Snipe Watson wrote:
Life almost invariably is unfair Shan. As you know, I'm not one for the siege mentality if there is any logic. I can see the rationale behind picking Radge over Humph or even Zebo over Gilly. What I cannot have is rediculious abuse that is poured on a particular player by elements of the southern media. Tom Court was pilloried for a bad substitute performance at tighthead when the pack as a unit were already beaten. McGurk (who I loathe) and Hook were the tormentors in chief. Pope interjected with the point that Tom is a loosie, but they weren't having it. Then some of the print morons fell into line.
Yes of course Snipe. This was one incident out of all his time but I agree it was ridiculous abuse and entirely unfair of those gowls. This is what I said at the time. It is probably what they should have said.
Simply put the scrum cost us this game. Once Ross was done for so was any chance we had given the conditions.
It's a sorry indictment of Ireland that we cannot produce 2 tight head props of reasonable standard. Healy and Court are both fine at loosehead. Court cannot play tighthead. That is not his fault.
However even at that we really need about 6 props of international standard for a 6N tournament.
In a game such as this it is difficult to really evaluate the rest of the players but what I would say is that Ryan was about the best of them. Ferris was decent enough as was Earls. The rest weren't really in it.
It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
Shan wrote:Life can be tough when things are not going your way. What are you going to do. We all have our crosses to bear. You keep going and keep the demons at bay as much as possible.
The siege mentality is way overdone though. When things are tough the hardest place to look is in the mirror. Most of the time it is where you'll find the source of the issue.
Wise words from my colleague in the red jumper, a man from the province with most to gurn about historically.
Your grace, it is easy to pick out an individual and build a case of woe around him, especially if he's keen to talk about it. The simple fact of the matter is that Angry Tom was never good enough at international level consistently, though he had some very good games, albeit not enough of them.
In my opinion, he wasn't as good for Ireland as for his province. Nothing unusual in that Plug had a great career doing the same, Quinnie? The same, there are players down the years who have looked like that might be decent at international level & weren't & with 30 plus caps, it would be hard to suggest that he didn't have chances to prove himself.
So why don't you Ulster whingers man up & stop gurning & playing the poor mouth? Just get on with it like us feckin' liginds. G'wan.
NEVER MOVE ON. Years on, I cannot ever watch Ireland with anything but indifference, I continue to wish for the imminent death of Donal Spring, the FIRFUC's executioner of Wee Paddy & Wee Stu, and I hate the FIRFUCs with undiminished passion.
Once a Knight wrote:
Since you wish to discuss "Liginds" there's no doubt that if Tom had played provincial rugby for Leinster or Munster the increases provincial exposure to the Southern meeedya would have lead to a different "narrative". There are many who are accorded ligindary status based heavily upon their provincial play.
Chyornaya - Crimea River.
It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
Shan wrote:Life can be tough when things are not going your way. What are you going to do. We all have our crosses to bear. You keep going and keep the demons at bay as much as possible.
The siege mentality is way overdone though. When things are tough the hardest place to look is in the mirror. Most of the time it is where you'll find the source of the issue.
Wise words from my colleague in the red jumper, a man from the province with most to gurn about historically.
Your grace, it is easy to pick out an individual and build a case of woe around him, especially if he's keen to talk about it. The simple fact of the matter is that Angry Tom was never good enough at international level consistently, though he had some very good games, albeit not enough of them.
In my opinion, he wasn't as good for Ireland as for his province. Nothing unusual in that Plug had a great career doing the same, Quinnie? The same, there are players down the years who have looked like that might be decent at international level & weren't & with 30 plus caps, it would be hard to suggest that he didn't have chances to prove himself.
So why don't you Ulster whingers man up & stop gurning & playing the poor mouth? Just get on with it like us feckin' liginds. G'wan.
I am not one for the Siege mentality. Perhaps living in a castle mentally prepares one to be comfortable with the notion of a siege.
