Earls scores against England - photo from BBC site (linked)

After a disasterous visit to Paris and a very disappointing performance against the French, Ireland have got their 2010 Six Nations campaign back on track with a hard-fought victory in Twickenham.

It was by no means a classic performance, made more of grit and determination rather than a champagne performance. A huge amount of tackles put in by the Irish line, with the vast majority of possession to England.

A Win Is A Win

My post-match reaction was huge disappointment – we won, but just. The performance wasn’t what I hoped for: we didn’t see the back-lash against England after our Paris trip. But in hindsight, there is truth in the old sports clique – a win is a win. I went to so many 5 Nations games in Lansdowne Road with poor performances AND poor results so I have to be happy with the gritty victories.

There were some good performances across the board but for me the MOTM was Tommy Bowe who had a wonderful couple of tries.

I didn’t really have an opinion either way about Martin Johnson before this game – he’s a tough character but you have to have some respect for someone with his background in the game. However, I lost most of that respect after watching his post-match interview. You can take a look for yourself. Defeats are unpleasant for any manager, but a little graciousness wouldn’t go awry.

Video replays show that he controlled the ball with his hand at least twice, and possibly 3 times, in a split second incident 13 minutes into extra-time of the France-Ireland World Cup Qualifying Playoff.

Because of the resulting goal, France won, Ireland lost and won’t take part in World Cup South Africa 2010.

The referee missed the blatent (on replay!) handball at the time. Irish players, management and officials were incensed that such an obvious foul could be missed. Within 2 hours of the incident, 2000+ people had joined the Thierry Henry should apologise to Ireland Facebook group.

But is Henry a cheat and a thief? Well, honestly, I think that’s not relevant.

Sure, you can call him a cheat for his (probably instinctive) reaction, and hold it against him. If he was Irish, would we be complaining? I’d put money down that he himself was surprised the ref didn’t call him on it*. I also think that every sports person on the planet would admit that they occasionally cheat, whether it be deliberate or accidental. That’s why we have referees.

*Update: Henry post-match says virtually identical to the above:

I will be honest, it was a handball. But I’m not the ref. I played it, the ref allowed it. That’s a question you should ask him. – Henry

Damien Duff said he doesn’t blame Henry, and that he or Robbie would have tried it and would expect the ref/linesman to catch it.

An angry Twenty Major says we shouldn’t blame FIFA for our players squandering all those chances, and I’m 100% in agreement.

The real fault here lies with the wendybal football authorities on a different issue – they should have brought in video referral for controversial incidents like this one before now.  Every rugby fan is familiar with the question “Is there any reason why I cannot award this try?”. How about a bit of that on the soccer pitch?

Many (most?) professional sports have video or photo evidence: rugby union, rugby league, cricket’s 3rd umpire, tennis, American football, even the photo finish in horse racing and athletics, the list goes on.

I think the real topic in this incident is that soccer needs to bring in video evidence now. Enough of the stupid experiments with goal-line referees – let’s get the computers and videos in there.

Finally, Henry didn’t knock Ireland out. Even after the controversial goal Ireland still had to score just a single goal from the myriad of chances that we squandered. We cost ourselves – but it’s nice to have a scapegoat as we wallow in yet another glorious defeat.

A shock and total surprise. Sad news for Ulster and Irish rugby, Matt is a gentleman and a superb coach and will be greatly missed.

Sources: last few minutes of the Ruggamatrix podcast, transcribed by mikerob over on the UAFC board:

LK: “the other news this way.. who is catching a flight home.. is Matt Williams… is finished up at Ulster… they’ve moved that on as well… they are looking for a new coach… which is a bit of a surprise actually.. anyway”
Presenter: “He’s done quite a good job up there Les hasn’t he? .. brought that team together in the end”
LK: “Yeah.. got a lot of young kids coming through”
Presenter: “What happened?”
LK: “… I think he had another year but… I don’t know the true details… but I know that decision was made.. I just found out an hour or two ago myself … no one was expecting anyway..”

More news as we get it.

