European Club Rugby
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I've just watched a recording of SF1 between Leinster and Scarlets. Leinster were too good winning 38-16 but my interest was to see James Lowe in action. Unfortunately due to an injury to halfback Luke McGrath, Lowe couldn't play due to the two non-EU players rule. Gibson-Park started at halfback as the second non-EU player, and looked a much better player than when he was in NZ. He did have an armchair ride behind the Leinster pack. Fardy was MOTM.
Racing 92 v Munster tomorrow morning NZT.
@bovidae said in NH club rugby:
I've just watched a recording of SF1 between Leinster and Scarlets. Leinster were too good winning 38-16 but my interest was to see James Lowe in action. Unfortunately due to an injury to halfback Luke McGrath, Lowe couldn't play due to the two non-EU players rule. Gibson-Park started at halfback as the second non-EU player, and looked a much better player than when he was in NZ. He did have an armchair ride behind the Leinster pack. Fardy was MOTM.
Racing 92 v Munster tomorrow morning NZT.
Both semi-finals were pretty one-sided. Leinster gave close a masterclass IMHO, they would do very well in Super Rugby. International class pack, and their 10, 12, 13 are also excellent. They basically dominated from start to finish.
Munster were awful, especially in the first 40, and Racing were all over them too.
Kiwis on display
Leinster - Gibson-Park, Nacewa, (Carbery)
Scarlets - Parkes
Racing - Carter, Rococoko
Munster - Marshall -
@bovidae said in NH club rugby:
I've just watched a recording of SF1 between Leinster and Scarlets. Leinster were too good winning 38-16 but my interest was to see James Lowe in action. Unfortunately due to an injury to halfback Luke McGrath, Lowe couldn't play due to the two non-EU players rule. Gibson-Park started at halfback as the second non-EU player, and looked a much better player than when he was in NZ. He did have an armchair ride behind the Leinster pack. Fardy was MOTM.
Racing 92 v Munster tomorrow morning NZT.
Both semi-finals were pretty one-sided. Leinster gave close a masterclass IMHO, they would do very well in Super Rugby. International class pack, and their 10, 12, 13 are also excellent. They basically dominated from start to finish.
Munster were awful, especially in the first 40, and Racing were all over them too.
Kiwis on display
Leinster - Gibson-Park, Nacewa, (Carbery)
Scarlets - Parkes
Racing - Carter, Rococoko
Munster - Marshall@billy-tell
Sigh - Carbery is hardly a Kiwi developed player.
Was at the Leinster match watching end on. Scarlets didn’t know which day was Sunday at various stages in the match with the never ending waves coming at them. Lancaster, Dempsey and Fogarty have them singing and humming in triple-part harmony with Cullen’s selections during the season proving fit for purpose most of the time. Relentless was the most used word amongst commentators and media reporters.They missed McGrath at the base of the scrum and his ability to snipe but Gibson Park had one of his better days. As did McFadden despite a howler of a dropped catch from a high ball. He made up for it with his well taken try.
Munster were abysmal and Racing well worth their victory. Should be a brilliant weekend in Bilbao for the two finals - looking forward to it.
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@billy-tell
Sigh - Carbery is hardly a Kiwi developed player.
Was at the Leinster match watching end on. Scarlets didn’t know which day was Sunday at various stages in the match with the never ending waves coming at them. Lancaster, Dempsey and Fogarty have them singing and humming in triple-part harmony with Cullen’s selections during the season proving fit for purpose most of the time. Relentless was the most used word amongst commentators and media reporters.They missed McGrath at the base of the scrum and his ability to snipe but Gibson Park had one of his better days. As did McFadden despite a howler of a dropped catch from a high ball. He made up for it with his well taken try.
Munster were abysmal and Racing well worth their victory. Should be a brilliant weekend in Bilbao for the two finals - looking forward to it.
@pot-hale said in NH club rugby:
Sigh - Carbery is hardly a Kiwi developed player.
Imagine how good he could have been if he went to high school here...
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@billy-tell
Sigh - Carbery is hardly a Kiwi developed player.
Was at the Leinster match watching end on. Scarlets didn’t know which day was Sunday at various stages in the match with the never ending waves coming at them. Lancaster, Dempsey and Fogarty have them singing and humming in triple-part harmony with Cullen’s selections during the season proving fit for purpose most of the time. Relentless was the most used word amongst commentators and media reporters.They missed McGrath at the base of the scrum and his ability to snipe but Gibson Park had one of his better days. As did McFadden despite a howler of a dropped catch from a high ball. He made up for it with his well taken try.
