I only got into rugby coaching when my eldest was in the U11s and his head coach appealed for help. Standing on the touchline and watching, I figured “ah – he means me…”. Initially, I just put out cones, held tackle bags and blew a whistle (lots!) [Ed: the Karl is strong in this one.]
A few years on, I’m part of a group of four coaching 30-40 U14s that combines the two age groups of U13 and U14.
Kerry is very much GAA – especially Gaelic football – country. But rugby has a history here, and actually pre-dates the GAA. The 1880s to 1920s were a time of huge turbulence in Ireland, and part of that led to the abandonment of rugby as a ‘foreign sport’ in favour of the new ‘Irish’ game (soccer, cricket and hockey were also regarded as ‘foreign’). Historically, a football game called ‘caíd’ was played in Kerry, but there’s very little evidence of how it was played: we can surmise it might be closer to the Shrove Tuesday games played in England than any modern code of football. There are theories that it might have been akin to Aussie Rules, as that seemed to spring up on the gold fields in the 1850s, where many Irish had headed off to make their fortune.
Rugby in Killarney goes back to the 1880s, and the club notes an official founding of 1929 – but it’s been re-founded on at least 3 other occasions: 1937, 1953 and 1983. With our own field and two decent pitches (and a third … well, it needs work…), we’re in a position to grow rather than just survive. In September 2019, we even hosted a Munster pre-season training session.
As a club at U14 level, which is the first competitive level (full-sized pitch, fifteen a side – hopefully), we compete in what is termed West Munster – essentially this is the other clubs in Kerry plus one other. We only get to play clubs from Cork and Limerick in friendlies or challenges slotted in between regular fixtures. In an ideal world we’d break out of this, as we end up playing the same local rivals three or four times in a season. In September, it’s all healthy competition; by March they hate each other’s guts. Doesn’t help that same group of lads also run into each in schools and club football and soccer over the same period.
Our season breaks into two parts. Before Christmas, there is a local league decided by a premiership-style knockout format (1 v 4 and 2 v 3) to eliminate the vagaries of no home-and-away. After Christmas, the West Munster teams split into an upper and lower section, with a home and away format. We took this opportunity to split our squad in two. The competition rules initially were that you could name an extended panel, and play all the subs in a non-competitive ‘3rd half’.
However, several clubs were struggling to make fifteen, so the rules reverted to two halves and a maximum squad of 23. That left us with ten not getting any game at all, plus subs only playing five to ten minutes at the end. The three-thirds is well-intentioned, but it’s really aimed at clubs with maybe 23-25 players to ensure everyone plays. It’s well-nigh impossible to play 15+ subs: you end up trying to replace the whole team without giving them adequate time to ‘gel’ as a unit.
We bit the bullet, knowing that we’d be stretched for numbers at times, but also knowing that we had the option to start with as few as twelve if numbers got sticky. The real restriction was having to separate the two squads: that meant a few hard decisions.
We wanted a ‘Black’ team to have a chance at winning their competition, but we didn’t want a ‘Red’ team comprised only of inexperienced – and in many cases smaller – 12-13 year olds who’d have to face up to teams made up mainly from the age grade above. A couple of the older lads were asked to step down to the junior squad to help provide some experience and sheer size.
The smaller size of clubs down here means that we don’t have a dedicated U13 competition, which means our younger players can be faced with bigger and more experienced U14s at a time when they’re really just learning to play the ‘adult’ game. It was a risk, but the alternative was standing on the sideline getting cold or not playing at all.
In our first Black game, we lost away to what was regarded as the best U14 in our region, but the seeds were there. 38-14 was final score, but we were beginning to see our strengths (and weaknesses) and to start to recognise the opposition’s.
Strengths: good scrum (if not a lot of use at U14 as limited pushing is allowed), strong, fast ball-carriers, good kicking game.
Weaknesses: looking for contact, over-carrying, weak support running.
Red started off badly, run ragged by a combined club with a couple of gifted individuals. Their second match, a return fixture, was much the same until we persuaded the opposition to ‘retire’ their No.8. Thereafter it was much more even, and you could see the inexperienced players beginning to develop their teamwork and understanding: where should I be? who’s my man? Attack the ruck or stay out?
Their remaining two games were close – a one-score difference in each game – and unlucky not to win one or both of them. But overall, despite the disappointment of losing, they all got to play an hour’s rugby in four games, and there’s a development in actually playing that you can’t get from all the training sessions in the world.
