Category: Articles

80+ column : May 6

ON THIS WEEK’S COLUMN…

  • WRAP OF A WRAP
  • RANDLE SCANDAL HANDLED
  • HUGO & JERRY
  • LION IN WAIT
  • ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE
  • CLICKBAIT OF THE WEEK
  • BORDEAUX BEAT BATH, BILBAO BOUND, BUT BOTH BRILLIANT & BEATABLE
  • LEINSTER SQUAD UPDATE
  • TROLL PATROL
  • COMPETITION UPDATES (incl Super Rugby)
  • NEXT HARPIN’

WRAP OF A WRAP

My cough which has haunted me for the past few weeks seems to have mostly gone, at least when I’m recording podcasts which is the main thing. Both preview & wrap recordings went well, although when I met some friends in the pub after the match on Saturday it seemed to be back. “There’s a bug going round” as the saying goes so I won’t look for too much sympathy. Anyway Tom Coleman was on for the wrap pod offering his usual superb technical analysis from a coaches’ standpoint. On WhatsApp during the match he said we had the beating of him, even when we were in card trouble, and he was right. Just. But still right. Click here if you missed it.

RANDLE SCANDAL HANDLED

One step for­ward, two steps back. That’s the way this sea­son has panned out for Mun­ster.

Roger Randle debacle further evidence Munster are their own worst enemy

Rory Keane – Extra.ie

Always the right option IMO. I know many are dwelling on how “accusations like this made against a young man can stay with you for your entire life”, and this is true, but I might push back by saying “sexual assault can stay with a young woman for the rest of her life too”. If we are to constantly bring up that the legal case was dropped and he denies it all, we must also bring up that the victim has not publicly withdrawn the allegations.

But from a purely rugby standpoint, this story is about Munster who most certainly did not need this matter at all and I don’t know what they were thinking trying to pursue it. Was the agreed approach “ah, sure, it’ll be grand”???

Anyway. The matter has been dealt with and they have to try and salvage something from their season. Results have improved it’s true but concern over a Tadhg Beirne injury looms large. As the URC table stands right now there would be a Leinster/Munster quarterfinal which maybe, just MAYBE, will cause a bit of hype…

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80+ column : April 29

ON THIS WEEK’S COLUMN…

  • WRAP OF A WRAP
  • CLOSING THE GAP
  • GOODE ADVICE
  • THE REST IS POLITICS
  • LIONS BEYOND 2029
  • CLICKBAIT OF THE WEEK
  • THE TOULON CHALLENGE
  • LEINSTER SQUAD UPDATE
  • TROLL PATROL
  • COMPETITION UPDATES (incl AIL finals)
  • NEXT HARPIN’

WRAP OF A WRAP

It was an unusual weekend for content producing here at Harpin Manor – first, I was unavailable Friday to record the preview with Keego once the team was named so we did a “drop-in” version where he recorded his bit and I added mine but the video wasn’t ready until Saturday morning.

Then a family event on Saturday evening meant I had to miss both the Leinster and Ireland women’s matches. I did a reasonable job avoiding the Leinster score until the Sunday morning, I did catch a glimpse of a scoreline where the boys in blue were leading 14-5 but didn’t know what stage of the match that was. Turns out it was just before halftime and I let out an almighty roar of frustration when we shipped that needless penalty right at the death.

Anyway, whatever the outcome it was great to have Jay Long back on the pod to mull it over, click here if you missed it.

CLOSING THE GAP

There is still a gap between these two sides. Albeit it has shrunk to the point that this is now a proper rivalry.

France too strong for Ireland as their superior depth shows in Six Nations victory

Nathan Johns – Irish Times

Friend of the pod Nathan hits the bullseye with this account of Ireland’s defeat in Clérmont on Saturday evening. Continuously losing to both England and France does not necessarily mean the squad isn’t improving. You could argue that at this stage a lot of the difference between the sides was down to Irish lack of accuracy as opposed to actually not being good enough. Like I said earlier I didn’t get to watch this match live but I did switch over for a couple of minutes towards the end of the first half and Ireland had a penalty which Dannah O’Brien tried to put to touch in the corner but it ended up going dead. A couple of plays later the French were back down the other end of the pitch scoring. Fix that, improve the depth and we can definitely close the gap even further and I’d definitely have faith in the squad to do just that.

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Slaves to the algorithm & football Prague-matism

Saturday, March 28, 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.

It’s another week when I write this AFTER our feature match of the weekend has been played – thankfully this time it was a win for my team, a bonus point one to boot.