Munster were abysmal and Racing well worth their victory. Should be a brilliant weekend in Bilbao for the two finals - looking forward to it.
@pot-hale said in NH club rugby:
@billy-tell
Sigh - Carbery is hardly a Kiwi developed player.I think he knows that, hence the brackets. Brackets are the international symbols for that.
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As went the 6 Nations so went the 1st semi.
Leinster just too good, and smart, and accurate.
Fancy them to win it all.
Again.
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@pot-hale said in NH club rugby:
@billy-tell
Sigh - Carbery is hardly a Kiwi developed player.I think he knows that, hence the brackets. Brackets are the international symbols for that.
@rapido said in NH club rugby:
@pot-hale said in NH club rugby:
@billy-tell
Sigh - Carbery is hardly a Kiwi developed player.I think he knows that, hence the brackets. Brackets are the international symbols for that.
I see what you mean. (Not)
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Isa Nacewa is having his second retirement with an announcement from Leinster that he and Richardt Strauss are retiring from the club at end of May.
Nacewa will hoping to add a fourth gold star to his club jersey in two weeks. Each star represents European Cup wins he and some other players at the club have won since 2009.
Top, top player and one of the all-time best club men. The archetypal glue player. A great captain and a modest grounded guy.
Thanks for the memories Isa.
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Nacewa did look his age in the SF, where his only tactic seemed to be to kick ahead and hope someone chased.
No doubting what impact he had at Leinster though.
@bovidae said in NH club rugby:
Nacewa did look his age in the SF, where his only tactic seemed to be to kick ahead and hope someone chased.
No doubting what impact he had at Leinster though.
Yep - he knows he’s flagging too. He’ll get a rest for the final league match next weekend - interpro away against Connacht. Then 3 matches left he’ll want to be in - back to back. Euro final in Bilbao, PRO14 semifinal in the RDS and hopefully the Grand Final being hosted this year in Lansdowne Road. It would be some season and career sign off if they did the double.
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Jono Gibbes leaving Ulster after he took over from fired Les Kiss. Heading back to NZ.
Former Connacht player, coach, and Emerging Ireland and Ireland Wolfhounds head coach, Dan McFarland taking over the reins for next season after the interview process. He’ll have a job on his hands but has a lot of respect within the Irish game. And he may have a new 10 to replace sacked Paddy Jackson - Leinster star Joey Carbery if current IRFU rumors come true.Kieran Keane fired/leaving his 3 year contract early at Connacht after a poor season out west. A lot of people think he wasn’t given enough time. It’ll be interesting to see if IRFU decide to appoint an Irish/UK based coach in his stead as part of the ongoing IQ Rugby strategy launched last year.
SH exodus 2018 so far from IRFU
Kiss (London Irish)
Gibbes (NZ)
Erasmus (SA)
Nienabar (SA)
Keane (NZ)
Lealiifano
Piutau (Bristol)
Isa Nacewa (ret)
Gerbrandt Grobler (Gloucester)
Jake Heenan (Bristol)
Pita Ahki (Toulouse)
Andrew Deegan (Brumbies)
Naulia Dawai (released)
Stacey Ilii (Released)
Richardt Strauss (ret)
Robbie Diack (ret)Incoming 2018
Johan van Graan Head Coach Munster
JP Ferreira asst coach Munster
Kyle Godwin Connacht next season
David Horwitz Connacht next seasonQuota player slots and end contract date
LH Schalk van der Merwe NIQ May 2019
H Rhys Marshall NIQ May 2019
TH Vacant
L Scott Fardy NIE May 2019
L Jean Kleyn NIQ May 2019
BR Chris Cloete NIQ June 2020
BR Jean Deysel NIE May 2019
BR Marcel Coetzee NIE May 2019
SH Jamison Gibson Park NIQ May 2019
OH Vacant
W James Lowe NIQ June 2020
12 Jaco Taute NIE May 2019
13 Vacant
W Isa Nacewa NIE May 2018
15 Charles Piutau NIE May 2018 -
Didn't know where to put this one but, Irishman in potato addiction shocker!
https://www.rugbypass.com/news/ireland-prop-furlong-battling-potato-addiction/
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Didn't know where to put this one but, Irishman in potato addiction shocker!
https://www.rugbypass.com/news/ireland-prop-furlong-battling-potato-addiction/
@machpants said in NH club rugby:
Didn't know where to put this one but, Irishman in potato addiction shocker!
https://www.rugbypass.com/news/ireland-prop-furlong-battling-potato-addiction/
He’s not the first, nor the last.
