Club tug of war over one of rugby highest paid players

Prior to the Ulster Job, Murphy looked after the Irish U20s. For three years in the 6Nations.

They played 15. Won 14 and drew 1.

Again, he's with Ulster!

Lancaster is at Connaght now. He was great at developing young talent 13 years ago. He's only better at it now with his experience. Relative to their size and resources, Lancaster at Connacht is comparable totally to everybody's favourite south African at Leinster! There is zero imbalance.

You're great craic lad, but this is far too indulgent and it's boring repeating myself.

Episode 1 of season 2 of Father Ted is called ‘Hell’. It's the one in which Ted tries to explain spacial awareness to Dougal with plastic, toy cows.

These ones are “small! These ones are far away”!

Well worth your time. Give it a watch.

there’s a club world cup in football, and from what I can tell no one really cares about it. Certainly when I was a child and actually followed football none of the top teams took it seriously.

France are still awaiting their Webb Ellis.

England's - and the NHs - only RWC success wasn't necessarily on the strength of the English club game.

I really don’t like the halves, especially the two 9s that have constantly let Australia down over the years with their antics, I’d have one at a pinch, probably Gordon on the basis of early SR season form, so it’s really a lottery. Not very sold on Ben or James either, but then I was looking at the Lions team and they also seemed fairly average when you break them down player by player.

That’s really what Joe has excelled at though, knitting a team together, lets hope that Farrell is hopeless at it.

Joe did talk about investing in the younger fly halves…but surely there is nothing wrong with holding 1 of them back to give JOC a crack in an important series.

My midfielders would be

12 J. Barrett, Tavatavanawai, Tupaea

13 Proctor, Ioane

Hopefully qld and RA can work together despite this.

However, the URC is never going to prepare the Springboks for the skill and speed of playing the All Blacks and Australia either.

The Springboks who won in 2019 and 2023 were overwhelming players who were brought through the Springboks during the Super Rugby days. We will see in 2027 (or maybe 2031) when the new generation of Springboks who have only played in the URC whether they are as prepared as the previous Springbok generations.

URC surely has not prepared Ireland, Scotland, or Wales to win any World Cups.