It all started off with such high expectations: in honour of Welsh Legends, a pre-match drinky at the Owain Glyndwr. Unfortunately the beer was being served by an amateur, and headless Brains was the result.
Not to worry! A text arrived from a colleague of the mister’s (a Tigers fan) announcing that he was at O’Neill’s, so we made our way there. The colleague was nowhere to be found, and the beer (and wine) was equally shit. The main point of interest was that the owner must be a County Antrim man, judging by the exquisite photographs on the walls.
Next on the agenda was to find somewhere to watch the Munster v Racing match. After considerable traipsing, eventually found a pub that was both showing it and had drinkable booze. Hooray!
As you’ll all know, that was quite an exciting match, ending in a draw.
On to Arms Park for the main event!
Arms Park is a civilised ground that serves Courvoisier doubles. Whoever designed the signage must have been overly-appreciative of said cognac, because the signs in no way resembled any of the seating information on our tickets.
With the help of a friendly usher, we eventually found our seats, in the middle of a garish sea of Leicester supporters. A particularly large-lunged one was sitting directly behind me, and was given to shouting YESTIGAHS every time Leicester touched the ball.
Noticing me flinching, he said, “Sorry, I’ll try to warn you before I shout. But I don’t always know when I’m going to do it.”
“Oh. A bit like Tourette’s, then?”
As for the rugby itself:
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(Yay, try Cardiff.)
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Ah shit.
Further Reading
Weekend team selections start here.
ClydeMillarWynant’s views on known knowns and unknown unknowns.
On the telly this week
Friday 29th November
| Munster v Edinburgh | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Ulster v Scarlets | 19:35 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Bath v Saracens | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
Saturday 30th November
| Wales v Barbarians (women) | 11:45 | S4C |
| Wales v Barbarians (men) | 14:45 | Channel 4 |
| Northampton v Leicester | 15:00 | BT Sport 2 |
| Treviso v Cardiff | 15:00 | FreeSports / PS2 |
| Connacht v Southern Kings | 17:15 | TG4 / Premier Sports 1 |
| Dragons v Zebre | 17:15 | S4C / Premier Sports 2 |
| Glasgow v Leinster | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Ospreys v Cheetahs | 19:35 | Premier Sports 1 |
Sunday 1st December
| Harlequins v Gloucester | 15:00 | BT Sport 1 |
Ovally Balls 
Cowan takes advantage of the collision to steal the ball from Hughes.
Nice bit of theft.
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If the TMO check for forward goes ok, that was a fantastic try for Charlie-P.
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It was, it is and Sheedy doesn’t miss from in front. 15-10.
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Bristol’s maul is effective, and from the resulting breakdown they pass it right. A little flick back inside creates some space for a dummy. Two more quick passes gives the winger some space on the right. His pass misses the target but is collected off the ground by another Bristol player who pops it back to Piatau (sp?), and the fullback runs it in under the posts.
15-10
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Bad miss from 36 there. Hoping this lulls Quins into a false sense of their superiority.
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Naholo races down the pitch after snagging an intercept in London’s side of the pitch.
15-17
How are Bristol not ahead being a man up for 20+ minutes?
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Bears’ hooker pings and pongs off a couple of tackles through the centre of the pitch, from where Bristol manages to ship it out wide for Ed Holmes who was lurking on the wing. Holmes breaks a couple of tackles himself on the way to score.
20-17
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Bristol tight head earns a yellow card in front of the posts.
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Irish get the ball to the open man on the left how manages to touch down despite the covering tackle.
20-24
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Bristol hooker crating opportunities again, and he is on hand to finish.
27-24 with 2 minutes left on the clock.
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Jesus wept:
“The Liberal Democrats have suspended a senior member of their campaign team just days before polling day, after an official apparently forged emails to support a legal threat against a journalist over an embarrassing story.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/01/lib-dems-suspend-campaigner-over-apparent-email-forgery
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Penalty ties it up at 27.
With ten seconds to play.
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Ha, cheers ladoab, lost my stream at 24-20. Thats Harry Thacker, been in awesome form for a year now, should have been in Japan with England I think.
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Draw?
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27-27 final.
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@SBT
How long has Thacker been playing in the BIG leagues, SBT?
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Tomp, the line at the bottom of the article says it all, ” Perhaps I was naive, but I did not expect it from Jo Swinson’s Liberal Democrats.”
Complete breakdown of honesty and integrity in the political classes, or maybe thats just the way it has always been.
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Saints, Bristol, Exeter and Sale to make play-offs – Sarries to just fall short.
Well done Irish today – did my team a favour!
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reserve hooker at Leicester for a few years, wan’t getting enough starts, so moved to Bristol when they came up.
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Also former England under 20 player, ladoab. Still only 25 too.
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Leicester are too wedded to the Youngs brothers.
Please that they go down.
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” Perhaps I was naive, but I did not expect it from Jo Swinson’s Liberal Democrats.”
Either very naive or very ironic.
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Of course that gormless Lib Dem scandal will dwarf the impact of the much larger scandals, lies and caught-red-handedness of what the the Tory party is up to, simply because the right-wing media will feed it to their mass readership in a way to keep them ignorant and looking at squirrels.
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Still feeling downbeat about the Drags. It was all there in front of them yesterday. Good playing surface, decent playing conditions and a Saturday fixture all aligned to get bums on seats. And they go and deliver a pathetic performance with players who should be capable enough regardless of the Wales absentees.
Zebra just looked better prepared, more capable and far more motivated. Early days but I’m already wondering if Ryan is just another chancer with a reputation happily pocketing an easy pay cheque while Drags plc is being milked by Smarmy the Businessman..