Fierce problem out here. Worse than the drink.
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The European finals are on next weekend and the senior comp features Racing 92 v Leinster - neither of them English teams to Stephen Jones chagrin. But it does provide him with an opportunity to have a poke at two of his favorite targets and display his glorious grasp and understanding of irony. From his Times column:
“*One preview of the action in Bilbao on Saturday proclaimed that Leinster were meeting “Dan Carter’s Racing 92” in the Champions Cup finaI. I recall Carter being paid an enormous amount of money following the 2015 World Cup to leave New Zealand to play for Racing, but I don’t recall him buying the club as well.
Icons. They are just, well, iconic. It is a status conferred in rugby which is above world-class and which makes you untouchable. Shovel manure and it comes up smelling of roses.
One account of a previous European match this season recorded that Carter, arriving as a replacement, “immediately . . . showed his true class with a glorious long pass”. The truth is that the pass in question could have been thrown by about 95% of professional fly-halves currently playing the game.
But an icon is an icon, and is always an icon, and that status does not depend on form or fitness or reality — just as, for example, Brian O’Driscoll discovered on the 2013 Lions tour, and yet there are still thousands of Irishmen who cannot accept that he was over the hill by then and had no business playing in a Lions Test.
Carter was a great player for the All Blacks but it is important to note the platform on which he played. It would be too much to say that your old grandmother could have played fly-half for the All Blacks, so dominant were they throughout two World Cups, and Carter was sublime at each end — in 2005 against the Lions and a decade later in the World Cup final — if inconsistent in between.
That is why the likes of Jonathan Davies, Juan Martin Hernandez and John Rutherford, plus one or two others, would lie above Carter in my all-time list in terms of individual greatness. Davies, for example, spent most of his career playing for Wales while waiting in vain for a decent morsel of possession which he could run on to.
Whisper it, but Carter has not been a runaway success for Racing. Decent yes, willing yes, but not dazzling at all. It is also too easy to say that his marvellous approachability and example to youngsters has shone through, but he was convicted for drink-driving in Paris, an incident which caused Jacky Lorenzetti, Racing’s owner, to finally lose patience with the player and bemoan the fact that Carter had added to his repertoire the one talent that he had not yet demonstrated throughout his outstanding career — the ability to enjoy a party.
And whisper it even more quietly, but he may not even start in Bilbao. Pat Lambie, a Springbok, has been favoured lately at fly-half and insiders believe that he will also start in Bilbao, leaving Carter, in one of those needle-sharp witticisms for which Kiwis are not famous, “riding the pine”.
It is quite remarkable how variable in performance All Black imports have been. One fascinating piece of research from the New Zealand Herald reckons that of the 119 players who have appeared for the All Blacks since 2008, 60 of them have played overseas. Sometimes, the greater the all Black, the worse they have fared. Some of the true greats — Richie McCaw, Kieran Read, Tony Woodcock and others — never tried it. They had reputations to protect and such reputations do not always survive the intensity of a northern hemisphere winter.
Carter, Chris Jack, Ian Jones, Conrad Smith, Carlos Spencer and around a score more players regarded as greats have created barely a ripple compared to what they were expected to achieve. Yet fringe All Blacks, those who rarely started in Test matches — the likes of Victor Vito, Ben Blair, John Afoa, Jimmy Gopperth, Nick Evans, Charles Piutau and Greg Rawlinson — have been simply wonderful. Strange.
Whether Lambie or Carter play on Saturday is far less relevant to the eventual result than the withdrawal of the injured scrum-half Maxime Machenaud, easily Racing’s player of the season, one of the few Frenchmen to show international form consistently over the last few years. Teddy Iribaren, the replacement, has a slicker service but not the all-round strength and match gravitas of Machenaud.
Carter, whether he is Carter the starter or Carter the bencher, is unlikely to add Bilbao and Europe to the list of his conquests. Racing have been improving, they have reduced the number of dodgy foreign players in their ranks quite significantly, and indeed, most of the team in Bilbao will be homespun. A French club comprising largely French players? Whatever next?
