498 : France v Ireland wrap

14 February 2026; Robert Baloucoune of Ireland dives over to score his side’s third try despite the tackle of Lorenzo Cannone of Italy during the Guinness 6 Nations Rugby Championship match between Ireland and Italy at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

🏉 Attack still misfiring

🏉 Fresh faces

🏉 Brava Italia

🏉 Super Stu

🏉 15s & 7s

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

CONOR CRONIN

FULL TIME TAKES

Gerald Williamson

Quite frankly it was a wrestling match with Ireland just shading it.

Christy O’Connor

Lots of work needed to be done for next week. Sam is in a horrible position, Farrell is adamant about Sam starting, I’m not saying he’s a poor player, he’s just not ready. If any 10 can feel hard done by it’s Frawley. The championship is already over for us, so may as well test more players

John Kehoe

Ireland beat Italy by more points this year than last year

Greg McAuliffe

I thought once Crowley came on, we got a bit of an attacking shape back, which has been under Sam. Still not where we should be but the difference was obvious.

Michelle Tobin

Andy Farrell would do well to talk to Andrew Brown. Brown was so p*ssed off at the Irish performance last night despite the win. “A win is a win” is not the right mindset for the team that was formerly #1 in the world and should be aspiring to get back there, not barely beating Italy. We’re safe from 6th now but there are 3 big games left and I’m not confident

Ted Maher

I really really really hate to say it but Sam!

Chris McDonnell

3 of the 4 half backs are just not good enough. Doak for Casey and frawley and Murphy for Pendergast and Crowley.

Gavin Hegarty

Prendergast not good but then Crowley doesn’t take his chance and denies us a bonus point. Time to try Byrne.

Brian McKeon

Scotland did it last week, we did it this week, underestimated the Italians. Italy have lightening quick backs and a very strong pack.

I’ve never seen Tadhg Furlong get flying lessons in a scrum before today.

Ken Tancred PT

Ireland’s definitely in a rebuilding phase… It should have started last year except for the lions distraction. But Italy are starting to click so they so they have to take some credit

A worrying thing for me is how they team played under Casey and how they changed when JGP came on

Kevin Kelehan

Italy turned up and forced Ireland to work harder than they have for a long time against Italy. England will really target our scrum next week, what was the only blot on an otherwise really decent effort. I remain a huge Sam fan but not was clear that JGP and Crowley was a far better combination. Very decent debuts for Itzy, Balacoune and Edogbo with further enhancement of Timoney’s rep. 70% happy

Craig Boyd

Really poor, very one dimensional and Italy can feel really hard done by. V little to be positive about. Improved when Crowley and Gibson Park came on but missed out on the bonus point

Darragh Headen

2 yellows were harsh i taught, Italy were ferocious, will seriously test both England & France, good points were new debutants, and some great passing, we have concerns in the scrum. Crowley to start, Atmosphere looked desperate, too many there with no passion just in & out drinking & pissing like yo yo,s

CLICK HERE FOR THE REAL-TIME REACTIONS FROM

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SIX NATIONS WRAP

Italy 18-15 Scotland

England 48-7 Wales

France 36-14 Ireland

Scotland 31–20 England

Italy 13–20 Ireland

Wales 12–54 France

Round 3 Fixtures

Sat 21 Feb

England v Ireland

Wales v Scotland

Sun 22 Feb

France v Italy

NEXT HARPIN’

TUESDAY

BONUS CHAT : “MEDIA NARRATIVES”

WEDNESDAY

80+ COLUMN

497 : Ireland v Italy preview

Our guest : CIARÁN DUFFY

Post to Post blog

IRELAND : 15 Jimmy O’Brien 14 Robert Baloucoune 13 Garry Ringrose 12 Stuart McCloskey 11 James Lowe 10 Sam Prendergast 9 Craig Casey

1 Jeremy Loughman 2 Dan Sheehan 3 Tom Clarkson 4 Joe McCarthy 5 James Ryan 6 Cian Prendergast 7 Caelan Doris (c) 8 Jack Conan

16 Ronan Kelleher 17 Tom O’Toole 18 Tadhg Furlong 19 Edwin Edogbo 20 Tadhg Beirne 21 Nick Timoney 22 Jamison Gibson‑Park 23 Jack Crowley

ITALY : 15 Lorenzo Pani 14 Louis Lynagh 13 Tommaso Menoncello 12 Leonardo Marin 11 Monty Ioane 10 Paolo Garbisi 9 Alessandro Fusco

