Hello and welcome to our latest 80+ column where I generally harp on things outside our normal remit, namely the latest match involving the Leinster/Ireland men’s team.
For our latest wrap pod we harped on Leinster’s 11th win out of 11 in the URC, with Rich Mifsud from Gibraltar and Ciarán Duffy from Bray doing their usual bang up job helping me do so.
We’ve been using a timer on the Zoom calls for the past few weeks to help keep the show under an hour and it has been working really well, especially since by a complete coincidence the app puts the clock right where I have the Harpin logo on the videos so nothing needed to change.
Made another change to our platform lineup, after adding the Substack channel something had to give.
Mastodon had already made way for Discord, so we decided the next in line was to be Threads; to be honest I never really understood what I was getting from that platform anyway.
But the Substack looks very useful indeed, I’m trying to use it to get myself actually writing again, including what I hope will be a weekly article named “Broken Play” which I’ll scribble on Saturday mornings for the foreseeable. I am also restoring our “Throwback Thursday” feature where I’ll be trawling through the Harpin archives going back to 2008 for an old post which somehow relates to Leinster/Ireland’s next match. With us playing in Cardiff this weekend you can probably imagine what bit of history I’ve chosen for the first one, but to confirm your suspicions you’ll have to actually click into our Substack on Thursday morning to find out!
Just to be clear, I have this Substack account as a FREE subscription so if you could take a look and maybe even subscribe you’d help me out a lot, cheers.
BREAKING NEWS
UPDATE : this Ross Byrne story broke as we were posting, we’ll harp on it for our preview Friday
FRONT FIVE
CLICK THE IMAGE TO VIEW THIS WEEK’S FRONT 5
A selection of eye-catching egg-chasing quotes & links from around the rugby media landscape
OFF THE BOIL
SWEET HOME CHICAGO
BRING YOUR A GAME
THOMOND THOUGHTS
RE-LEASH A JAGUAR
HARPIN ON…LIONS TOUR – STILL WORTH IT?
For our bonus chat this week, our panel looked at the Lions Tour in the professional era.
Here’s the lead-in question…
“It’s a Lions year and two games into the Six Nations the talk about possible starting XVs and who’s ‘on the plane’ are already happening throughout the ruggersphere. But for right now, we’re going to revisit a angle that we’ve been harpin’ on going way back to 2013 when we had a guest post from long time Babbling Brook message board poster curate’s egg titled “Lions: more ‘meh’, than miaow”. Basically the question being asked is whether or not the Lions Tours are still relevant in the professional age and the questions have come from more and more people as we have gotten closer to the latest tours since then. Starting with yourself Ciarán, are the Lions a concept worth continuing?”
BTW – we chose to steer clear of the ‘British Empire’ Lions argument in the video mostly because we figured the comment section would cover it pretty well and sure enough within half an hour we got the first one in, here’s a sample…
Camcolito
I couldn’t care less about the Lions honestly. The Brits love it since it gives them the feeling of having an empire.
Jason Wall
7:34 no such thing as Ireland being in the home Nations. Also no such thing as the British Isles. The Lions seems to go nack or reflect the imperialism of the British empire.
I’d rather see a series of a team from Franco-Hibernian Wolf Hounds v the British Lions.
IRELAND SQUAD UPDATE
With Doris and Kelleher listed as doubts since Monday’s update I took the approach whereby we do have enough cover not to risk them, this includes Tadhg Furlong who can get minutes off the bench for Leinster against Cardiff if needed. I have a feeling Simon will stick with Sam and Bundee in the starting lineup but I for this selection I switched those for rotation’s sake and as you can see I have opted for what I call “The Porter Protocol” where Church puts in a full bore 30m shift allowing AP to see out the match.
Healy, Sheehan, Bealham, McCarthy, Beirne, O’Mahony (c), van der Flier, Conan
G McCarthy, Porter, Clarkson, Ryan, C Prendergast, Murray, S Prendergast, Aki
caveat : I have no “ITK” a la Thornley
IRELAND SQUAD UPDATE POSTED MONDAY FEB 17
The Ireland squad return to camp on Sunday evening ahead of Saturday’s Round 3 Guinness Men’s Six Nations clash against Wales at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff (Kick-off 2.15pm).