Yet you would wish Carter the very best. He is one drinking session short of a perfect career as an example to everybody. Nothing indicated his status in the eyes of the New Zealand public better than the day he was injured and had to withdraw from the 2011 Rugby World Cup. It was as if some desperate natural catastrophe had struck the whole nation.
It is a good few years since Carter has truly been in his pomp — in the 2005 series against the Lions, he appeared to be walking on water and it probably took him until 2015 to regain those heights.
Also at stake in Bilbao, it is said, is a supremacy battle between the Pro14 and the Top 14. In a week when the Top 14 announced a stitched-together television deal — or, rather, a series of mini-deals which in the end adds up to a mini-deal — it was proudly stated that Leinster were proving the mighty worth of the Pro14 with their dominant performances in Europe.
The fact is that Leinster’s team in Europe have very little to do with the Pro14, a tournament in which they have coasted through with ease. They are in the final of the Champions Cup partly because the Pro14 allows them to field weakened sides so often and still thrive. The true indication of the strength of the Pro14 would be if Leinster started to struggle.
It is unlikely that the struggle will begin on Saturday, and unlikely that Carter at his best would have had much of a say. Leinster, like the march of time which even creeps up on the iconic, appear to be unstoppable.”*
-
The European finals are on next weekend and the senior comp features Racing 92 v Leinster - neither of them English teams to Stephen Jones chagrin. But it does provide him with an opportunity to have a poke at two of his favorite targets and display his glorious grasp and understanding of irony. From his Times column:
“*One preview of the action in Bilbao on Saturday proclaimed that Leinster were meeting “Dan Carter’s Racing 92” in the Champions Cup finaI. I recall Carter being paid an enormous amount of money following the 2015 World Cup to leave New Zealand to play for Racing, but I don’t recall him buying the club as well.
Icons. They are just, well, iconic. It is a status conferred in rugby which is above world-class and which makes you untouchable. Shovel manure and it comes up smelling of roses.
One account of a previous European match this season recorded that Carter, arriving as a replacement, “immediately . . . showed his true class with a glorious long pass”. The truth is that the pass in question could have been thrown by about 95% of professional fly-halves currently playing the game.
But an icon is an icon, and is always an icon, and that status does not depend on form or fitness or reality — just as, for example, Brian O’Driscoll discovered on the 2013 Lions tour, and yet there are still thousands of Irishmen who cannot accept that he was over the hill by then and had no business playing in a Lions Test.
Carter was a great player for the All Blacks but it is important to note the platform on which he played. It would be too much to say that your old grandmother could have played fly-half for the All Blacks, so dominant were they throughout two World Cups, and Carter was sublime at each end — in 2005 against the Lions and a decade later in the World Cup final — if inconsistent in between.
That is why the likes of Jonathan Davies, Juan Martin Hernandez and John Rutherford, plus one or two others, would lie above Carter in my all-time list in terms of individual greatness. Davies, for example, spent most of his career playing for Wales while waiting in vain for a decent morsel of possession which he could run on to.
Whisper it, but Carter has not been a runaway success for Racing. Decent yes, willing yes, but not dazzling at all. It is also too easy to say that his marvellous approachability and example to youngsters has shone through, but he was convicted for drink-driving in Paris, an incident which caused Jacky Lorenzetti, Racing’s owner, to finally lose patience with the player and bemoan the fact that Carter had added to his repertoire the one talent that he had not yet demonstrated throughout his outstanding career — the ability to enjoy a party.
And whisper it even more quietly, but he may not even start in Bilbao. Pat Lambie, a Springbok, has been favoured lately at fly-half and insiders believe that he will also start in Bilbao, leaving Carter, in one of those needle-sharp witticisms for which Kiwis are not famous, “riding the pine”.
It is quite remarkable how variable in performance All Black imports have been. One fascinating piece of research from the New Zealand Herald reckons that of the 119 players who have appeared for the All Blacks since 2008, 60 of them have played overseas. Sometimes, the greater the all Black, the worse they have fared. Some of the true greats — Richie McCaw, Kieran Read, Tony Woodcock and others — never tried it. They had reputations to protect and such reputations do not always survive the intensity of a northern hemisphere winter.
Carter, Chris Jack, Ian Jones, Conrad Smith, Carlos Spencer and around a score more players regarded as greats have created barely a ripple compared to what they were expected to achieve. Yet fringe All Blacks, those who rarely started in Test matches — the likes of Victor Vito, Ben Blair, John Afoa, Jimmy Gopperth, Nick Evans, Charles Piutau and Greg Rawlinson — have been simply wonderful. Strange.