1 Danilo Fischetti 2 Giacomo Nicotera 3 Simone Ferrari 4 Niccolò Cannone 5 Andrea Zambonin 6 Michele Lamaro (c) 7 Manuel Zuliani 8 Lorenzo Cannone

16 Tommaso Di Bartolomeo 17 Mirco Spagnolo 18 Muhamed Hasa 19 Federico Ruzza 20 Riccardo Favretto 21 David Odiase 22 Alessandro Garbisi 23 Paolo Odogwu

Guinness Six Nations 2026 – Round 2

Saturday, February 14, 2026

Aviva Stadium

KO 2:15pm

Live on : Virgin Media 1

Referee: Hollie Davidson (SRU)

AR1: Matthew Carley (RFU)

AR2: Luc Ramos (FFR)

TMO: Ian Tempest (RFU)

FPRO: Tual Trainini (FFR)

496 : France v Ireland wrap

5 February 2026; Matthieu Jalibert of France scores his side’s second try despite the attempted tackle from Cian Prendergast of Ireland during the Guinness 6 Nations Rugby Championship match between France and Ireland at Stade de France in Paris, France. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

🏉 Rucks & collisions

🏉 The three P’s

🏉 Après set pieces

🏉 Selections

🏉 Calls & non-calls

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

MARK JACKSON

FULL TIME TAKES

Craig Grehan

All in all. Good day out. Look we know we’re in transition and we’re not the numero uno team anymore. SA and France are. Very different teams. Who we need to figure out new ways to beat them.

Good things, our lineout outclassed and manhandled theirs.

Scrums without our big names in the front row definitely held their own.

Sam P silenced his can’t tackle haters (a bit) by hitting a fair few.

Stockdale can still be a threat.

When we move ball we can scare teams.

Cian P was immense.

We still gave France a good rattle fir 25 minutes.

The referees helped France by not seeing 2 forward passes, and a knock on by France.

And not the deliberate yellow one.

The not so good:

We kept kicking despite it not really working.

Despite our scrum and lineout platform, we looked game rusty, silly knock ons, not running hard.

Which is easily settled by picking game ready players.

Some sloppy defending.

Doris is our least aggressive backrow.

No leader on the pitch to say “this isnt working”.

The ref missing the above mentioned things haha

Odran John OBrien

France outstanding no one will come near to them playing like this

Kevin Kelehan

Fixed the perceived problems, scrum solid, gave away 3 penalties in the entire game, only one preventable, line out held up against French going after it. Sam Prendergast’s tackling was arguably the best of the Irish backs. Then they kicked and kicked and kicked when it was clear the French has superior aerial skills. 22-0 at half time and 29-0 down at nearly an hour and it looked like a hiding. Then they woke up and were unlucky the ref didn’t card Dupont when 29-14, they could with a man advantage have got a lot closer. Next game out through Edogbo in at 5, Furlong will be back, put Beirne in at 6 and hopefully the 3 larger ball carriers will get us more yards when we have the ball. France deservedly on their way to retaining their championship

Christy O’Connor

Can’t say I expected any other outcome on the result. The scrum done a lot better than I expected. We are well off the pace and Farrell needs to start picking more players that are in form rather than ticking with the same old faces. This could be the unraveling of Andy’s time in charge if he doesn’t get a grip on this.

Peter Mcconnell

For me it was the commitment in the tackle. For some reason French players were able to power through the tackle sufficiently to offload, or make more metres. In previous years the Irish tacklers have done a pretty good job of halting the attacking players. I don’t know if it is a lack of aggression on behalf of the Irish tacklers, or just a brute fore determination by the French, but I have no doubt it were we lost was at the contact.

Ann Marie Crean

Just not up to scratch 😒 😫

End of

Cormac Mannion

Good to see Cian P do so well, Milne too. The subs did very well when they came on and it did make a difference but France had taken their foot off the gas by that stage. Lineout and scrum were good.

Our defence is shambolic. Players don’t seem to know what they’re supposed to be doing and our attack plan was dire. We seem to look better when we have two playmakers on the field (Crowley and Sam), similar to Leinster when Sam and Harry were on the pitch at the same time.

Osborne is a fine player but looked rusty last night and has all the speed of an oil tanker when he’s turning. Stockdale – didn’t reproduce his early season form. Ringrose – barely saw the ball.

