Watch Kyle Sinckler Bullock 35m for a Superb Try

The Aviva Preimership(more highlights here) gets a bad rap for dull forward orientated rubbish. To tear up those outdated myths here is a bright young Quin shredding through the London Irish defense . His name   is Kyle Sinckler which sounds like the name of a Californian dot com millionaire he is ,in fact, a 19 stone 22 year old Harliquin.

You can view his player profile here

Here is a picture of him looking positively terrifying in an England jersey.You might be seeing a lot more of him dressed in white

Eddie Jones was the best thing in 2016 6N

Eddie Jones is brilliant coach and an  interesting fellow. He was the best thing about last years 6 nations and that’s a terrible indictment on the premier northern hemisphere rugby competition. The best thing about 8 weeks of action was a few ironic barbs delivered in a media room by a cocky little Aussie bloke. Ireland scored a nice try against Italy. Vunipola and Hogg did some nice things but an antipodean Quipster was the highlight and that should be shocking but everyone seems to have that convenient form of  amnesia. Where you cant remember the stuff you don’t want to

What happened to all the World cup post-mortems? Well we ignored them and went back to playing  zombie bash. Just a lot of dead eyed lads falling into each other grunting and pointing at their opposite man because a defensive guru from League told them they should

I don’t want to diminish what Jones has done. He has turned England in to a legitimate force again by making them accurate, dominate, and cohesive. He made them English again. A snarling bunch of massive anglo saxons that don’t back down from anyone. He made difficult selection calls that mostly worked and his  choice of captain told you all you needed to know about  how this England team was going to be different from the last one. Despite the personale  changing as drastically as some people would have like

Now if there was one man that deserves to be a bit full of himself it was Eddie. One of the most brilliant debut seasons by a coach in the tournaments history and it also represented the tipping point  when the talking  was more entertaining the the playing.  It’s going to be interesting to see if he can conjure  a performance out of his side in Australia. Both he and Micheal Chieka must be racking their brains trying to think up of burns for each other already.

Joe Scmidht started to look like he was running out of ideas and few irish coaches  ever come fully back from that. If a  difficult tour to South Africa is followed by a difficult November series then Scmidht is going to be in a difficult position. The Irish public  don’t understand rugby and thats been terrible for a lot for irish coaches.

Gatland after all this time with the brilliant  players he has had at his disposal  he could be accused of underachieving though he very rarely is. I cant believe the welsh seem to be happy with. Especially with his meagre record against the southern hemisphere

I don’t want to talk about whats going on in France because it upsets me. Guy Noves got the job 10 years too late.his  beautiful Toulouse sides are now but a haunting memory

So,Eddie is the best but the rest of us really need to get better.

Video:6 Nations Stereotypes

I made this at the start if the Six Nations for the brilliant irish sports media company Balls.ie

Usually im not mad about  watching my own work after its done but im proud of this one. Give it a watch and if you know peoples that love rugby laughing and handsome irish comedians wearing ketchup and toilet paper … this is the video for them!!

 

 

Jamie Heaslip can get Rucked

C’mere to me have you heard the one about the rugby player that does all the “unseen” work? he got a hundred caps and went on a couple of lions tours….WHAA??

In Ireland, we specialise in this type of forward. The invisible Trojan that works like a donkey for the good of team. Don’t you dare question the value of his contribution. If you do it is going to be very obvious to the experts that you haven’t played the game and certainly don’t understand the modern version of it. Heralded by pundits , loved by teammates and adored by coaches these guys get a free pass because of all the unnoticeable work they perform at opaque footballing occasions like rucks and mauls or  are lauded for even less understandable traits like “positioning”. In rugby terms, these are advanced concepts. The things common fans don’t have a capacity to comprehend but  the laymen ARE right..these guys do sweet FA..You can see the emperors scrotum. We all can

Jamie Heaslip doing f**k all at the back of another  ruck as his teammates score a vital try    pic:espnscrum.com

I remember the first time this really started to annoy me was when someone mentioned what a fantastic counter-rucker Donnacha O’Callaghan. Just in case you don’t understand counter rucking let me explain..in a rugby match when a player pushes you ,you push back .thats counter rucking folks!!its not a skill it’s moving slowly in a certain direction with another human attempting to do the same thing in the opposite direction.