At halftime I was approached by Huw Griffin, aka “HG Rugby” who was over for his first visit to the Aviva Stadium. He asked me what I thought of the first half, I gave my honest opinion that the Scarlets impressed in the first quarter but Leinster eventually grew into it and that we really needed a strong 10m spell after the break. I guess he was impressed with this response…

To be clear I was professing expectations rather than predictions but thankfully the boys in blue didn’t let me down at least for that spell. It certainly wasn’t a perfect performance but myself and Rich Mifsud will go over all that for the wrap pod recording on Sunday evening.

I feel bad I wasn’t able to chat to Huw after the match for his account as he requested, but I had to leg it at fulltime, I definitely owe him an interview at some point.

Here’s what I was thinking before kickoff, courtesy of my Dublin South FM slot after the 5pm news on Friday…

What I’d like to focus on this week is a disgusting post I saw on Facebook, sadly by another one of my fellow online creators.

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80+ column : March 25

ON THIS WEEK’S COLUMN…

  • WRAP OF A WRAP
  • THE IMPORT-ANCE OF BEING REIKO
  • PROJECT HAIL MARY’S
  • JACK OF ONE CLUB
  • BEN AND GONE
  • ACCUSED
  • WOMEN’S 6N PREVIEW
  • [EXTRA STORY]
  • LEINSTER SQUAD UPDATE
  • TROLL PATROL
  • COMPETITION UPDATES (incl Super Rugby)
  • NEXT HARPIN’

WRAP OF A WRAP

It’s always a pleaseure to have Cian “RugbyKino” O’Muilleoir on the pod, since he was doing his own show MudderRucker that follows women’s rugby along with also-friend-of-the-pod Ailbhe O’Nolan his opportunities to appear have been limited to say the least. Obviously it was a shame that his appearance had to be for a bad Leinster loss, of course, but still there was a job to be done picking apart what went wrong and he did an excellent job as ever. If you missed it, click here to check it out.

THE IMPORT-ANCE OF BEING REIKO

“…he hasn’t added any clear and obvious lift in quality to ‘the big show’ the east coast province are so used to delivering.”

Why Rieko Ioane is struggling to match Barrett’s X-factor impact for Leinster

Nick Bishop – Rugbypass.com

We touched on this for the wrap pod and clearly we’re not the only ones who noticed.

Two factors to consider before continuing…first, I’m wary of accusations of “import blaming”, something that has been known to happen at clubs not doing well throughout all team sports. We also have to acknowledge that it was highly unlikely that Reiko’s career cameo at Leinster was never going to come close to that of Jordie Barrett’s – although the similarities between them are plentiful, there are also plenty of differences so to expect the same output would have been crazy.

All that said, he has hardly set the world alight for us. It’s true, his intercept and pass on the run to JJ Kenny for our opening try in Scotstoun was quality, but when you wear that blue 13 jumper in particular you are expected to fulfil defensive duties as well and he was found wanting for more than one of the tries Glasgow made look all too easy.

To be perfectly honest, were I to pick an elite matchday squad for Leinster right now, even leaving out those injured, I can’t find a place for Reiko, which surely calls into question the value for money we’re getting for him.

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Throwback Thursday – Ireland v Wales 2018

We’ve already looked back at the French and English contests from the 2018 Slam so it’s only right and proper that we keep that going ahead of the visit of the Welsh to Dublin too. A couple of starters from 8 years ago are wearing the exact same numbers on Friday…can you spot them?

Wales : 15. Leigh Halfpenny 14 Liam Williams 13 Scott Williams 12 Hadleigh Parkes 11 Steff Evans 10 Dan Biggar 9 Gareth Davies

1 Rob Evans 2 Ken Owens 3 Samson Lee 4 Cory Hill 5 Alun Wyn Jones > CAPT 6 Aaron Shingler 7 Josh Navidi 8 Ross Moriarty

Replacements: 16 Elliot Dee 17 Wyn Jones 18 Tomas Francis 19 Bradley Davies 20 Justin Tipuric 21 Aled Davies 22 Gareth Anscombe 23 George North.

Natwest Six Nations 2018 – Round 3

Saturday, February 24, 2018

KO 2:15pm

Aviva Stadium

Referee – Glen Jackson (New Zealand)

Assistant 1 – Pascal Gauzere (France)

Assistant 2 – Matthew Carley (England)

TMO – Rowan Kitt (England)

Click here if you’d like to read my preview, but for the record my prediction was for an Ireland win by 1 to 3 pts…

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH…

“Our defence was too narrow.”

