respect and little attention.

Totally agree. First thing I do on an IT rugby article is check the writer, so I don't accidentally start reading his rubbish. I've been ignoring his pieces for a long time now.

Rob gives that gobshite way too much respect in that article. He is not even a respected journalist, why would he care about some talentless hack?
This is the moron that when replying to a clip of Owen Farrells recent high tackle retweeted "Life time ban?"
It was a bad tackle but, a life time ban? Idiot
He also wanted the Pro14 players to refuse the play in the games after the lockdown in support of BLM.
I don't think I have the vocabulary to express how low my opinion is of that loathsome sack of sh1t!

[riocard911]

What is Cummiskey spouting on about with this sentence?

"Healy is a rare, old world outhalf revisited upon the modern game."

Eh, because he's got long hair and looks like a 70s beach bum? Am I missing something?

[nc6000]

He posted this earlier but quickly deleted it - sure organising a league over multiple jurisdictions during a global pandemic should be easy.

[LeRouxIsPHat]

It’s almost like there are different people running the commercial side and the operational side.

[curates_egg]

Even reading his name enrages me.
It was bad enough when the IT rugby pages were full of Munster fanboy pieces by GT.
But this guy takes it to a whole new level: lazy, an appalling writer, zero journalistic talent and a gigantic chip on his shoulder.

For me growing up, rugby correspondent with the Irish Times would have been an absolute dream job. Not having much of a clue about the guy, the name Edmund Van Esbeck was like the name of the hero I wanted to grow up to be.
It is beyond infuriating to see that arrogant toolbox just run the rugby page into the ground - not that I read the Irish Times rugby page anymore.

Edit. I've just realised the right words to describe him are as an utter c**t. I presume the auto-censor won't allow it, but I will give it a lash anyway. Apologies to female readers if it gets through.

[fourthirtythree]

It's the Irish times. Honestly it's rugby coverage is the least of its worries. They've maintained an obsequious cheerleading of the government all the way to the highest rate of infection in the world, decided that illegal government leaks are just fine. There are lots of fine young journalists in this country offering good reporting on the government and the pandemic.

None of them are in the Irish Times.

They have no credibility with anyone under 50 (perhaps trending to 70). They were already on demographic death spiral and their own poor performance is now dooming them. They're done. Move on.

[riocard911]

It's the Irish times. Honestly it's rugby coverage is the least of its worries. They've maintained an obsequious cheerleading of the government all the way to the highest rate of infection in the world, decided that illegal government leaks are just fine. There are lots of fine young journalists in this country offering good reporting on the government and the pandemic.

None of them are in the Irish Times.

They have no credibility with anyone under 50 (perhaps trending to 70). They were already on demographic death spiral and their own poor performance is now dooming them. They're done. Move on.

Have to agree, and I'm someone grew up reading and loving the likes of Edmund van Esbeck, Sean Cronin and Donal Fallon's "Man bites dog". How the mighty have fallen.....

[curates_egg]

It's the Irish times. Honestly it's rugby coverage is the least of its worries. They've maintained an obsequious cheerleading of the government all the way to the highest rate of infection in the world, decided that illegal government leaks are just fine. There are lots of fine young journalists in this country offering good reporting on the government and the pandemic.

None of them are in the Irish Times.

I don't agree with most of that.
I think are still very good journalists in the Irish Times.
I found their coverage of the pandemic more balanced than most Irish outlets.

[Anyone relying solely on pearl-clutching millennials, working for the online publications and masquerading blue-tick opinion as journalism, got a very one-sided perspective and there was, consequently, a very skewed national debate. Certainly, that is my perception from also being exposed to the media in two other non-English-speaking countries.
Anybody now blaming the government for your infection rate, must also blame it for Ireland long being among the lowest rates in Europe in late autumn/early winter, when Ireland initially missed the second wave that spread throughout Europe.
La verite reste probablement au milieu - the severe and premature October lockdown probably sowed the seeds for what happened in December (both in terms of social behaviour and receptive infection hosts). Of course, the extent of the reopening seemed at the time to be too much, as it subsequently proved. But it is far too facile to blame the government solely for that and not take into account the wider context. Certainly, while journalists should rightly hold the government to account for its role and blame, they should also provide the context.]

Anyway, the Irish Times rugby page has been poor for a decade.
And there are certainly a few very good rugby journalists in some of the online publications (Murray Kinsella being obviously the top of the pile).

All that notwithstanding, Cummisky takes a particular biscuit.

[nc6000]

Now Michael Corcoran and Rúaidhrí O'Connor are joining in.



https://twitter.com/MichaelC_RTE/status ... 6582256640

[hugonaut]

It's the Irish times. Honestly it's rugby coverage is the least of its worries. They've maintained an obsequious cheerleading of the government all the way to the highest rate of infection in the world, decided that illegal government leaks are just fine. There are lots of fine young journalists in this country offering good reporting on the government and the pandemic.

None of them are in the Irish Times.

They have no credibility with anyone under 50 (perhaps trending to 70). They were already on demographic death spiral and their own poor performance is now dooming them. They're done. Move on.

Don't agree with that at all, 433.

I see the IT as a largely credible news source with plenty of very good journalists and writers - Conor Gallagher, Sorcha Pollak, Ruadhan Mac Cormaic, Fintan O'Toole etc. – a genuinely great sportswriter in Keith Duggan and a really good surrounding cast in Malachy Clerkin, Ian O'Riordain, Sean Moran etc. John O'Sullivan quietly does good work on the rugby side; I'd be happy if he got the Cummiskey jobs.

[LeRouxIsPHat]

I’d disagree too. It’s the only paper I ever buy (not daily) and a lot of my friends would be the same, or at least it’s the only Irish paper that they’d read online. That and the guardian are pretty much the only papers/websites we all read.

I realise this is very small example but even at the barbers (remember them?) it’s always the IT that people are looking to read from the selection that’s on the table.