In any event, my sole comment was that Tom Court was very unfairly treated. I noted the difference between Hook being pilloried for "second rate kiwi" and Tom being an Aussie import. I think there are "narratives" for players where the meeedya are concerned and my only point is that Tom Court got the rough end of it. Since you wish to discuss "Liginds" there's no doubt that if Tom had played provincial rugby for Leinster or Munster the increases provincial exposure to the Southern meeedya would have lead to a different "narrative". There are many who are accorded ligindary status based heavily upon their provincial play.
Aye ................. you say you only say that one thing but it support the bullshite of provincial bias against "one of ours".
I struggle to see that Tom Court was unfairly treated by anyone who actually matters. Don't buy into provincialist garbage, you're better than that..................... even if you're a bloody Ulsterman.
We'd have barely given TC time of day, sure most of his career, we had Marcus & the Bull, proper props & liginds. You want to see a loosie gallop about the pitch tripping people, look no further than Marcus.
NEVER MOVE ON. Years on, I cannot ever watch Ireland with anything but indifference, I continue to wish for the imminent death of Donal Spring, the FIRFUC's executioner of Wee Paddy & Wee Stu, and I hate the FIRFUCs with undiminished passion.
Russ wrote:I'm just shocked that Kilcoyne has caps to his name.
A bit part prap in the pro12 at best
Are Munster fans gurning about how badly he has been treated?
No, we've got more class than you whingers, G'wan Munster.
NEVER MOVE ON. Years on, I cannot ever watch Ireland with anything but indifference, I continue to wish for the imminent death of Donal Spring, the FIRFUC's executioner of Wee Paddy & Wee Stu, and I hate the FIRFUCs with undiminished passion.
Russ wrote:I'm just shocked that Kilcoyne has caps to his name.
A bit part prap in the pro12 at best
Are Munster fans gurning about how badly he has been treated?
No, we've got more class than you whingers, G'wan Munster.
I have a fearsome vision of you sitting in your Munster top sweltering in the heat of Johnny Diego land with a copy Eric Cairns guide to buying property in Spain whilst tapping out your thoughts to all your new comrades on Munster Fans.
What is the Spanish for "nat on my meagre stipend Juan"?
Russ wrote:I'm just shocked that Kilcoyne has caps to his name.
A bit part prap in the pro12 at best
Are Munster fans gurning about how badly he has been treated?
No, we've got more class than you whingers, G'wan Munster.
I have a fearsome vision of you sitting in your Munster top sweltering in the heat of Johnny Diego land with a copy Eric Cairns guide to buying property in Spain whilst tapping out your thoughts to all your new comrades on Munster Fans.
What is the Spanish for "nat on my meagre stipend Juan"?
From my a-level español, I think it might be:
¡No con me exiguo estipendio!
Has habido ayudado.
Baggy should enlist the help of one of those "Place in the Sun" bints and give us all a bit of daytime TV entertainment.
Volunteer at an animal sanctuary; it will fill you with joy , despair, but most of all love, unconditional love of the animals.
Big Neville Southall
I'd never chalk it down to provincial bias, xenophobia or even suggest it has anything to do with the media but I would say that, particularly in the pre-Schmidt era, there was a fairly long list of very good provincial players who, largely, looked mediocre in Ireland jerseys. Tom Court, most certainly, was one of these guys but there are others, now firmly established internationals, of whom one could say the same thing. Andrew Trimble and Rory Best immediately come to mind, although I would say the same about the likes of Cullen, Quinlan, Jennings, Fitzgerald and Geordan Murphy, for fear someone thinks I'm writing this with my little Ulstlander hat on... It's hard to put a precise cause on this - maybe these guys just weren't good enough to look good on an international pitch - but some, like Trimble and Best, have gone on to be well-established internationals.