Leinster beat Munster 25-6 in the 2009 Heineken Cup Semi Final, a reversal of the 2006 result

What a win! What a glorious, glorious win! Here’s some pictures from the wonderful occasion, and it certainly was a massive win for rugby and Ireland, as well as Leinster. After my previous post being a humorous response to the drubbing Munster gave Leinster, it’s a massive turn around.

Fantastic performance all around from Leinster. 1-15 were immense. Actually, given the growing injury list, the squad, 1-25 were immense. Leo, Mal, Cian, BOD (BOD, BOD!), Rocky, Stan, Luke, Felipe…. poor Felipe: I genuinely shed a tear when I saw his face when he had to limp off. A massive player for Leinster, he deserves the biggest accolades we can give him. A real pity to lose him (though a bigger picture positive for Irish rugby to allow us develop an indigenous outhalf).

All of them were immense. Isa did incredibly well at fullback, we were seriously worried about that selection – but with Super Rob sick, and Legend Girvan injured, we had no choice. Isa, you did yourself proud.

Brian O’Driscoll summed it up perfectly:

We had lost twice to Munster this season and we really felt we owed them one.

People had questioned our pride and passion, but I think we answered our critics. Munster are a team that pride themselves on their physicality and we had to work hard to match them. They are a great team and have been the standard bearers for such a long time.

I don’t think anyone doubts Leinster’s passion after this win.

I think some elements of the Munster-Leinster rivalry is getting out of hand. I don’t know if that’s because of the new fans being attracted to the game, if it’s because Munster have had such success recently, or what it is. I’ve caught myself thinking some thoughts I’m not very proud of a couple of times after meeting some fans who brought certain views to the table.

As far as I know, and please correct me in the comments (linking a source) if I’m wrong, of their last 10 meetings, honours are shared 5 each. In fact, of all matches historically to date (May 6th 2009) I believe that it’s exactly evens. Fans of both teams, and all Irish rugby fans, need to be aware that success can be fleeting. We need to all avoid being bad winners.

I’ll leave the last word on this to a Limerick man. From the Irish Independent Myopic Munster fans a blight on old rivalry:

By Billy Keane
This Leinster-Munster rivalry is beginning to annoy me. It has gone too far and has Tom Tommed off in the wrong direction.

I can’t handle the crowing after beating Leinster. If you want to motivate the opposition, there’s no better way than by poking fun at them, or by belittling their efforts.

We are all mixed up in the melting saucepan that is this little country. For me it has never been a question of being against Leinster — I’m just for Munster.

Those of us who cheered on our Grand Slam heroes in Cardiff didn’t care what province the winners came from; indeed, there was a spontaneous singing tribute in Thomond last Sunday when the Munster fans reprised Tommy Bowe’s greatest hit — ‘The Black Velvet Band’.

And that brings us to the last reason for being nice to Leinster — the bookies have it completely wrong and Leinster do have a chance. The All-Ireland semi-final will be some battle.

So, let’s go easy on Leinster just in case they flay us with our own words.

Wise words there in hindsight :)

Leicester Tigers:

For England – Scotland, I think this is a close game, if Scotland perform like they did in the first half against Ireland then they have a change of winning this game. On the other hand, England started off the Championship so poorly, and I really didn’t rate them (or Johnson who seems more like a captain than a manager). But England have picked it up and played well the last couple of games, resulting in a thrashing of France. Given the home ground advantage, I’ll call this as England by 7 points: England 22 – 15 Scotland.

On to the big game of the day at Cardiff. Lots of people have written off Ireland because we haven’t won the grand slam since 1948, because we’re competing with NZ for the title of top chokers of world rugby, because we’re nervous, etc. I’m happy enough to go into the game as underdog according to most bookies.

First of all the Championship. Wales might beat this Irish side, but it is highly, highly unlikely that they’ll put up more than 13 points against us. Ireland will end today as Six Nations Champions.

Ok, to the real business of the day, Ireland’s potential Grand Slam. This is tough against a good Welsh team who will be doing their damnedest to get revenge on the Irish for many recent beatings in international rugby and club competitions, and to stop us from doing what they could not do this year. Honestly I think the game will be extremely close, but I think this Ireland squad under Kidney just has a psychological edge, a new mental strength, that we didn’t have under EOS. Ireland to win the game by 2 points to win the Grand Slam.