So much wrong (injuries aside) and the players looked jaded from the very beginning

Shaun Berger‬ (BlueSky)

Timoney was great.

Ire outplayed and outfought in so many areas. But one thing I dont see mentioned much:

Did we even win one bloody aerial battle? Even when it looked like we caught it Fra seemed to end up with the ball.

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SIX NATIONS WRAP

ROUND 2

SATURDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2026
Ireland v Italy, 2:10pm, Aviva Stadium
Scotland v England, 4:40pm, Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium

SUNDAY 15 FEBRUARY 2026
Wales v France, 3:10pm, Principality Stadium

NEXT HARPIN’

TUESDAY

BONUS CHAT : “WEEKEND ROUNDUP”

80+ COLUMN

Irish realities, casual fans & telly innovations

Saturday, February 7, 2026

Hi there, welcome to Broken Play, aka my Saturday morning Substack scribbling, and since you’re here, if you haven’t already, please hit the subscribe button if you don’t mind.

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.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE ON SUBSTACK

Some post-Paris thoughts from Kristian & Keego

It’s Friday when we normally do our feature match previews here at Harpin Manor, but the horrendous Thursday evening kickoff time has discombobulated our weekly routine a tad.

We’ve decided to stick with our Sunday evening match wrap recording, and regular contributor Mark Jackson will be joining me for that, but to tide us over until then, here are some thoughts from two other friends of the pod, Kristian Ross who offered some written words and Keego who recorded a brief video.

IRELAND THROWN BACK ON THURSDAY

by Kristian Ross

A weakened Ireland opened their 2026 Six Nations campaign with a humbling defeat to France in Paris, on an unfamiliar Thursday evening.

With a seemingly insurmountable injury list, Andy Farrell’s side were in need of a miracle at the Stade de France — but any hope of that was firmly extinguished as the reigning champions set the pace early on.

By half-time, the contest was effectively over. Les Bleus held a 22-point lead that reflected their dominance, with Louis Bielle-Biarrey, Matthieu Jalibert, and Charles Ollivon all crossing the line. However, there was controversy surrounding the opening try, with what appeared to be a forward pass in the build-up.

Uncharacteristically, Ireland made multiple handling errors, their exits misfired, and any momentum was quickly smothered by French line speed and physicality at the breakdown.

The home side were just as ruthless after the restart, extending their lead further. A brief flicker of resistance emerged after both benches emptied, with Ireland showing greater intent with ball in hand and earning a try through Ulster forward Nick Twomey.

A second score followed soon after, capitalising on a rare lapse in French concentration and briefly threatening to give the contest some shape, as Munster prop Michael Milne became the first Offaly-born player to score an international try in a green jersey.

Historically, France have a habit of making things difficult for themselves, and they nearly conceded a third try following a penalty for a deliberate knock-on by Antoine Dupont. Yet, to the confusion of a partisan crowd, he avoided a yellow card.

With that reprieve, France punished Ireland further as Théo Attissogbe put the finishing touch on a commanding win. A depleted Ireland squad must now regroup and aim for a bounce-back victory against Italy next week to keep their slim championship hopes alive.

@harpinonrugby
He usually does previews for us on Fridays but this week we get to hear Keego’s views on the other side…. #FRAvIRE #GuinnessM6N #rugbytiktok
♬ original sound – Harpinonrugby.blog

495 : France v Ireland preview

Our guest : HUGO GORDON

IRELAND : 15 Jamie Osborne 14 Tommy O’Brien 13 Garry Ringrose 12 Stuart McCloskey 11 Jacob Stockdale 10 Sam Prendergast 9 Jamison Gibson‑Park

1 Jeremy Loughman 2 Dan Sheehan 3 Tom Clarkson 4 Joe McCarthy 5 Tadhg Beirne 6 Cian Prendergast 7 Josh van der Flier 8 Caelan Doris (c)

16 Ronan Kelleher 17 Michael Milne 18 Finlay Bealham 19 James Ryan 20 Jack Conan 21 Nick Timoney 22 Craig Casey 23 Jack Crowley

FRANCE : 15 Thomas Ramos 14 Théo Attissogbe 13 Nicolas Depoortere 12 Yoram Moefana 11 Louis Bielle‑Biarrey 10 Matthieu Jalibert 9 Antoine Dupont