Meanwhile, in Black world we had 2 good wins: 26-17 and 28-7, the first win from 12-0 down and for much of the game playing 13 v 15 when the opposition conveniently ‘forgot’ that all clubs had agreed to match numbers. There’s a bit of thrill when you comprehensively defeat a team whose mentors are trying to pull a fast one. The second win was against a club we’d lost to twice earlier in the first half of the season by 5 and 3 points – basically losing both games from a place where we should have won.
In both wins, there was a pleasing degree of – dare I say it – ‘T-CUP’. Carrying the ball against the wind, and in the second half kicking long and chasing like demons. Then came a defeat: 12-5 and a wake-up call that we’re weren’t going to bulldoze everyone. Our final – not that we knew that at the time – game was a return versus the Tralee team who’d handed out two thorough beatings to us before. Tables were turned this time as we defeated them 36-5.
So it looks like we went out on a high. The lads themselves were recognising their strengths and trying not to play to those of the opposition. We helped them by moving our usual 8 (quick, strong but not excessively big) into 10 and letting him get into the face of the opposition 10 … who didn’t get the armchair ride he was used to.
For me, the main takeaway or ‘learning’ (as my international work colleagues might say) is that we need to get lads playing. We can train them with drills to develop the skills, but they need to play, and play together, to build up their knowledge. Five, ten or fifteen minutes as a sub doesn’t help that development. It’s certainly a bugbear of mine to see a visiting club arrive with 23 or 24 players, knowing that numbers 16-23 will get a few token minutes when the game is already won or lost. We’d be better off to play 12 v 12, and adjust the rules slightly.
I get irritated by coaches for whom winning is obviously the priority. Winning is great, but the long-term view is to have as many as possible playing – and enjoying playing – our game. Hopefully, some of them will be standing on a touchline in 30 years’ time, having replaced me….
Courtesy of Triskaidekaphobia.
Ovally Balls 
This should answer your question Chimpie.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52267997
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This has a little more on Doncaster:
https://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/18377628.spfl-chief-neil-doncaster-earning-388-000-missing-action-league-crisis/
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CMW has an opinion on Mr Doncaster I imagine.
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Lockdown blues in Heidelberg, but otherwise fine BB. 4 weeks of fine weather has made going for a daily walk or going to the supermarket more bearable.
We just had a 100+ demo at the police HQ over the road today because a local medical lawyer who had been banged up for over a week in a psychiatric unit holding cell was released today, and her supporters had gathered there to protest and listen to what she had to say.
She had been preparing a series if legal challenges against the lockdown and trying to organise a large outdoor protest event which would have broken the covid-19 lockdown measures. She was then arrested for acting strangely and causing a kerfuffle while out on the street one evening, hence the psychiatric unit step.
Question now is whether what the police say is actually true, or whether she was targeted for arrest for stirring up trouble. It has also caught the attention of the AfD because it fits into their agenda of stirring up fear and panic about the deep state taking freedoms away for good during the pandemic.
Odd thing is though is that the police and protesters at the demo were all jammed together on the Police HQ forecourt rather than trying to keep to the 2 meters rule.
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Only read a few lines of all that before losing the will to live. What a bunch eh.
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Not Iks’ missive. Not that
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I saw the AfD called for some anti-coronavirus measures the other day. Including the abolition of Gender Studies courses in German universities.
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Perhaps in more interesting news, European beavers have returned to the river at Heidelberg.
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What has the heron been up to, Iks?
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TomP: is this happening near to you?
https://www.praguemorning.cz/in-this-czech-city-appeared-a-self-service-beer-bar/
you could incorporate it into your daily walk
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I recall a friend of mine said he saw vending machines with beer cans in Japan (a while back though it was)
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BRB, nice but a bit of a stretch to get there as it’s about 250 kms.
I’m sure I’ve seen something like that before.
Restaurants and pubs are closed at the moment but do takeaways and you can get half-litres and plastic bottles of draught to drink off premises. That was quite common in the old days apparently. When my missus was a young kid of 6 or 7 she and her brother would take a 2-litre jug to the pub, have it filled and then take it back home for her dad to drink.
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This place, which I’ve been to once, has self-service at the table, You pour your own Pllsner Urquell for 1.80 for 500 ml. https://www.thepub.cz/praha-1/o-nas/?lng=en It was too touristy for me.
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The pub, not the beer, which was yummy.
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@tomp
My older friends tell me similar stories from the UK. Going to the pub to buy draught beer for Dad.
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OT, I read a story in the FT a couple of days back about the ventilators still needing to be regulated. How are things going at the moment?
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Takeaway beer sounds very sensible and delicious. Nobody doing it around here yet (deepest west Wales). There’s definitely an opportunity here.
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The mother of a person *name redacted* I know used to drive to the pub with the kidz in the back, park outside, leave them in the car and go for multiple alez before driving home. One of a number of sub-optimal behaviours unfortunately.