To me, talent, capacity and quality of opposition do not, therefore, fully explain the gulf that existed between provincial form and international performances for a number of players. That Kidney and O'Sullivan both seemed to have a clear favoured "in-group", surely, is something of a contributing factor. I'm specifically thinking of Trimble destroying everything that stood in his way during the pre-2011 World Cup games, only to be jettisoned as soon as Keith Earls returned. It's difficult for me to imagine what such treatment would do to a player's confidence or their mentality when / if they got onto the park. In essence, however, it always seemed to me to suggest that, no matter what certain players did, they would always be in the "out-group", viewed as not quite good enough for the management to seriously consider. It doesn't seem surprising that some players failed to take their international opportunities...
In the case of Tom Court, it's easy to point at 32 caps and conclude that he had plenty of opportunities to make his mark. In reality, however, of those 32 caps, 24 were from the bench and in a majority of those appearance, he played fewer than 15 minutes. Of his starts, he only played the full 80 twice - against Fiji and Samoa - and only three of them came against properly competitive nations. This doesn't really point to a player being given a chance - even Tony Buckley's stats compare favourably to Tom's in this regard. No matter how well Court played (and he did play very well in a number of games, including a start at tighthead against the All Blacks in 2010), he was seldom rewarded for his performance in the next game. When you compare this to the trust that was placed in someone like Cian Healy in his early career, it's also easy to see why some players might have adverse reactions of their treatment.
I have no doubt that in 2009 when Healy made his debut and got marched backwards at an alarming pace that Court was the best loosehead in Ireland. Given what Healy has done since then, and the fact that he's seven years younger than Court, I'm happy enough to say placing this faith in Healy was the right call - but it's also difficult not to see it as a contributory factor to Court's relatively lacklustre international career. Or to see similar situations as contributors to the international fortunes of others.
As it is, I think Court was a better player than his international record and his international performances would suggest. I think he was unfairly treated by Ireland - not because he played for Ulster or because he was from Australia but because of a structural problem in two consecutive management regimes that adversely affected many other players. I'm quite sure different players would react differently to this - as I said, the likes of Best and Trimble have gone on to better things at international level. But in the case of Trimble, it involved him almost entirely disappearing off the international radar between 2011 and his comeback in the 2014 6 Nations. In Rory's case, it involved him once losing his starting place to Bernard Jackman... Given his age, that opportunity to show people otherwise didn't really come from Tom Court. Which I think is a pity - his provincial form suggested, to me at least, that he had a lot to offer on the international stage, even if he could never have been a Cian Healy.
I'm sorry if it comes across that I'm shedding any tears. I thought I was making a fairly valid point that the southern media tend to focus on the Southern teams. I don't think is bias for them to do so. Just demographics. Equally, if they had seen some of Tom Courts performances for Ulster he may well have had a different narrative to his career.
Only a bit of a joke Sir(Unfunny as it was) and a chance to post a nice picture.
I'm not overly concerned with the media as some are. Honestly I don't tend to read an awful lot of the spewings from the establishment media as such exposure can have a debilitating impact on you.
It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
Neil F - Very good points and showing yet again the value of visting this place. Think you should charge for your output. If you were paid by the word you'd be a wealthy man in a very short space of time.
It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
Shan wrote:Neil F - Very good points and showing yet again the value of visting this place. Think you should charge for your output. If you were paid by the word you'd be a wealthy man in a very short space of time.
Now, now, Shan. I'm sure the last thing anyone needs is for someone create incentives for me to be even more pleonastic...
Shan wrote:Neil F - Very good points and showing yet again the value of visting this place. Think you should charge for your output. If you were paid by the word you'd be a wealthy man in a very short space of time.
Now, now, Shan. I'm sure the last thing anyone needs is for someone create incentives for me to be even more pleonastic...
And if you were paid by the erudition of your vocabulary the Greeks would be banging on your door for a loan. Of course, maybe they'll be banging on all our doors looking for a loan pretty soon.
Being currently based in Berlin, I get the feeling the Greeks have already been round two or three times... The door is practically hanging from its hinges if you listen to the locals...