Whether Lambie or Carter play on Saturday is far less relevant to the eventual result than the withdrawal of the injured scrum-half Maxime Machenaud, easily Racing’s player of the season, one of the few Frenchmen to show international form consistently over the last few years. Teddy Iribaren, the replacement, has a slicker service but not the all-round strength and match gravitas of Machenaud.
Carter, whether he is Carter the starter or Carter the bencher, is unlikely to add Bilbao and Europe to the list of his conquests. Racing have been improving, they have reduced the number of dodgy foreign players in their ranks quite significantly, and indeed, most of the team in Bilbao will be homespun. A French club comprising largely French players? Whatever next?
Yet you would wish Carter the very best. He is one drinking session short of a perfect career as an example to everybody. Nothing indicated his status in the eyes of the New Zealand public better than the day he was injured and had to withdraw from the 2011 Rugby World Cup. It was as if some desperate natural catastrophe had struck the whole nation.
It is a good few years since Carter has truly been in his pomp — in the 2005 series against the Lions, he appeared to be walking on water and it probably took him until 2015 to regain those heights.
Also at stake in Bilbao, it is said, is a supremacy battle between the Pro14 and the Top 14. In a week when the Top 14 announced a stitched-together television deal — or, rather, a series of mini-deals which in the end adds up to a mini-deal — it was proudly stated that Leinster were proving the mighty worth of the Pro14 with their dominant performances in Europe.
The fact is that Leinster’s team in Europe have very little to do with the Pro14, a tournament in which they have coasted through with ease. They are in the final of the Champions Cup partly because the Pro14 allows them to field weakened sides so often and still thrive. The true indication of the strength of the Pro14 would be if Leinster started to struggle.
It is unlikely that the struggle will begin on Saturday, and unlikely that Carter at his best would have had much of a say. Leinster, like the march of time which even creeps up on the iconic, appear to be unstoppable.”*
@pot-hale said in NH club rugby:
That is why the likes of Jonathan Davies, Juan Martin Hernandez and John Rutherford, plus one or two others, would lie above Carter in my all-time list in terms of individual greatness. Davies, for example, spent most of his career playing for Wales while waiting in vain for a decent morsel of possession which he could run on to.
This where I stopped reading this ridiculous pile of horse shit.
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The European finals are on next weekend and the senior comp features Racing 92 v Leinster - neither of them English teams to Stephen Jones chagrin. But it does provide him with an opportunity to have a poke at two of his favorite targets and display his glorious grasp and understanding of irony. From his Times column:
“*One preview of the action in Bilbao on Saturday proclaimed that Leinster were meeting “Dan Carter’s Racing 92” in the Champions Cup finaI. I recall Carter being paid an enormous amount of money following the 2015 World Cup to leave New Zealand to play for Racing, but I don’t recall him buying the club as well.
Icons. They are just, well, iconic. It is a status conferred in rugby which is above world-class and which makes you untouchable. Shovel manure and it comes up smelling of roses.
One account of a previous European match this season recorded that Carter, arriving as a replacement, “immediately . . . showed his true class with a glorious long pass”. The truth is that the pass in question could have been thrown by about 95% of professional fly-halves currently playing the game.
But an icon is an icon, and is always an icon, and that status does not depend on form or fitness or reality — just as, for example, Brian O’Driscoll discovered on the 2013 Lions tour, and yet there are still thousands of Irishmen who cannot accept that he was over the hill by then and had no business playing in a Lions Test.
Carter was a great player for the All Blacks but it is important to note the platform on which he played. It would be too much to say that your old grandmother could have played fly-half for the All Blacks, so dominant were they throughout two World Cups, and Carter was sublime at each end — in 2005 against the Lions and a decade later in the World Cup final — if inconsistent in between.
That is why the likes of Jonathan Davies, Juan Martin Hernandez and John Rutherford, plus one or two others, would lie above Carter in my all-time list in terms of individual greatness. Davies, for example, spent most of his career playing for Wales while waiting in vain for a decent morsel of possession which he could run on to.
Whisper it, but Carter has not been a runaway success for Racing. Decent yes, willing yes, but not dazzling at all. It is also too easy to say that his marvellous approachability and example to youngsters has shone through, but he was convicted for drink-driving in Paris, an incident which caused Jacky Lorenzetti, Racing’s owner, to finally lose patience with the player and bemoan the fact that Carter had added to his repertoire the one talent that he had not yet demonstrated throughout his outstanding career — the ability to enjoy a party.