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Local Italian restaurant is still doing their menu as a takeaway only. Don’t think they include draft beers sadly.
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Want a beer now.
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Luckily have a decent supply in.
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A lot of independent brewers have started up here and they often run a pub and restaurant on site as well. You can have a few jars with your grub and then buy a plastic bottle they fill from the tap to take away.
The newish brewery in my missus’s hometown is selling bottles from the window at the moment as restaurants and pubs are closed:
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Tom, I imagine Lance will be on a fraction of what Embra were paying Hickey, Matt Scott is OOC at the end of the season, if moving Hickey on allows us to keep Scott I’ll be more than happy.
I agree about Chamberlain but I don’t know his contract status. Edinburgh haven’t had a good home grown stand off for a very long time. I can’t really count Weir as he was injured for a long time. Laidlaw played 10 a lot with Mike Blair at nine. There was Paterson, but these guys were a long time ago.
It’s a shameHastings didn’t come home, but I can understand why he didn’t at that time, he would fit nicely into our backline now. We don’t want for backrow players, but pro level fly halfs are hard to come by
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‘Coronavirus adds $24bn to fortune of Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’
Well that’s a relief. I was worried he might lose a few billion and have to give up a superyacht or two.
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A Norwich supporting friend of mine just told me that N D*n*a*t*r is reputed to have once had a stand-up row with the soon-to-be-ex Norwich manager P L*m*ert outside the Wetherspoons in the city.
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‘It’s a shameHastings didn’t come home’
Thieving weedgie baboons.
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Coronavirus adds $24bn to fortune of Amazon boss Jeff Bezos
That’s before tax. After tax it works out at $24bn .
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@tomp
I think I may have seen the same report. Much of the newspaper reporting is very frustrating as they are trying to turn the situation in a political one when it is nothing of the sort. What all the different consortia is trying to do is very difficult and this has been known from the beginning. How I would characterise the present situation is this:
1. The original demand for 30k ventilators has been reduced to 18k. This is because a) the worst case scenario of patients in ICU seems to have been averted, partly through social distancing and b) we have learned that there are certain situations where covid-19 patients will not benefit from being put on a ventilator (in may indeed cause more problems).
2. When a covid-19 patient needs to be put on a ventilator it needs to be a sophisticated one, and the simpler ones simply won’t do the job, they have realised. So they have cancelled the order from the BlueSky consortium (that one with Red Bull F1 involved). Perfectly reasonable and sensible.
3. The Dyson one seems to have been done from scratch. These devices usually have to go through clinical trials and provide large amounts of data to demonstrate their efficacy and, most importantly, their safety. A faulty ventilator can severely damage and/or kill someone. So the regulator is taking a long time to approve that one, for good reason – this was all predicted by people who understand these things (a colleague of mine said “you can’t design and build a ventilator in a week”). So their design is yet to be approved, I would have thought (not inside this one so I’m just guessing).
4. The Ventilator Challenge UK consortium is already delivering ventilators. They are using a Penlon design already approved – the only difficulty is in getting automotive and aerospace suppliers that are not MHRA approved to be able to demonstrate they are doing things properly. There is also the slight snag that the F1 suppliers and others are using 3D printing (which makes parts with slightly different mechanical properties to conventional techniques) so they have to be sure these are safe. So the MHRA and their notified bodies are just doing their thing to make sure that the delivered ventilators meet the approved spec – they’re not holding anything up as ICUs are not at capacity yet (apparently the Nightingale had 19 people over the weekend, and there’s loads of ventilators lying unused there). It’s not a delay as such, but may be reported in that way.
5. This consortium are also delivering the Smiths Parapac vent but this is low risk and quite straightforward – you find one of these in every ambulance for example, so that’s not a problem – these have alreade been put into place in hospitals – https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/14/first-uk-built-ventilators-finally-arrive-hospital-wards-12555139/
There’s been a lot of PR-driven hot air from Dyson et al, followed by a bit of a backlash from the media. But everything is probably happening as you might expect.
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Cheers, OT. The problem seems to me to be that big things get promised and then things don’t go to plan.
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@tomp
That’s how it’s presented in the media. In some papers they presented the reduction from 30k to 18k as some kind of failure when it isn’t. If they chose they could present it as a triumph of the government’s social distancing strategy but they don’t. Or as a welcome result of doctors learning from experience, but they don’t. It’s got to be the result of government ineptitude but it isn’t. It’s weird for me to be defending a BoJo led government but that’s what I’ve ended up doing!