Gavin Coombes, John Hodnett, Diarmuid Mangan, Stuart McCloskey, Jacob Stockdale and Nick Timoney have all been added to the squad, with Iain Henderson (hamstring) and Cormac Izuchukwu (ankle) unavailable due to injury. The Ulster duo will remain with their province to recover and commence their rehabilitation programmes.
The workloads of Caelan Doris (knee) and Rónan Kelleher (neck) are being managed this week.
Tadhg Furlong is continuing to make progress and both Mack Hansen and Joe McCarthy are back training with the squad.
Meanwhile, Craig Casey will join the Ireland camp this week as he bids to return to action over the coming months.
TROLL PATROL
Now it’s time for Troll Patrol where we ‘detain’ a social media commentator and charge them with gaslightery and general online mayhem.
It’s very important to remember that it’s not just so-called anonymous “keyboard warriors” who can be trolls. In fact I find that term is most often used by the journos, probably to disguise the fact that they can often be the worst trolls themselves.
Take this article from Stephen Jones. I’m serious, please take it and get it as far away from me as possible!!! Seriously though, maybe the sub editor has a lot to do with the choice of headline but having suffered SJ’s work in the past I’d say it’s a pretty accurate reflection of what he’s on about in the article itself. No, I didn’t actually read it, nor would I want to. I got enough from this headline to know it ranks right up there with Off The Ball’s nonsense I mentioned in this week’s Front5 video.
Qualifying finals – 1 v 6, 2 v 5, 3 v 4 with the top-ranked team hosting
Semi-Finals – three qualifying winners plus highest ranked loser: Teams re-ranked with 1 v 4 and 2 v 3
Final – top-ranked semi-final winner hosts the other semi-final winner.
Premiership
🔝🐱🐴
ProD2
RWC2027 QUALIFIERS
The RWC2027 tournament has expanded to 24 nations so with four extra spots up for grabs it makes for a fascinating qualifying process.
Rather than post the latest results and fixtures here however, I’d like to defer to the excellent work of frequent Harpin’ contributor Ciarán Duffy who has been keeping close tabs on the qualifying process over at his own site Post to Post Sport.
Follow this link to see how the Road to Australia is progressing..
Japan League One
Major League Rugby
Harpin Prediction League
This is the 4th season of our Superbru prediction league among Harpin’ pod contributors.
Kristian is the reigning champion, but the real competition is in avoiding finishing last, which means you must wear The Jersey of Shame. I had to wear it the first year, while Keego has had the honour the past two seasons. As you can see our resident stats expert Rugby Kino is leading the way but we’re only passing the halfway stage, and we’ve also added a Cup (or Mug) competition to make things interesting – I managed to overcome Jay in the first quarterfinal, with Conor leading Rich with one outstanding match left in Round 11.
14 February 2025; Rabah Slimani of Leinster is congratulated by teammates after scoring his side’s third try during the United Rugby Championship match between Ospreys and Leinster at Swansea.com Stadium in Swansea, Wales. Photo by Chris Fairweather/Sportsfile
Just shows what experience brings, Tipuric was a menace and a pain in the arse from the 1st minute, got right in the Leinster faces and bullied them and all behind the refs back(or the ref just didn’t care).
McGraths try was brilliant for once in the game passes stuck and defenders were beaten.
MOTM Harri Deaves was also a menace & seemed to get a semi when Snyman came on giving him lots of lip and trying to belittle him, Snyman for his part looked to love it and was all smiles, a real valentines vibe going on.
Great win for a real second team and good for Frawley, O’Brien, Osbourne and the Irish squad members to get a run to dust off some cobwebs, which there was a lot of, but if they get a run against Wales it will stand to them.
Some over the top comments on here about playing bad when the team was cobbled together and most haven’t played in 3 weeks but as the saying goes winning ugly is still winning.
Sandra Seery
Was really hoping for a bonus point but happy with the win.
Bert McLoughlin
Sloppy handling when in good positions cost us a few scores from good positions but just about got over the line. It’s not often an opposition backrow play better than the Leinster backrow, Tipuric still going strong as the elder statesman
Jackie McEachern
I think this is mostly one to forget but glad we got the win.
Warren Doyle
A win is a win but not a great performance. Second string players will not have learned anything from that. Too much up & under & very little continuity. Better to come, hopefully.
Get in the conversation yourself by leaving
your own thoughts each week after the full time whistle
Hello and welcome to our latest 80+ column where I generally harp on things not so Leinster-and-or-Ireland-men’s-team-related.