You can follow my updates on Twitter @AMcDermott where I’ll be ranting and raving as the games go on.

I didn’t see much of the Italian visit to Twickenham, what little I did see was predictable but nothing awe-inspiring from England. From the Italian performance they’re still the whipping boys of the 6N, although Scotland look like they might be racing Italy to this years Wooden Spoon.

Ireland had a wonderful start to the championship with a fantasic win over a decent French side at GAA headquarters. France had an experimental but dangerous side and it was real back and forth stuff. Ireland managed to keep the penalty count lower than the French, and with a couple of really spectacular tries from both sides, it was a pleasure to watch. Eventually I think our experience and team play won out, I’m really happy we didn’t let them back in before the final whistle like we might have last year. Great defensive performance there. Particularly delighted for the 3 try scorers – Heaslip for show-casing himself in the Lions selection year, and BOD and D’arcy for both getting deserved scores and coming back into form after a quiet 12 months (particularly for the injured D’arcy). The photo shows my view of the pitch – I was in the middle of a huge crowd of really sound French guys, fantastic folks and not a sore loser amongst them after the game.

Wales are getting rave reviews after what was probably the most boring Six Nations game I’ve seen in years. They are the defending champions, and I expect they’ll improve hugely, particularly by the time we meet them in the last round, but I think the BBC et al are going a little over the top based on a yawn-inspiring performance against a pathetic Scotland team who did their best to knock themselves out. Literally.

I think Williams will enjoy watching the replay of Webster going for a smashing tackle only to knock himself unconscious, and what back wouldn’t want to smile about a tight-head prop knocking himself out after going for a dirty in-the-air hit? btw good call from Alain Roland on Webster, the medico’s should have taken him off the pitch immediately.

Aside: On that point, it’s something that happened during a J4 match recently, one of my teammates took a bang to the head and went down like a tonne of bricks. He immediately rolled up on his feet and continued playing, and noone insisted he go off. In hindsight and after some post-match discussion we agreed it was bad form to have him continue and I very much regret not following my first instinct in forcing a substitution. For all of us, amateurs and pro’s alike, let’s bear in mind that head injuries aren’t to be messed about with, and ignore the player if they want to play on, it’s not worth the risk.

@joescanlon rightly recommended that I mention @patrickphelan‘s analysis of the Twitter #merde tag which people were using to flag tweets related to this game – great work there Patrick!

If you know of another good 6N round 1 post please mention it in the comments.

The canal route was pleasant, and I don’t regret cycling it, but now that I’ve done it, I think I’ll stick to a road route in future – the canal section was just too slow and wasted a lot of time early in the day. If I was on my hardtail my average speed would have been a lot better on the canal section (but not on the road ) I did take quite a few photos, but had the camera in my bar bag so that didn’t slow me up much at all. Will post all 4 videos I took while moving onto YouTube, first here: Royal Canal

Flickr set with all pictures is here

Fuel strategy was good. I made an enormous pasta bake the evening before (enough for 6 people ), ate it for dinner that night, and for breakfast, lunch and dinner on the cycle. Had 1.5l of DIY sports drink (oj/water/salt/sugar), and a camelbak of plain water. Bought some sweets (see pics) towards the 100km mark when I thought it might prevent bonk, though I was still going strong – increasing speed in fact!

The route was along the towpaths from Croke Park as far as Kilcock, then after that I was on the old N4 for most of the way. I’ve thought a lot about the next route that I’ll do, Dublin-Mayo, I’ll write up a new post for that in a couple of weeks.

All videos will be here after YouTube processes them

By the numbers

Distance: 133km
Time: 7 hours 40 mins
Avg: 17.3 km/h (approximately 12-13 km/h on the canals, 21-22 on the road)
Mechanical: 1 (broken front fender after going over a branch)
KCals (according to HRM): 6557
Average HR: 126
Max HR: 163