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@ Ticht
One for you to enjoy!:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2020/apr/15/self-isolating-animals-species-social-distancing-wwf
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Lovely stuff, Slade
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Coming over here etc news:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52293061
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“CMW has an opinion on Mr Doncaster I imagine.”
Never heard of him so I’m going to have to have a guess.
I’ll go for ‘Not a postman on the Isle of Mull’.
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Though if it’s the qualities to look for in a winner then I would go for depressing with an air of menace. The Mrs Doncaster contest is scarier though.
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“European beavers have returned to the river at Heidelberg.”
This I do have an opinion on, best news I’ve heard in weeks.
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“N D*n*a*t*r is reputed to have once had a stand-up row with the soon-to-be-ex Norwich manager P L*m*ert outside the Wetherspoons in the city.”
Well at least half of the row will have been unintelligible.
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*o*c*s*e* and *a*b*r* don’t seem to have been at Norwich at the same time, the latter taking over as manager after his Colchester team beat Norwich 7(seven)-1 on the first day of their only season in the third tier since 1960.
“However, after the team’s relegation from The Championship to League One in May 2009, he stepped down from his position, along with chairman Roger Munby.[5] In the following months, he also left his positions on the boards of The Football Association and The Football League.
On 7 July 2009, Doncaster was appointed Chief Executive of the Scottish Premier League.”
Great recruitment policy from the SPL.
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OT, thanks for the clear and concise explanation. Nice to read something not laden with bias. Also quite reassuring at one level, but disturbing at another, with so many companies globally now producing ventilators as if they’re face masks.
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Springsteen review on the Graun. I, like the author first heard Born in the USA, and moved on from there. The more I listen to his earlier music, the more I love him in totality. A complete musician for me.
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Think I’ll listen to some in my ‘office’ tomorrow.
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Anyway, baby, I was born to run, so see you tomorrow!
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Book news. The Alexander Zelvin book I’m reading about The Economist is slyly, absurdly funny at points.
About Walter Layton, editor aftter 1916 he writes: “Layton lost his part in a production of Faust to poet Rupert Brooke because he was studying railway wages for the Board of Trade”
In the 1950s and 60s The Economist employed a frightening Australian called Brian Cozier, a very dark presence in British political life until the 1990s. There was another character there called Brian Beedham who was nicknamed Bomber. He was seen as a calmer voice and was asked to rewrite a critical article about Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Here’s the sentence:
“Crozier fumed, but even his friend Beedham at this point preferred compromise to nuclear war.”
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Deebee, last year, it might have been two years ago now, I embarked on a journey and played every Springsteen album one night after the other, reading through the lyric sheets as I did so. There is a website called Springsteen Lyrics or somesuch. It was a rewarding experience as I only knew a few of his albums well.
I tend to wince a bit when he goes all Jim Steinmanesque in the arrangements, but I guess that was of its time
Tom, that sentence is quite something
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Also, that Springsteen on Broadway is well worth a look on Netflix.
I had forgotten about it till now, I only watched about 3/4 of it, maybe I’ll start all over again, it was good.
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I think I’ve mentioned it before, but the best gig I have ever been at was Bruce Springsteen at Hampden Park – June 2013 it was. A beautiful clear night, sun splitting the sky, I had a seat in the second row of the stand, directly across from the stage so uninterrupted view of the stage and screens. He came on at 7.30 and finished just before 11.00. (OK, you could maybe argue that he shouldn’t have started a gig in Glasgow with a song called ‘No Surrender’).
Songs – too many to mention, though Born To Run (the album) is probably my favourite overall and not even necessarily the well known songs either. The trumpet in Meeting Across The River just adds to the whole atmosphere of the song (and you just know things aren’t going to end well).
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Could well argue that Born in the USA is actually one of his worst albums, altho I have to be in the right mood to listen to much post of Tom Joad. So much variation, favourites vary with time, i would have to bracket Ghost and Nebraska together, The River and Born to Run, Wild, Innocent and E Street and Darkness On the Edge of Town as a consistent top six, varying in pairs. Only seen him once, Born in USA tour.
Did once make a pilgrimage in passing to the Stone Pony in Asbury Park for a beer, but Bruce was nowhere to be seen.
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Ach, buggrit. Here’s a Brucie bonus…
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Nicola says, Stye the fuck in
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More ventilator news
Welsh doctor’s ventilator approved by regulators
A new type of ventilator developed by a senior consultant from Glangwili Hospital, and an engineering company from Ammanford to help coronavirus patients, has been approved by regulators.
https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2020-04-14/welsh-doctors-ventilator-approved-by-regulators/?fbclid=IwAR1D0zn6Fk5wncUHACXc04csxe-SBvlzZzMsdrsN953aMwz8wOl0Ys3D-SE
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