As you can see below the lads didn’t let me away with a typo when I set up the wrap pod WhatsApp group, quite a bad typo I’ll freely admit. Anyway Tom & Conor forgave me enough to give a top notch summary of Ireland’s win on Sunday.
We recently started a presence on Discord and now we’re adding Substack to the list. Threads might be next to be ditched make way….
Anyway, Substack seems like a good place to get back into regular actual writing – as much as I have loved producing pods and videos for the past few years I do miss the article-producing so hopefully this new account will help me do that.
I’m going to start with a series of posts I call “Broken Play” where every Saturday morning I’ll sit down and bash the keys on a few topics without stopping for a while on different rugby topics on my mind and we’ll see what we end up with.
Obviously I’m not looking for subs to read my stuff, at least not for the time being, so please check it out if you can.
FRONT FIVE
CLICK THE IMAGE TO WATCH THE VIDEO ON SUBSTACK
A selection of eye-catching egg-chasing quotes & links from around the rugby media landscape
GATS GONE
ROMAIN HOLIDAY
WOMEN’S 6N SQUAD
THIS IS LEINSTER
LONDON JORDAN?
HARPIN ON…URC 24/25 RESET
For our bonus chat this week, our panel looked at the two rounds of the URC during the 6 Nations and how they can effect the race for the top 8?
Here’s the lead-in question…
“We’re six matches in to the 2025 Six Nations but with two bye weeks throughout the tournament that means we have to quickly turn our attention back to the URC and next weekend sees Leinster travelling to Swansea to play the Ospreys. We currently lead the table by 11 points from Glasgow, although the Bulls’ win over the Stormers last Saturday means if they win their other game in hand it could make the race for top spot interesting especially with the two to meet in Pretoria on March 22. For now we’d just like to take a step back and see how the table is shaping up ahead of the final stretch as the teams all try to give themselves a good shot in the knockouts. Starting with yourself Conor, how do you see the competition so far?”
LEINSTER SQUAD UPDATE
Really, really tricky 23 to put together this week. The injury update alone wasn’t enough to know who was in contention, there was also the prospect of players returning to Leinster from Ireland camp, also Rabah Slimani. Could Tadhg F & Joe McC feature on Friday? Possibly off the bench but we’ll have to see, I’m working under the assumption that neither will be risked.
HARPIN’ POSSIBLE MATCHDAY 23 V OSPREYS
McErlean, J O’Brien, J Osborne, Barrett, A Osborne, Frawley, McGrath
Boyle, G McCarthy, Slimani, Deeny, Snyman, Deegan, Connors, Penny
McKee, P McCarthy, McGuire, Mangan, Soroka, Gunne, R Byrne, Turner
caveat : I have no “ITK” a la Thornley
AVAILABLE FOR SELECTION:
Will Connors and James Culhane are both available for selection this week after returning to full training last week.
Liam Turner has recovered from the injury suffered in the DHL Stormers game and is available for selection.
NO FURTHER UPDATES ON:
Rob Russell, Michael Milne and Jordan Larmour.
[Frawley, Joe and Gus all back training with Leinster apparently And Boyle]
TROLL PATROL
Now it’s time for Troll Patrol where we ‘detain’ a social media commentator and charge them with gaslightery and general online mayhem.
A classic “self-troll” for you this week. An actual Irish fan actually hoping Ireland lose just to make the final round interesting? Couldn’t make it up.
Qualifying finals – 1 v 6, 2 v 5, 3 v 4 with the top-ranked team hosting
Semi-Finals – three qualifying winners plus highest ranked loser: Teams re-ranked with 1 v 4 and 2 v 3
Final – top-ranked semi-final winner hosts the other semi-final winner.
Premiership
🔝🐱🐴
ProD2
RWC2027 QUALIFIERS
The RWC2027 tournament has expanded to 24 nations so with four extra spots up for grabs it makes for a fascinating qualifying process.
Rather than post the latest results and fixtures here however, I’d like to defer to the excellent work of frequent Harpin’ contributor Ciarán Duffy who has been keeping close tabs on the qualifying process over at his own site Post to Post Sport.
Follow this link to see how the Road to Australia is progressing, some nations booked their places over the weekend.