And whisper it even more quietly, but he may not even start in Bilbao. Pat Lambie, a Springbok, has been favoured lately at fly-half and insiders believe that he will also start in Bilbao, leaving Carter, in one of those needle-sharp witticisms for which Kiwis are not famous, “riding the pine”.
It is quite remarkable how variable in performance All Black imports have been. One fascinating piece of research from the New Zealand Herald reckons that of the 119 players who have appeared for the All Blacks since 2008, 60 of them have played overseas. Sometimes, the greater the all Black, the worse they have fared. Some of the true greats — Richie McCaw, Kieran Read, Tony Woodcock and others — never tried it. They had reputations to protect and such reputations do not always survive the intensity of a northern hemisphere winter.
Carter, Chris Jack, Ian Jones, Conrad Smith, Carlos Spencer and around a score more players regarded as greats have created barely a ripple compared to what they were expected to achieve. Yet fringe All Blacks, those who rarely started in Test matches — the likes of Victor Vito, Ben Blair, John Afoa, Jimmy Gopperth, Nick Evans, Charles Piutau and Greg Rawlinson — have been simply wonderful. Strange.
Whether Lambie or Carter play on Saturday is far less relevant to the eventual result than the withdrawal of the injured scrum-half Maxime Machenaud, easily Racing’s player of the season, one of the few Frenchmen to show international form consistently over the last few years. Teddy Iribaren, the replacement, has a slicker service but not the all-round strength and match gravitas of Machenaud.
Carter, whether he is Carter the starter or Carter the bencher, is unlikely to add Bilbao and Europe to the list of his conquests. Racing have been improving, they have reduced the number of dodgy foreign players in their ranks quite significantly, and indeed, most of the team in Bilbao will be homespun. A French club comprising largely French players? Whatever next?
Yet you would wish Carter the very best. He is one drinking session short of a perfect career as an example to everybody. Nothing indicated his status in the eyes of the New Zealand public better than the day he was injured and had to withdraw from the 2011 Rugby World Cup. It was as if some desperate natural catastrophe had struck the whole nation.
It is a good few years since Carter has truly been in his pomp — in the 2005 series against the Lions, he appeared to be walking on water and it probably took him until 2015 to regain those heights.
Also at stake in Bilbao, it is said, is a supremacy battle between the Pro14 and the Top 14. In a week when the Top 14 announced a stitched-together television deal — or, rather, a series of mini-deals which in the end adds up to a mini-deal — it was proudly stated that Leinster were proving the mighty worth of the Pro14 with their dominant performances in Europe.
The fact is that Leinster’s team in Europe have very little to do with the Pro14, a tournament in which they have coasted through with ease. They are in the final of the Champions Cup partly because the Pro14 allows them to field weakened sides so often and still thrive. The true indication of the strength of the Pro14 would be if Leinster started to struggle.
It is unlikely that the struggle will begin on Saturday, and unlikely that Carter at his best would have had much of a say. Leinster, like the march of time which even creeps up on the iconic, appear to be unstoppable.”*
@pot-hale thanks for your insight,Will agree to disagree on some of your points however I do have a couple of questions for you..?
I have always watched many NZ players that have headed to the North to persue professional careeres.
It’s almost like some have embraced the challenge as you have mentioned ,and others it’s almost like the have just used it to pick up a big cheque and see out their careers.
Is that a perception with a lot of rugby followers in the North..?And the other question is in an around the French Pro2 final which I believe is tomorrow morning our time between Perpignan v Grenoble,am I correct to say,the winner automatically gets promoted to the Top 14,but the loser still has a chance by playing the bottom placed Top 14 team in a playoff to be promoted or retained...
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The European finals are on next weekend and the senior comp features Racing 92 v Leinster - neither of them English teams to Stephen Jones chagrin. But it does provide him with an opportunity to have a poke at two of his favorite targets and display his glorious grasp and understanding of irony. From his Times column:
“*One preview of the action in Bilbao on Saturday proclaimed that Leinster were meeting “Dan Carter’s Racing 92” in the Champions Cup finaI. I recall Carter being paid an enormous amount of money following the 2015 World Cup to leave New Zealand to play for Racing, but I don’t recall him buying the club as well.
Icons. They are just, well, iconic. It is a status conferred in rugby which is above world-class and which makes you untouchable. Shovel manure and it comes up smelling of roses.