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Happy days.
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“I read a match report that said it happened a couple of times during the build-up to the Munster try. Are you saying there were other occasions on which it happened?”
I missed this earlier.
I’m saying that as far as I recall (I didn’t actually see Schoey lift the pads when watching live for some reason), the penalty given and the warning received by Schoeman was just before Munster scored
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Mitrea is awful, though, he was the ref when McFadden drove his shoulder into Damien Hoyland’s face and didn’t see anything wrong with it.
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Mr Iks, I feel similarly about Edinburgh, though I’ve no doubt Richard Cockerill acts in earnest, but it’s very disappointing to follow a team that just isn’t up to scratch and any sign of an up turn in fortune seems to be a false dawn.
I invest far too much emotional energy into it, I’m thinking of backing out for a while because Edinburgh are nowhere near as good as I hoped they’d be, solid mid conference, just missing the play-offs at best.
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Musing further on this, I don’t see how Edinburgh and Glasgow’s situations can be improved, Glasgow don’t own their ground and Edinburgh get around 5 thousand people turning up on a good night, it’s a long way from selling out Ravenhill, Thomond or Avia/the one across the road. These teams didn’t get big crowds until they won Heineken Cups and I just can’t see how we can do that, the pro rugby horse has well and truly bolted and we are forever playing catch up.
We will always be letting the Hoggs, Russells and Grays go off to play elsewhere, the Irish teams were able to incentivise their best players to stay and supplement them with some cracking international signings, I don’t see our situation changing soon, we don’t have the £15M or so to run another team and even if we did we don’t have another 40 players.
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Ticht – when you watch Welsh league matches, it’s shocking how small the crowds are. And if the oppo is Irish, half the crowd are away supporters.
I’m not really sure what Irish rugby has done right here, or Welsh/Scottish rugby done wrong. As you say, some of may be down to winning, but Ospreys, for example, were winning a lot until recently. And Embra and Glasgow are always competitive.
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Thaum, I looked up all the crowds over lots of seasons a few years ago and the big three Irish sides were only bringing in a couple of thousand, it changed when they won in Europe, for sure the tv and improved media coverage will have helped, but these teams winning fed into the Irish side, which had been woeful but became good, this widened interest across the country, I remember Keith Wood saying how amzed he was that rugby had become so popular in GAA areas.
The inbuilt rivalry between the “Four Green Fields” was the perfect base for building professional rugby, imo, there was already a bit of grit there and it has become a huge deal. In short, looking from the outside, Ireland made the most of a promising situation when the game went open, we had a lot of clubs jockeying for their own position with an inflated sense of their own importance and ability to compete, it’s still there in fact, there are people from clubs trying to undermine what the SRU are attempting even now
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I do apologise if that comes across as an egg sucking lesson, it wasn’t my intention. I am full of admiration for what the IRFU have achieved since the game went pro and I’ve looked into it a lot, because, simply put, I want Scotland, Embra and Glasgow to have a piece of the action.
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Ticht – sure, club success and country success feed into each other.
I can remember Ireland being truly woeful, but at that time I was living abroad, and had no idea what was going on in club rugby.
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Ticht @19:33 – not at all, no need to apologise!
I think one thing the IRFU does well is manage players – rest time, and moving to another club for development if necessary (cf Cooney). That, of course, also creates controversy, eg when Pienaar wasn’t allowed to re-sign with Ulster.
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We’ve had similar controversy, Henry Pyrgos, Mark Bennett and Duncan Weir moving over to Edinburgh really pissed off a lot of Glasgow fans, but tbf Pyrgos was third choice at Glasgow and didn’t want to remain so, Bennett was told he would be back up to Huw Jones and he’d fallen out with Townsend over his defence, Weir was moved to allow two Scottish fly halfs to be playing as first choice.
I’d never come across “club first, international teams second” from rugby supporters before, but it was there after those moves.
I don’t think I’ve watched Ulster yet this season due to clashes, but their results suggest they are really back on song
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For BB…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footrot_Flats
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Ticht – this weekend’s match was good, but the previous outings haven’t been very convincing.
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I’ve heard of Footrot Flats, ELS.
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Irish teams sitting one and two in each conference, Thaum, youse are doing something right.
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We’re bound to fuck up! Well, Ulster and Connacht anyway. Benefited from the WC, I should think.
Time for His Dark Materials!
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Thanks, SBT.
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Mr ElSuavo. Thanks for that. I haven’t heard of it, but I’ll have a look for it tomorrow.
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That’s an enormous exaggeration, re: Irish fans. If we get 6k – which is about the average – for a non-derby match, there are not 3k visitors.
There are no away fans worth counting unless it’s a derby. The most I have ever seen from an away team in a (non-derby) Pro numbers match would be no more than a hundred. Seen more from Pro teams in Euro clashes but not in the league. We get more visitors for pre-season matches v Bristol/Leicester.
Half the reason rugby here is practically dead.
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Something to make you smile :
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Half the reason rugby here is practically dead.
What’s the other half?
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Refit, thought the beardy bloke did a bit better than Cole to be fair.
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don’t worry, ticht, once CVC get their mitts on rugby in the UK in it’s entirety we’ll have a British & Irish league & all will be just dandy.
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Some interesting implications for the euro thingy if a B&I league happens. Presumably the ‘talians will be booted to touch to play with themselves (karl).
In which case we’ll need 6 B&I teams, 6 French & 6 Italian to make it all fair.
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i.e. by league
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