1 Jean‑Baptiste Gros 2 Julien Marchand 3 Dorian Aldegheri 4 Charles Ollivon 5 Mickaël Guillard 6 François Cros 7 Oscar Jegou 8 Anthony Jelonch

16 Peato Mauvaka 17 Rodrigue Neti 18 Régis Montagne 19 Hugo Auradou 20 Emmanuel Meafu 21 Leni Nouchi 22 Baptiste Serin 23 Kalvin Gourgues

Guinness Six Nations 2026 – Round 1

Thursday, February 5, 2026

Stade de France

KO 8:10pm

Live on : Virgin Media 1

Referee: Karl Dickson (RFU)

AR1: Angus Gardner (RA)

AR2: Jordan Way (RA)

TMO: Ian Tempest (RFU)

FPRO: Richard Kelly (NZR)

80+ column : February 3

ON THIS WEEK’S COLUMN…

WRAP OF A WRAP
THURSDAY’S CHILD…
SOLIDARITY
EARLY DOORS
LAWS UNTO THEMSELVES
DEVINE INTERVENTION
HARPIN’ ON…LEINSTER SEASON OVERVIEW
TEAMS FOR FRANCE V IRELAND
TROLL PATROL
COMPETITION UPDATES (incl Leinster Schools)
NEXT HARPIN’

WRAP OF A WRAP

As you’ll see a bit down the page, this ‘Thursday Six Nations kickoff’ malarkey is really grinding my gears, not least because it messes up my content schedule. Our preview will record Wednesday evening so I will post this late on Tuesday.

When it comes to the Edinburgh wrap, I was joined by Mr Leinster Royalty himself Tom Coleman who gave an excellent account of the match as well as an overview of Leinster’s season as you’ll see in the bonus chat. We began by focusing on Leinster’s NIQ players. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one cursing RG Snyman during the match on Saturday for overdoing the funky offloads but Tom did a decent job of providing counter point with all the good he’s done, as well as looking at Reiko & Rabah.

ICYMI click here to have a listen.

THURSDAY’S CHILD…

…this year’s Thursday start is because of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics.

Why is the Six Nations starting on Thursday?

Jonathan Bradley – BBC.com

…had far to go. And I’ll tell you what, you’d have to go pretty far to convince me that any of the reasons given for bringing this match forward to a goddam Thursday make any sense.

I mean, forgive me for not keeping up on the latest bobsledding and luge news but when this day switch was first announced, and I heard it was to do with the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics, I thought that meant the games were IN France. But they’re not. They’re actually in Italy. So why isn’t it their game with Scotland that gets moved instead of ours????

I mean, going by this article it seems that a weekly ProD2 fixture plus several World Cup matches under a very flawed format somehow makes this marquee matchup going to midweek understandable. Excusez‑moi, mesdames et messieurs, but it doesn’t.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL COLUMN ON SUBSTACK

494 : Leinster v Edinburgh wrap

31 January 2026; Scott Penny of Leinster, second from left, celebrates after scoring his third and his side’s fourth try during the United Rugby Championship match between Leinster and Edinburgh at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile

🏉 Offload overload?

🏉 NIQ benefits

🏉 Death. Taxes. Penny.

🏉 Tector at 10

🏉 Luke’s leadership

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

TOM COLEMAN

FULL TIME TAKES

Christy O’Connor

Great result for the players that were playing. Thought Tector done well considering it’s been a long time since he had a run of games at ten.

Still a lot of the same issues with our attack, it’s very 1 dimensional and we need a lot of entries into their 22 to come away with some points

Cormac Mannion

We really are winning the hard way this season but a welcome win and another bonus point.

Still lots to improve on but when you think we are down to the bare bones in terms of players, it was a very satisfactory win

Gavin Hegarty

We made very hard work of it. Simple things that just didn’t work.

For example why did RG continue to try offloads when they never worked?

All teams now know they can easily unlock our shoot up defence by quick passing yet we still do it? Reko got caught out tonight.

Eamon Saunders

Good win again and great to see so much young talent being used

Kevin Kelehan

We have discovered the new and improved version of Mick Kiernan at 12 to fix Ireland’s place kicking problem, his name is Charlie Tector and he will be well ready for RWC 2027. The block down of the conversion on 80 minutes was very frustrating, Embra deserved a point out of that game and conceding it cost Leinster nothing

Dave Murray

A hard earned, but well deserved, 5 points for the 2nd/3rd string. Stormers losing again was pleasing too.