Whatever about the merits of that statement, my question is…how can that be the very first thing someone says about this match???

Alright, hang on…I know it’s the first thing I’M saying about this match, but I’m merely quoting a straw keyboard warrior. You know what I mean 😉.

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80+ column : March 4

ON THIS WEEK’S COLUMN…

  • WRAP OF A WRAP
  • RUGBY’S ASHES
  • AS YOU WERE
  • DROPPING THE DROP
  • RENNIE’S REMIT
  • CLICKBAIT OF THE WEEK
  • COACHING BY REFS
  • SAY OOH LA LA, LUKE MCGRATH
  • LEINSTER SQUAD UPDATE
  • TROLL PATROL
  • COMPETITION UPDATES (incl Schools Cup)
  • NEXT HARPIN’

WRAP OF A WRAP

Since we cut from two guests on the wrap pods to one, having the same guest two out of three weeks has been a rarity but that’s how things turned out for the Cardiff pod and since Conor Cronin also chipped in to the 500th episode it means he earned three caps in as many weeks which I doubt has ever happened.

Unfortunately that one dull fact is more interesting than anything that actually happened in the URC match at Cardiff Arms Park but still Conor did a great job analysing what went wrong; I reckon it’s worth a listen if you missed it, click here to do so.

RUGBY’S ASHES

An “identical exhibition trophy” is set to be used for the remainder of the championship

New Six Nations trophy required after fire damage

RTÉ.ie

Not really a crazy story I suppose, fires happen, but I have to say I’m intrigued by the article simply saying “The fire, reported to have taken place in Ireland, led to no injuries…”.

Eh, maybe since you’re the Irish national broadcaster you might want to follow up on that? Where in Ireland? How did the fire start? To be fair if those details WERE in the article I probably wouldn’t pay them much mind, but they are still conspicuous by their absence and it leaves me an itch that needs scratching.

Plus all the talk of a new trophy being “forged” gave our WhatsApp group the perfect opportunity to run a host of Tolkien themed memes…

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Friday night sh*te, not so super defending & flag foibles

Saturday. February 28, 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.

Needless to say I’m not in a very good mood this morning, mostly because Leinster got beaten last night of course, but also because it was a really, really, truly awful game of rugby. You’ll just have to take my word for it that I’m not saying that due to sour grapes, it really was a long, arduous 80m watch although since Leinster got beaten, I’d say it did provide sufficient Friday evening viewing for the majority of those watching!

But that’s what wrap pods are for so I’ll try to put the frustration aside for the moment and leave it until Sunday to do the tortuous rewatch. No point in sharing a link to the preview this week, but to get a sense of how I was feeling before this match here is my latest spot on Dublin South FM…

Anyway, enough about all that. This time last week instead of doing this article I was sitting in the car recording my part of our 500th episode special. It was eventually an enjoyable experience, but not before I got through the process of downloading/editing/re-uploading which took literally hours longer than it should have. Do check it out if you missed it, you’ll find the YouTube version here.

Speaking of this Broken Play article, I see I missed the 1 year anniversary of it – the first edition was scribbled on February 9, 2025. That’s unusual for me as in general I’m good at keeping track of such things, but anyway I have to say I enjoy doing them and as long as I can drag myself out of bed at this ungodly hour on Saturdays I’ll keep it up for the foreseeable.

I just remembered there’s Super Rugby on, so it is now accompanying me and Chiefs v Crusaders isn’t a bad contest to have on in the background. Chiefs have just taken a 14-0 lead but we all know that means nothing in this comp, defences were shaky anyway but with a gagillion Law “trials” meant to “speed up the game” anything is possible.

This week I want to touch on a subject that is, well touchy. Last night’s disappointment for Leinster in Cardiff brought to an end an extremely enjoyable week on social media for me. Any big win for my team has me in a good mood, but England? In Twickenham? When we thought our chances were slim at best? Magical.

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Throwback Thursday – Ireland v England 2011

This week we go back to yet another Ireland win over England, just because.

Technically our choice of Throwback Thursday match should be based on our NEXT featured match, but, well, Twickenham. Nuff said. Let’s harp on that some more, shall we.

So there I was, writing my weekly 80+ column (one back here on the Substack feed) and I brought up the time it got leaked that England had produced a load of Grand Slam winning t-shirts ahead of their visit to Dublin, only to forget to do the most important thing, namely actually winning said Slam.