Japan League One
Major League Rugby
Harpin Prediction League
This is the 4th season of our Superbru prediction league among Harpin’ pod contributors.
Kristian is the reigning champion, but the real competition is in avoiding finishing last, which means you must wear The Jersey of Shame. I had to wear it the first year, while Keego has had the honour the past two seasons. As you can see our resident stats expert Rugby Kino is leading the way but we’re only passing the halfway stage, and we’ve also added a Cup (or Mug) competition to make things interesting – I managed to overcome Jay in the first quarterfinal, with Conor and Rich facing off next.
Decent performance but we need to get out of the habit of coughing up late scores, this could come down to points difference
Colin McConaghie
Thought JGP was outstanding again and Hugo looks back to his best. Worried about our centres who aren’t hitting the heights.
Not sure about persisting with POM with other longer term options available. Conan stepped it up when he came on.
Cormac Mannion
No head-slapping, whooping and screaming in the opposition’s faces from the Scotland players today. Good enough for them.
Overall, a solid performance. We were very sloppy at times though, particularly from 35mins to 50mins and then the last Scotland score.but we were well on top for most of it. Lineout wasn’t great but we tried a few new things and hopefully Furlong and McCarthy will be back for Wales.
David Ryle
I feel Sam has shut his detractors up but they won’t.
Kevin Kelehan
Scotland played very well for phases but the loss of Russell and Graham means we never saw the full test that was expected. Ireland were really professional in using their power and patience to get their scores. Conan is definitely back to his absolute best as Prendergast raises the bar at 10 higher game after game.
Jackie McEachern
Really happy overall with the performance and bonus point win. I thought Prendergast, Beirne, JGP and Keenan were all excellent. Always things to work on but two 5 point wins from the first two 6N matches is excellent.
Get in the conversation yourself by leaving
your own thoughts each week after the full time whistle
Hello and welcome to our latest 80+ column where I generally harp on things not so Leinster-and-or-Ireland-men’s-team-related.
I think it was as far back as last August when Mrs P told me about a wedding to which we had been invited, not immediate family by any stretch rather the daughter of her work colleague. It’s almost an instinct for me to check the date at times like this to see if there’s a clash with a major sporting event and sure enough there was a head-on collision with the opening match of the Six Nations against the old enemy no less.
“Just don’t go” was the response of more than one friend I told about this in the meantime, but we couldn’t do that for several reasons, and when it came to the big day we certainly weren’t the only ones who we first reluctant to leave the hotel bar having watched the first 15m of the match and then had our phones out on the table as the various courses were being served! Judging from the cheers rings out across the room at the same time Bundee Aki got his try, either loads were watching the match or this was the best wedding soup ever served!!!!
Anyway, thankfully Kino and Hugo were able to watch in a more conventional fashion and when it came time to record I think they did an excellent job going back over the match. ICYMI click here to check it out on Spotify or you’ll also find us on Apple and most major platforms.
FRONT FIVE
A selection of eye-catching egg-chasing quotes & links from around the rugby media landscape
GETTING YOUR KICKS
BLOODGATE 2
HE’S WHAT NOW???
MOANA RETURN
ULTRA MARATHON MAN
HARPIN ON…JACK OR SAM (OR TRUST?)
For our bonus chat this week, our panel looked at ‘the Jack v Sam debate’…is that the only way to discuss the Irish 10 jersey?
Here’s the lead-in question…
“On Feb 21 2020 the Irish Under 20s defeated England 39-21 at Franklins Gardens with a young lad named Jack Crowley at outhalf. On Mar 19 2023 the Irish Under 20s also defeated England, by a similar scoreline 36-24 only this time it was at Musgrave Park in Cork and wearing green 10 that day was a certain Mr Sam Prendergast. Unless you’re an Irish rugby fan who lives under a rock you’ll know that both players are currently vying for the national 10 jersey and they both featured in Saturday’s bonus point win at the Aviva. Naturally the Irish rugby media won’t shy away from stirring the debate over who should be starting, so we might as well throw our few euro cents in, but I’d like a slightly different angle…is it important to harp on who should be starting or should we have faith in the coaches’ decisions, especially while the team is actually winning?”
IRELAND SQUAD UPDATE
My logic behind selecting this 23 is simple…going by the language in the update, Tadhg & Joe won’t be available while Finlay and Mack will, so assuming the intent is to keep as much continuity as possible, the only changes I’d make would be swapping from started to bench at 2 and 6. I’m sure that makes me blue-goggled, so be it.