Get in the conversation yourself by leaving

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URC WRAP

NEXT HARPIN’

TUESDAY

BONUS CHAT : “LEINSTER’S SEASON SO FAR” (YouTube)

WEDNESDAY

80+ COLUMN (Substack)

France v Ireland preview (YouTube)

The Bundee debate, wonderful Warriors & provincial bants

Saturday, January 31, 2026

Hi there, welcome to Broken Play, aka my Saturday morning Substack scribbling, and since you’re here, if you haven’t already, please hit the subscribe button if you don’t mind.

Ah here, is it the last day of January already? It doesn’t feel like I’d quite gotten finished saying “Ah here, is it the last day of 2025 already?” yet here we are. I must be having tons of fun. It certainly wasn’t from the weather for the past week, mind you. Storm Chandra not only wreaked havoc by causing floods and upturning wheelie bins but took mind to circle back and wreak some more later in the week for good measure.

Which means the forecast for the Aviva tonight of 5॰, little or no wind and 25% rain sounds positively tropical and having been forced to miss the La Rochelle thriller I’m extra looking forward to some live Leinster Rugby this evening.

The latest Harpin preview was a little different this week. The actual format was still the same, but right after the intro when I normally ask my regular guest Keego about last week’s match, he elected to focus on the ban inflicted on Bundee Aki during the week. We don’t discuss what we’re going to say beforehand and I reckon this could have been the most I have ever disagreed with him in all the years we have been doing these preview pods.

Obviously that’s not necessarily a bad thing, in fact many suggest ALL podcasts should have an element of opposing sides, but with this one being so short and the opening segment meant to be brief, we couldn’t really get into it. I did push back a bit, but rather than relitigate the whole matter here you’d be better off listening for yourself so you can do that here. There is also, of course, a decent look ahead to this evening’s match if I do say so myself.

And let’s not forget my latest stint on DublinSouthFM…

But before the spotlight gets turned on the team from the Scottish capital, I’d like to first look at their 1972 Cup rivals the Glasgow Warriors, who consolidated themselves at the top of the URC table (although the Stormers who are 7pts behind them have two games in hand) with a 31-22 victory over Munster last night at Scotstoun.

I didn’t see all of the match, but it was 12-5 to the home side when I joined so I got a decent look at the free flowing rugby they are playing this season. It really was a sight to behold. I spend a lot of my harpin’ time trying to justify Leinster’s defence-centric approach this season but I have to say, at times I do miss the days when we were all freely using the phrase “Leinstertainment” and Glasgow certainly had their own version on display at times last night.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE ON SUBSTACK

493 : Leinster v Edinburgh preview

Our guest : NEIL “KEEGO” KEEGAN

www.keegolaughs.com

Apologies Up Front on Apple Podcasts

Leinster : 15 Andrew Osborne 14 Joshua Kenny 13 Rieko Ioane 12 Ciarán Mangan 11 Ruben Moloney 10 Charlie Tector 9 Luke McGrath (c)

1 Jerry Cahir 2 John McKee 3 Andrew Sparrow 4 RG Snyman 5 Brian Deeny 6 Max Deegan 7 Scott Penny 8 Diarmuid Mangan

16 Gus McCarthy 17 Alex Usanov 18 Niall Smyth 19 Conor O’Tighearnaigh 20 Josh Ericson 21 Will Connors 22 Fintan Gunne 23 Hugo McLaughlin

Edinburgh : 15 Harry Paterson 14 Malelili Satala 13 Wes Goosen 12 James Lang 11 Duhan van der Merwe 10 Ross Thompson 9 Ben Vellacott

1 Boan Venter 2 Jerry Blyth‑Lafferty 3 Paul Hill 4 Callum Hunter‑Hill 5 Glen Young 6 Ben Muncaster 7 Freddy Douglas 8 Magnus Bradbury (c)

16 Harri Morris 17 Mikey Jones 18 Ollie Blyth‑Lafferty 19 Tom Dodd 20 Connor Boyle 21 Charlie Shiel 22 Cammy Scott 23 Piers O’Conor

BKT United Rugby Championship 25/26 – Round 11

Saturday, January 31, 2026

Aviva Stadium

KO 5:30pm

Live on : Premier Sports 1, URC.tv

Referee: Andrea Piardi (FIR)

AR 1: Eoghan Cross (IRFU)

AR 2: Shane Gaughan (IRFU)

TMO: Matteo Liperini (FIR)