One account of a previous European match this season recorded that Carter, arriving as a replacement, “immediately . . . showed his true class with a glorious long pass”. The truth is that the pass in question could have been thrown by about 95% of professional fly-halves currently playing the game.
But an icon is an icon, and is always an icon, and that status does not depend on form or fitness or reality — just as, for example, Brian O’Driscoll discovered on the 2013 Lions tour, and yet there are still thousands of Irishmen who cannot accept that he was over the hill by then and had no business playing in a Lions Test.
Carter was a great player for the All Blacks but it is important to note the platform on which he played. It would be too much to say that your old grandmother could have played fly-half for the All Blacks, so dominant were they throughout two World Cups, and Carter was sublime at each end — in 2005 against the Lions and a decade later in the World Cup final — if inconsistent in between.
That is why the likes of Jonathan Davies, Juan Martin Hernandez and John Rutherford, plus one or two others, would lie above Carter in my all-time list in terms of individual greatness. Davies, for example, spent most of his career playing for Wales while waiting in vain for a decent morsel of possession which he could run on to.
Whisper it, but Carter has not been a runaway success for Racing. Decent yes, willing yes, but not dazzling at all. It is also too easy to say that his marvellous approachability and example to youngsters has shone through, but he was convicted for drink-driving in Paris, an incident which caused Jacky Lorenzetti, Racing’s owner, to finally lose patience with the player and bemoan the fact that Carter had added to his repertoire the one talent that he had not yet demonstrated throughout his outstanding career — the ability to enjoy a party.
And whisper it even more quietly, but he may not even start in Bilbao. Pat Lambie, a Springbok, has been favoured lately at fly-half and insiders believe that he will also start in Bilbao, leaving Carter, in one of those needle-sharp witticisms for which Kiwis are not famous, “riding the pine”.
It is quite remarkable how variable in performance All Black imports have been. One fascinating piece of research from the New Zealand Herald reckons that of the 119 players who have appeared for the All Blacks since 2008, 60 of them have played overseas. Sometimes, the greater the all Black, the worse they have fared. Some of the true greats — Richie McCaw, Kieran Read, Tony Woodcock and others — never tried it. They had reputations to protect and such reputations do not always survive the intensity of a northern hemisphere winter.
Carter, Chris Jack, Ian Jones, Conrad Smith, Carlos Spencer and around a score more players regarded as greats have created barely a ripple compared to what they were expected to achieve. Yet fringe All Blacks, those who rarely started in Test matches — the likes of Victor Vito, Ben Blair, John Afoa, Jimmy Gopperth, Nick Evans, Charles Piutau and Greg Rawlinson — have been simply wonderful. Strange.
Whether Lambie or Carter play on Saturday is far less relevant to the eventual result than the withdrawal of the injured scrum-half Maxime Machenaud, easily Racing’s player of the season, one of the few Frenchmen to show international form consistently over the last few years. Teddy Iribaren, the replacement, has a slicker service but not the all-round strength and match gravitas of Machenaud.
Carter, whether he is Carter the starter or Carter the bencher, is unlikely to add Bilbao and Europe to the list of his conquests. Racing have been improving, they have reduced the number of dodgy foreign players in their ranks quite significantly, and indeed, most of the team in Bilbao will be homespun. A French club comprising largely French players? Whatever next?
Yet you would wish Carter the very best. He is one drinking session short of a perfect career as an example to everybody. Nothing indicated his status in the eyes of the New Zealand public better than the day he was injured and had to withdraw from the 2011 Rugby World Cup. It was as if some desperate natural catastrophe had struck the whole nation.
It is a good few years since Carter has truly been in his pomp — in the 2005 series against the Lions, he appeared to be walking on water and it probably took him until 2015 to regain those heights.
Also at stake in Bilbao, it is said, is a supremacy battle between the Pro14 and the Top 14. In a week when the Top 14 announced a stitched-together television deal — or, rather, a series of mini-deals which in the end adds up to a mini-deal — it was proudly stated that Leinster were proving the mighty worth of the Pro14 with their dominant performances in Europe.
The fact is that Leinster’s team in Europe have very little to do with the Pro14, a tournament in which they have coasted through with ease. They are in the final of the Champions Cup partly because the Pro14 allows them to field weakened sides so often and still thrive. The true indication of the strength of the Pro14 would be if Leinster started to struggle.
