Trouble adjusting to the new reality...

[darkside lightside]

Read this: Thornley on the Irish provinces in the HEC over the weekend, "Three out of four ain't bad but still plenty to improve upon"

Despite invoking the 4 Irish provinces in the title, 933 words and not only is there no summary of the Ulster match, there is no mention - literally none - of Ulster whatsoever!!! Basically the first half is about Munster, the second half about Leinster, with an afterthought of a mini-paragraph at the end about Connacht - and absolutely sweet nanny Adams about Ulster!

Gerry has obviously entered a 'stick your fingers in your ears and close your eyes, and it might all go away' phase, and is hoping that next week Glasgow will do a job on Ulster, and then he can heave a sigh of relief and go back to occasionally, patronisingly, throwing Ulster a bone in his articles (a throwaway paragraph at the end of a Munster/Leinster love-in commending Ulster's "promising youth" but sadly lamenting their inability to quite break through to the top table just yet)

What will the poor guy do if Ulster keep this up???

[ruckover]

DL...read the name of the author.

And now you realise why Ulster aren't mentioned.

[fuzzylogic]

I can sort of understand why there is no mention of Ulster and why he doesnt write too much about us in general.

While rugby, north and south of the border is an all ireland sport, Ulster rugby is predominantly a Northern Ireland interest while Munster, Leinster and Connacht are all R.O.I teams.

You just have to look at who he is writing for. The Irish Times main readership is south of the border and to many due to all sorts from the past Ulster is Northern Ireland. I mean, even to take a look at the paper, out of all the news articles on the main page of the site, only 1 has any relation to NI, and thats about the abortion clinic.

The Irish Times caters for its main readership, and that is south of the border.

[Bart S]

Maybe he should have written a piece congratulating himself on having called the match correctly...

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/spo ... 85656.html

[Bart S]

Just checked and he actually wrote the match report in the Irish Times, so I think he knows we exist

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/spo ... 26011.html

Agree it's a bit strange that we didn't get covered in the aforementioned article but wouldn't overreact to it. We got a decent build up article and a decent match report and as Fuzzy says, I think it's unrealistic to expect parity of coverage to Munster and Leinster, given the IT's base and readership.

[Snipe Watson]

He reported on Ulster the day after the match and the others on Monday starting the article with a nod to the four matches. It's a ROI based paper.
How precious is it possible to be?

Wonder are the and complaining that we got 615 to ourselves andthey had to share 933 with Connacht?

[Rooster]

Gerry is actually one of the few or the ROI press who turns up at Ravenhill and does the reports from there and not a second hand story from someone else or watching at home on the tv, he is a fairly frequent visitor as well not just HEC matches.

[aarons]

Read this: Thornley on the Irish provinces in the HEC over the weekend, "Three out of four ain't bad but still plenty to improve upon"

Despite invoking the 4 Irish provinces in the title, 933 words and not only is there no summary of the Ulster match, there is no mention - literally none - of Ulster whatsoever!!! Basically the first half is about Munster, the second half about Leinster, with an afterthought of a mini-paragraph at the end about Connacht - and absolutely sweet nanny Adams about Ulster!

Gerry has obviously entered a 'stick your fingers in your ears and close your eyes, and it might all go away' phase, and is hoping that next week Glasgow will do a job on Ulster, and then he can heave a sigh of relief and go back to occasionally, patronisingly, throwing Ulster a bone in his articles (a throwaway paragraph at the end of a Munster/Leinster love-in commending Ulster's "promising youth" but sadly lamenting their inability to quite break through to the top table just yet)

What will the poor guy do if Ulster keep this up???

Normally I like a witchhunt as much as the next man, but this is simply a factor of us playing on Friday night. It would be deeply unusual to hark back on Monday to a match that was already reported at length in Saturday's paper.

I look forward to Ulster being ignored in his column tomorrow though

[BaggyTrousers]

Was about to post the link to Thornley's comprehensive match report but see Bart has already done so.

Another petty kick out at a favoured target DL ? Thought you had improved of late, consider that high praise by the way.

[Amiga500]

This complaining at the Southern "meeja" is more than a little embarrassing IMO.

