Saturday, February 7, 2026
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Well, this hasn’t been a great couple of days for Irish rugby has it. Bad enough that we had Six Nations rugby on a Thursday, the opening match in Paris quickly devolved into one we were never going to win in a month of Sundays.
I toyed with the notion of getting the weekly wrap pod over with early this week, but in the end I thought it better to leave for a couple of days to let the wounds heal a bit and also to allow the other matches from round 1 to play out, which seems like the right decision. To tide us over in the meantime, a couple of contributors from the Harpin WhatsApp group, Kristian Ross & Keego, did offer their own thoughts by way of a brief article and video respectively, click here to check them out.
But of course the Thursday thrashing wasn’t to be the only Irish rugby this weekend, and at Thomond Park last night we had the next crop of players down Andy Farrell’s pecking order assembling to take on their English counterparts. Before I get to the match itself, a quick word on the names of these teams.
This is a small point about aesthetics, I freely admit that, but is it too much to ask the rugby nations to come to some sort of agreement on what they’re going to call these 2nd string selections? To my eye anyway it looks really shoddy the way we sometimes call them XV, sometimes call them ‘A’, and sometimes give them nicknames like Wolfhounds or Saxons.
If I were being really picky, and I suppose I am, I’d never refer to the teams as ‘A’ because surely that letter is meant to be used for the best, which by definition this group is not? But FWIW even I would accept that, once they all did it. Why make it so goddam confusing for everyone. Ireland XV v England A suggests two teams that are different somehow, when they aren’t.
Well, when I say they aren’t…the above grievance is of course referring to the marketing of the match to the public before kickoff. Once things got underway in Limerick on Friday night, it was clear we did have two squads that were completely different in composition.
In England’s case, they looked like a team of players all of whom not only knew what they were about tactics-wise, but also all of whom were confident of stepping up to the top level when called upon. Ireland on the other hand resembled a team of players who were just filling the jersey for a night. Let’s just say that it was clear from an early stage that the visitors were likely to rack up 50 points and leave it at that.
HARPIN' ON RUGBY 