It is unlikely that the struggle will begin on Saturday, and unlikely that Carter at his best would have had much of a say. Leinster, like the march of time which even creeps up on the iconic, appear to be unstoppable.”*
@pot-hale said in NH club rugby:
The European finals are on next weekend and the senior comp features Racing 92 v Leinster - neither of them English teams to Stephen Jones chagrin. But it does provide him with an opportunity to have a poke at two of his favorite targets and display his glorious grasp and understanding of irony.
Well, Stephen's still trolling hard, and rewriting history to suit himself. I have just rewatched the 2015 semi against South Africa. They were bloody bloody good in that game, and manhandled our team. Big strong fast physical teams that turn up committed are really hard to beat. Carter was critical - some great kicking, including a key dropgoal, and making smart choices all day long. Ran well too.
Point is, suggesting that 'your grandmother could have won world cups with the ABs is patently nonsense. IN 2011, we were only one injury away from calling up your grandmother, and in 2015 he slotted two key dropgoals in semi and final to swing the games. Also played a fair bit of a hand in the quarter.
I can't believe I just bothered to respond to trolling again. Fark that guy.
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@pot-hale thanks for your insight,Will agree to disagree on some of your points however I do have a couple of questions for you..?
I have always watched many NZ players that have headed to the North to persue professional careeres.
It’s almost like some have embraced the challenge as you have mentioned ,and others it’s almost like the have just used it to pick up a big cheque and see out their careers.
Is that a perception with a lot of rugby followers in the North..?And the other question is in an around the French Pro2 final which I believe is tomorrow morning our time between Perpignan v Grenoble,am I correct to say,the winner automatically gets promoted to the Top 14,but the loser still has a chance by playing the bottom placed Top 14 team in a playoff to be promoted or retained...
@steven-harris said in NH club rugby:
@pot-hale thanks for your insight,Will agree to disagree on some of your points however I do have a couple of questions for you..?
I have always watched many NZ players that have headed to the North to persue professional careeres.
It’s almost like some have embraced the challenge as you have mentioned ,and others it’s almost like the have just used it to pick up a big cheque and see out their careers.
Is that a perception with a lot of rugby followers in the North..?Those were the Walrus's points. Not Pot Hale's.
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yeah I think some players do go north and maintain thier own high standards, while others do see it as building thier retirement nest egg.
Dont get me wrong I think they still give it thier all, but if they have spent the last 10-12 years working thier arses off to be an AB, now without that carrot, the drive just drops off 5%, and we keep getting told there is only a few % between the top players, then that 5% drop off in intensity or lack of desire will be telling.I look at someone like Ranger, when he was in the Blues last year, was poor, and then came back to Northland and recaptured some of his form (yeah yeah albeit at a lower level) but on talking to him and those that know him, his heart is in Northland, so being part of NH (and when in France) his play has regressed so far that he didnt even get a super contract...now he is struggling to get game time in France.
Have heard the odd whisper that he may even be leaving French rugby again.,,be interesting if he came back here again to see what happens (was speaking to a ferner yesterday and he suggested he might end up in Japan for the Sunwolves...which would be great as he could be back playing for Northland if that was the case
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yeah I think some players do go north and maintain thier own high standards, while others do see it as building thier retirement nest egg.
Dont get me wrong I think they still give it thier all, but if they have spent the last 10-12 years working thier arses off to be an AB, now without that carrot, the drive just drops off 5%, and we keep getting told there is only a few % between the top players, then that 5% drop off in intensity or lack of desire will be telling.I look at someone like Ranger, when he was in the Blues last year, was poor, and then came back to Northland and recaptured some of his form (yeah yeah albeit at a lower level) but on talking to him and those that know him, his heart is in Northland, so being part of NH (and when in France) his play has regressed so far that he didnt even get a super contract...now he is struggling to get game time in France.
Have heard the odd whisper that he may even be leaving French rugby again.,,be interesting if he came back here again to see what happens (was speaking to a ferner yesterday and he suggested he might end up in Japan for the Sunwolves...which would be great as he could be back playing for Northland if that was the case
@taniwharugby personally I think Japan is a better fit for some NZ players,especially if they want to keep their standards high,the season in Japan is quite short which still leaves the opportunity to play Super Rugby.
In the case of Ranger whilst he is currently injured,he seems to have fallen out of favour in terms of even making the match day 23 at La Rochelle.looking very similar to his stint at Montpellier.
A good result for the Taniwha,would be a contract with the Sunwolves which would leave a window for Mitre 10 Cup.
