A round-up of other rugby stories in brief...
Player welfare tops Lions agenda
THE BRITISH and Irish Lions have finalised the details they will be sending out to players before the tour to South Africa this summer.
Particular attention has been paid to player welfare issues and as a result the Lions management will be bringing the largest ever medical and fitness teams. The teams will deal with every aspect of the player’s welfare including fitness, nutrition, injury, and recovery. The tour runs from May 30th, when they play their first match against Highveld in Rustenburg, to July 4th, when they meet South Africa in the third and final Test.
With that extended schedule in a mind, a player injured in the first week could, with attention, be easily fit to play in the Test matches three weeks later.
Could it be that the powers than be were getting ahead of themselves last weekend in the Millennium Stadium. Planet Rugby has heard evidence that when Wales outhalf, Stephen Jones, hit that fateful final kick in the dying seconds of the Grand Slam match, the stadium score board actually registered the three points as the ball appeared to sail goalward before hastily making the correction. As if Irish hearts needed the extra jolt.
Clive's new job
FORMER WORLD Cup-winning rugby coach Clive Woodward has been given the task of increasing Britain’s traditionally dismal medals haul at the Winter Olympics. The canny coach has been named performance manager for the British team at next February’s Games in Vancouver.
Woodward, performed a similar role at the Beijing Olympics last year, when Britain exceeded expectations by coming fourth in the overall medals table.
O'Dwyer target's own Grand Slam
CASHEL NATIVE, Derry O’Dwyer, should be expecting to complete his own Grand Slam this year. The former Rockwell pupil is lining up to go on this summer’s Lions tour to South Africa as a supporter. It will be his fourth Lions tour, which would complete all of the Southern Hemisphere nations.
More impressively Derry travelled to Wales last week to watch Ireland win this year’s Grand Slam in the Millennium Stadium. While all of the television cameras focused on Jack Kyle, who played in the 1948 team, Derry would have been one of the very few in Cardiff to have seen Kyle play 61 years ago in the last Slam win.
As a teenager, the young Derry left Rockwell College, got a lift to Dublin and jumped on the train to Belfast for the historical match. So, two Irish Grand Slams, a soon to be fourth Lions tour and of course he was also in Thomond Park when his beloved Munster beat the All Blacks. Can anyone top it?
945,000 watch match on RTÉ
JUST HOW do you measure the popularity of Ireland’s Grand Slam match against Wales last week? Well, 945,000 people watched the game on Irish network, RTE, making it the most watched programme of the year.
RTÉ Two recorded a peak audience of 1.2 million for the broadcast and registered a 75 per cent share of the available audience. Overall, an average audience of 753,000 tuned into Ireland’s Six Nations games this year, an increase of 175,000 viewers on last year.
These viewing figures compare with England’s historic visit to Croke Park in February 2007 when the peak viewing reached 73.4 per cent of the audience share. The Irish Times also made a little bit of history when the irishtimes.com website recorded 1.2 million page impressions on the Monday following the match, the highest in the history of the website.
Lengthy rest period
BLACKROCK STRUGGLED very ably over the weekend considering their outhalf shortage.
Already down Darragh Fitzpatrick, the Stradbrook Road club, who are in strong contention for a play-off declined to play Irish under-20 player, Ian Madigan.
Apparently the talented Madigan is being moth-balled for the summer Junior IRB World Cup in Japan. The thing that confuses some people is that this is still March and the Junior World Cup is not being played until June.
That’s quite a rest.
Welsh players back in action
ENGLAND SIDE Gloucester beat Welsh side Ospreys 17-0 in the semi-final of the EDF Energy Cup at the weekend.
And the Ospreys player selection reflected just how the more protective central contract Irish system is often the envy of other home nations.
Lions hopeful Gavin Henson, who limped off the pitch towards the end with a leg injury, Irish winger, Tommy Bowe, last season’s World Player of the Year, Shane Williams, Wales captain, Ryan Jones and second row, Ian Gough all lined out for the Ospreys team just seven days after their gruelling final Six Nations Championship match in Cardiff.
And what were the front line Irish players doing?
Judging by the front page in one of yesterday’s newspapers, they may have been slugging champagne in ‘Residence’ and celebrating Brian O’Driscoll’s engagement to Amy Huberman. That seems an eminently more reasonable thing to be doing.