Munster’s Thomas Ahern and Connacht’s Shayne Bolton have been added to the squad this week.
Finlay Bealham and Mack Hansen will be monitored over the coming days after receiving treatment for leg injuries during Saturday’s win over England and it is hoped that both players will be available.
Tadhg Furlong (calf) and Joe McCarthy (concussion) have both stepped up their rehabilitation programmes and a decision on their availability will be made later this week.
The Ireland team will be named on Friday morning.
TROLL PATROL
Now it’s time for Troll Patrol where we ‘detain’ a social media commentator and charge them with gaslightery and general online mayhem.
This week’s detainee is something I call “good trolling”. The media-fuelled online Jack v Sam debate was annoying not just because it was ridiculous but also because it was so predictable. Thankfully some were happy to have a bit of fun with it, along with others on hand to fact-check…
U20 Six Nations
Celtic Challenge
All Ireland Leagues
WOMEN’S AIL
MEN’S AIL 1A
MEN’S AIL 1B
LEINSTER SCHOOLS SENIOR CUP
Super Rugby Pacific
Premiership
🔝🐱🐴
ProD2
RWC2027 QUALIFIERS
The RWC2027 tournament has expanded to 24 nations so with four extra spots up for grabs it makes for a fascinating qualifying process.
Rather than post the latest results and fixtures here however, I’d like to defer to the excellent work of frequent Harpin’ contributor Ciarán Duffy who has been keeping close tabs on the qualifying process over at his own site Post to Post Sport.
Follow this link to see how the Road to Australia is progressing.
Japan League One
Major League Rugby
Harpin Prediction League
This is the 4th season of our Superbru prediction league among Harpin’ pod contributors.
Kristian is the reigning champion, but the real competition is in avoiding finishing last, which means you must wear The Jersey of Shame. I had to wear it the first year, while Keego has had the honour the past two seasons. As you can see our resident stats expert Rugby Kino is leading the way but we’re only reaching the halfway stage, and we’ve also added a Cup (or Mug) competition to make things interesting.
For this coming weekend, we have the first of the Harpin’ Mug quarterfinals, and it’s me up against Jay Long. My Superbru score this weekend will be put up against his for a spot in the semifinals.
NEXT BATCH OF HARPIN’
Fri 7th
Scotland v Ireland preview featuring Keego
Dublin South 93.9FM Harpin’ slot right after 5pm news
Sun 9th
Leave comments on our Facebook page at full time after SCOvIRE
Bench was the difference, Conan was clinical, Dan was Dan as only Dan can be Dan, Tom Clarkson stood up to Ellis Genge who is technically intimidating and Jack Crowley kept it simple and flowing. England were value for their lead on 10 mins but their persistent cynical fouling caught up with them. Ireland got out with 5 points, England very lucky to get 1
Hubert Gallagher
Really really good second half except for allowing the last 2 tries. Huge impact from bench. Conan made an immediate impact. Crowley was excellent as well. And Sheehan….was he ever away?
James Lowe has a knack of making something out of nothing so often. Recognise JGPs performance but Lowe must have been very close to MOTM!!
Discipline excellent and mental toughness to the fore.
Onwards to Scotland – they’ll fancy turning us over and it’s never a gimme in Murrayfield. We need to be even tougher there. Will be a very different game – they’re unlike to kick as much ball away and will challenge our defence our wide.
Jackie McEachern
Lineout and discipline much improved from Autumn Internationals. England getting the LBP is disappointing but getting 5 points from an England match is always a great feeling.
Gavin Macarthur
This kind of championship game should be a platform for developing new players, instead of allowing some of the older players to continue their international careers as ‘game-closers’. There are a few players in that category and they need to be cut loose. Anyone who is over the age of 35 is not really going to figure in the next world cup, so why continue to play them?
That said, it was a good test match, giving the squad an opportunity to put their systems and leadership under pressure.
David Ryle
Turning point was their winger not allowing the ball go dead resulting in an Ireland 5m scrum at 44 mins.
Dave Murray
Great second half (except letting England back in for the bonus point) and Dan Sheehan what an impact again along with Lowe back from their injuries.
Get in the conversation yourself by leaving
your own thoughts each week after the full time whistle
HARPIN' ON RUGBY 