Our current counter rucker extraordinaire is Jamie Heaslip.. pusher-in-chief its one thing for your tight forwards main skill to be in this realm but a no.8 does anyone talk about Kieran Reads counter rucking?does anyone talk about Taulupe Faletau`s lineout lifting?Does Billy Vunipola do any work on a rugby field that could be considered “unseen”? Not a beeping chance because they are three of the best  in the world and they love  to hide the work they do but highlight it.. they run and they pass and impact the game in a very obvious way by being very good at the basics of rugby again that not chasing diagonal kicks that’s running passing and tackling. the things Jamie Heaslips falls well short in terms of worlds best and he is getting further not closer. 

Jamie Heaslip used to be a brilliant rugby player  he was the most exciting back row player pre-SOB in a decade.Then his game calcified and got conservative . He was the most exciting back row player pre-SOB in a decade. He didn’t get on with coaches, he wore fancy boots he had a bad attitude and I loved him. His boots seem less fancy these days and his coaches love him, he still has the bad attitude (that’s why he isn’t the Irish captain) but it seems less maverick and more straight up prick(there someone said it )

Jamie Heaslip never breaks tackles anymore in fact he seems intent on finding at least three tacklers to hit him about a quarter  metre behind the gain line before collapsing and presenting clean ball to repeat the formula with an even less effective ball carrierEven though i played the position myself I still thought it would be prudent to look up the most basic definition  on Wikipedia and I stumbled across this “Number eights are often strong ball carriers and run off the backs in an attempt to break through or push past the opposition’s defensive line.”Jamie Heaslip never breaks tackles anymore in fact he seems intent on finding at least three tacklers a solitary metre behind the gain line before collapsing and presenting clean ball to repeat the formula with an even less effective ball carrier

Thats Ireland’s big problem and certainly was felt throughout the 6 nations.when we need to break the line we simply did not have the players to do it.With O’Mahoney and O’Brein out for the entire tournament and surrounded on with side by novices this was the 6 nation for Heaslip to step it up and in my opinion he failed miserably  sure he scored a few tries  but how many destructive carries d he literally isn’t in the shot because he is already i the opposition 22 and he wait. how many times did he beat his opposite man. Lets take a look

Against Wales Felateau outplayed him to an  embarrassing degree. The pundits screamed.”Well,they fulfil totally different roles on their teams.” No!, they play the same position and Faletau plays it an awful lot more effectively . Then onto to Paris where he was up against Damien Chouly he was probably privately relieved not to get his annual is  roasting off Picamoles. Chouly is a second rate forward and still Heaslip couldn’t make an impression on the game.  then we played against England and again the best player on the pitch was Vunipola. He destroyed Heaslip individually and Ireland collectively.. Heaslip is meant to be an outstanding defender. i accept he makes a lot of tackles but he should have gone out on that Twickenham field with the sole intention of stopping billy the basher. he didn’t but he went looking for work elsewhere.. he did slightly better against nations that are in the upper echelons of 3rd rate international rugby.. he had a decent game against Italy where Parisse looked like a beaten man realising that he wasted an entire career being the best player on a terrible team/ Parisse usually turns it on against Ireland and i think its because he and many other international teams target Heaslip as they view him a soft target and he is unless you take into account his 2 try performance against Ryan Wilson and Scotland

Before the last two lions tours Heaslip was  nailed on starter at no.8. This time round the only reason he is going to make the squad is reputation. Its ben a very long time since Heaslip was a top class rugby player I don’t care what anyone says and no one has ever seemed to come and challenge him in Ireland either. Its  not his fault he is the best we got and it s a shame that the best no. 8 we have ever produced is so far  short of the best in the world for such a long period of his career.