We have a number of papers that discuss UR at length, like the Newsletter, Tellylaugh or Irish News. We pretty much have a dedicated TV channel for the league games in BBC2 NI. (Or failing that, BBC Alba or S4C.)

How much print do any of the Northern papers dedicate to Leinster/Munster/Connacht?
How many Leinster/Munster/Connacht matches does BBC2 cover? (When they aren't playing us.)

To me, it smells like wee-man with a cowboy supper on his shoulder syndrome or worse, the undertones of political/religious bullshit. Hopefully its the former.



Anyway, I believe the TV contracts with RTÉ and BBC do break the matches down along the lines of Ulster = BBC, Connacht, Leinster Munster = RTÉ, Interpros = both.

[ColinM]

Probably better reading both days press before starting a daft thread.

And if he had talked about Ulster in a "Needs improvement" article just hours from a 5 pointer against French Heiny opposition he probably also would have had a thread

I've had the opportunity to speak to Thornley a few times at Ravers, he visits often as Rooster says and have nothing against him. I will say he is very knowledgeable and some folk could do worse than to take heed from his words as he is rarely very wide of the mark IMO

[OneMore]

This complaining at the Southern "meeja" is more than a little embarrassing IMO.

We have a number of papers that discuss UR at length, like the Newsletter, Tellylaugh or Irish News. We pretty much have a dedicated TV channel for the league games in BBC2 NI. (Or failing that, BBC Alba or S4C.)

How much print do any of the Northern papers dedicate to Leinster/Munster/Connacht?
How many Leinster/Munster/Connacht matches does BBC2 cover? (When they aren't playing us.)

To me, it smells like wee-man with a cowboy supper on his shoulder syndrome or worse, the undertones of political/religious bullshit. Hopefully its the former.



Anyway, I believe the TV contracts with RTÉ and BBC do break the matches down along the lines of Ulster = BBC, Connacht, Leinster Munster = RTÉ, Interpros = both.

Well said.

[Cornerfleg]

Probably better reading both days press before starting a daft thread.

And if he had talked about Ulster in a "Needs improvement" article just hours from a 5 pointer against French Heiny opposition he probably also would have had a thread

I've had the opportunity to speak to Thornley a few times at Ravers, he visits often as Rooster says and have nothing against him. I will say he is very knowledgeable and some folk could do worse than to take heed from his words as he is rarely very wide of the mark IMO

Well said Colin ... by all means tear George Hook and Farrelly a new one any time you feel like pointing out their chubemanship. But if you start lambasting decent reporters it just looks like you've got a wee dick ... GT is a balanced writer and often has much food for thought about Ulster.

[OneMore]

All this sense is a bit unnerving, there's surely someone ready to pounce with an over-reaction any second now...

[darkside lightside]

Precious? I'm not offended, it's just an absolutely shocking piece of rugby journalism - it's like someone writing an article entitled "Tight at the top of the premier league" which makes no mention of Chelsea!

I have long thought that it will be interesting to see how the Irish journalists would react to an Ulster resurgence - would they genuinely embrace it, or would there be a lot of through-gritted-teeth begrudgery? I'm inclined to maybe think the latter, hopefully we find out this season - but actually in the case of Thornley, what I have come to believe is that he doesn't have a big prejudice in favour of Munster or Leinster, or against Ulster - he simply has a big prejudice in favour of the status quo.

He's all for the easy life, where he can dash off articles-by-number on Munster overcoming with 'heart and passion', Leinster 'oozing class' and 'purring like a Rolls Royce', with a couple of notes around the fringes about Ulster 'just coming up short once again' and Connacht being outclassed despite a 'plucky, scrapping performance' - lace it with a few bons mots en français, and the mugs will lap it up... Money for nothing. So for him, a new world where Munster's time at the top suddenly ends, and where things suddenly click for Ulster, is like a blast of icy air round the knackers - which is why, with every finger crossed, he called the match at Ravenhill for them; here's an interesting quote from him from that podcast he does, the week of the Munster game, for the inexplicably adulatory following he seems to have on here:

Ulster are the stronger team, but Munster are the stronger province

hmm