All of which inspired me to hark back to my writeup of that match in the Aviva Stadium. It was a time when Declan Kidney’s good will from his own 2009 Slam was starting to wear off…in this 2011 Championship we had already struggled to beat Italy & Scotland and lost to France & Wales before the English rocked up to our shiny new D4 home for the first time.

We all know what happened, yet I assume we all enjoy remembering what happened same as any other time we beat them, so here are the starting lineups followed by the writeup…

IRELAND

15 Keith Earls 14 Tommy Bowe 13 Brian O’Driscoll (c) 12 Gordon D’Arcy 11 Andrew Trimble 10 Johnny Sexton 9 Eoin Reddan

1 Cian Healy 2 Rory Best 3 Mike Ross 4 Donncha O’Callaghan 5 Paul O’Connell 6 Seán O’Brien 7 David Wallace 8 Jamie Heaslip

16 Seán Cronin 17 Tom Court 18 Leo Cullen 19 Denis Leamy 20 Peter Stringer 21 Ronan O’Gara 22 Paddy Wallace

ENGLAND

15 Ben Foden 14 Chris Ashton 13 Matt Banahan 12 Shontayne Hape 11 Mark Cueto 10 Toby Flood 9 Ben Youngs

1 Alex Corbisiero 2 Dylan Hartley 3 Dan Cole 4 Louis Deacon 5 Tom Palmer 6 Tom Wood 7 James Haskell 8 Nick Easter (c)

16 Steve Thompson 17 Paul Doran-Jones 18 Simon Shaw 19 Tom Croft 20 Danny Care 21 Jonny Wilkinson 22 David Strettle

RBS Six Nations – Round 5

Saturday, March 19, 2011

KO 5pm

Aviva Stadium

Referee – Bryce Lawrence (NZL)

SLAM, DENIED. FAITH, RESTORED.

Professional rugby union has evolved into so much more than an 80-minute slosh in the mud at the weekend. It’s now a process that begins the previous Monday morning.

As well as all the general work to be done on the training pitch and in the weights room, there’s DVDs to be analysed, charts to be drawn and top-secret code sequences to be created.

But when all is said and done, the real work behind everything associated with a team begins in just one square foot of real estate…the noggin of the head coach.

And for me, the most satisfying aspect of Ireland’s slam-denying victory at the Aviva Stadium was that it was clearly the culmination of a superior week’s preparation from Declan Kidney, who totally outfoxed his opposite number.

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80+ column : February 25

ON THIS WEEK’S COLUMN…

  • WRAP OF A WRAP
  • ROYAL FLUSHED
  • EDDIE SHOULD KNOW
  • (DESTI)NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP
  • AN ACTUAL ITALIAN JOB
  • SING WHEN YOU’RE WINNING
  • HARPIN’ ON…IRELAND’S NEXT OPPONENTS
  • 500TH EPISODE SPECIAL
  • LEINSTER SQUAD UPDATE
  • JAVAN SEBASTIAN ARTICLE
  • TROLL PATROL
  • COMPETITION UPDATES (incl Celtic Challenge)
  • NEXT HARPIN’

WRAP OF A WRAP

Our newest contributor is Hugo Gordon, and our schedule worked out in such a way that he had arguably the two “cushiest” assignments for an Irish podster in the opening three weeks of the 2026 Six Nations – first previewing the French game, when there was still even a smidge of hope for an upset away win, and finally wrapping the England game, when Ireland actually got one.

It goes without saying that this pod in particular was a pleasure to record, especially since we could spend the first portion reversing the mood from the previous week when we panned our attack plan, such as it was.

ICYMI you can have a listen here.

ROYAL FLUSHED

“They did nothing to win”

Mike Tindall slates Ireland despite record England win

RugbyLad.ie

The whole point of this 80+ column is meant to be to turn the spotlight on anything BUT the Leinster & Ireland men’s rugby teams, but after that performance in Twickenham I think it would be rude not to bring it up a few times anyway. Besides, I do get away with it on a technicality in that the three Front 5 articles devoted to it involved reactions from non-Irish sources.

First up is Mike Tindall – look, while this stance may positively reek of sour grapes it is probably one that a lot of English fans will take when summarising the match. Plus it’s true, Borthwick’s men were below par and we did explore this on our wrap pod, it was definitely a factor.

But Ireland were pretty low on confidence too and there was no guarantee that we could take full advantage of England’s shortcomings, so to say we “did nothing to win” is disingenuous to say the very least.

And then of course there’s this – given his royal family connections….does Tindall really think he needs to be the poster-child for such a gaslighting opinion? REALLY? At THIS particular time? Baffling. I’ll leave it there.

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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.

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