ON THIS WEEK’S COLUMN…
- WRAP OF A WRAP
- GOODMAN YOURSELF
- LOOD AWAKENING
- INSURANCE RENEWED
- LOSING THE WILL
- THAT’S NOT CRICKET
- HARPIN’ ON…IRELAND’S CURRENT STANDING
- AWARDS & APPOINTMENTS
- IRELAND SQUAD UPDATE
- TROLL PATROL
- COMPETITION UPDATES (incl ProD2)
- NEXT HARPIN’
WRAP OF A WRAP
Here at Harpin’ Manor we have made a commitment to cover the Leinster & Ireland senior men;s team rugby by featuring their matches on a weekly basis by way of two pods per contest, one for a preview, and one for a wrap. We do this regardless of the importance of the fixture. So whether it’s a marquee matchup, against Munster at Croker or the All Blacks in Chicago, or an outing that will be virtually forgotten once the full time whistle blows, like against Zebre or Japan (all due respect etc), we’ll be there harpin’ on ‘em.
It’s our way of keeping tabs on the overall rugby scene – we have things like this column to cover the wider world and BlueSky & Facebook to pass comment on things that happen during the week in real time, but it’s the pods that do most of our lifting, and as ever I’m grateful to the team of contributors for joining me for the chats each time. On this occasion it was Conor Cronin sharing his views on the win over Japan, and for this one we reverted to the “Harpin old school” format of covering each half separately and I reckon it worked pretty well. Click here to check it out if you missed it.
GOODMAN YOURSELF
By Goodman and the players’ own admission, Ireland’s backline detail has not been where it needs to be.
Ireland backs coach Andrew Goodman out to get the better of mentor Joe Schmidt
Johnny Watterson – Irish Times
I find it fascinating that Andy Farrell has taken so much stick in articles and social media comments over the past couple of weeks…I mean sure, the buck does stop with him but if his track record at the Irish helm doesn’t earn him any mitigation, surely the fact that he was away from the role for the bulk of 2025, not to mention so was a large contingent of players as well.
So with the Irish attack failing to fire on all cylinders, plus all the lineout woes, you’d think we might be transferring some more focus on the unit coaches, not necessarily to blame in such away that they should be fired necessarily, more to at least acknowledge their responsibility.
Paul O’Connell currently has the lineout in his bailiwick and no doubt will have a plan to sort out the very obvious yips, and when it comes to the attack, there’s Andrew Goodman. I have to say we were never exactly dazzled by his time at Leinster, a province that certainly earned the moniker with “-tainment” tacked on to the name for a reason.
And this makes me wonder, not for the first time, if high ranking positions in the Irish set-up are “promised” more than they are earned. I know this makes me sound like a classic tinfoil hat blogger but I’m just putting this out there – when you’re combing the southern hemisphere for what you consider to be the best coaching talent, is it enough to offer a position within a province, even Leinster, or does it help to have some extra leverage in your back pocket like a promise of a guaranteed promotion after a certain amount of time?
But like I say, that’s just a crackpot theory from the outside…at least in this article Goodman acknowledges there have been issues much like the lineouts (although the two are clearly related given how pretty much all of Ireland’s tries over he last two weekend’s have come following the setpiece working) so we can look forward to seeing how they have been worked on in training.
HARPIN' ON RUGBY 