All in the scrum

A RUGBY MISCELLANY COMPILED BY GAVIN CUMMISKEY:

Sevens: Start ball rolling

A formal press conference is coming next week but the seeds of an Irish Sevens programme appear to have been planted.

Denis Hickie, Malcolm O’Kelly, Victor Costello, Matt Williams, Fergal Champion and former Ireland captain Sarah Jane Belton are involved in the Shamrock Warriors who will compete in male and female sevens competitions this year. Ireland’s Sevens, eh, programme is miles behind every other major rugby nation and there is no point complaining come the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

The IRFU have stated they cannot afford to make the investment but the Warriors, while not official representatives of the nation, have been afforded club status. It is a start.

Perhaps a little cheekily, we enquired of Croke Park’s stadium chief Peter McKenna if All Black superstars Dan Carter and Sonny Bill Williams would be gracing the GAA’s hallowed turf in the coming weeks as Christchurch’s Super 15 franchise the Canterbury Crusaders are actively seeking to bring their fixture with the Natal Sharks to a major stadium in Europe to offset the loss in earnings from the unavailability of their home patch, the AMI stadium, due to the recent earthquake.

The suggestion is not without merit as both Twickenham and Wembley were forced to turn the Crusaders down due to conflicting engagements. There was no approach made to Croke Park who last week announced a €10 million loss in revenue due to rugby and soccer’s return across town.

The IRB are due to make a statement this week about the damaged Christchurch surfaces ability to host World Cup games in September. Regardless, the IRB have confirmed that every game will remain in New Zealand.

No comfort: in personal milestones for O'Driscoll

A DAY of regrets for Irish rugby in Cardiff on Saturday must also be recognised for milestones. Brian O’Driscoll’s early try finally bridged a 78-year gap, drawing him level with Scotland’s Ian Smith on 24 tries in the championship, while Ronan O’Gara broke the 1,000 mark for Test match points, moving him to fourth in the all-time list, just five shy of Diego Dominguez, while he is also positioned within one cap of Mike Gibson’s record of 56 championship outings.

The achievements were, somewhat ridiculously, put to O’Driscoll in the post-match press conference as crumbs of individual comfort on a dreary day. The Irish captain remained polite in reminding the journalist, who asked as much for propriety’s sake, that rugby is, and always will be, about the team.

“We have a saying in Ireland called ‘Me Féiner’ . . ,” O’Driscoll began. You get the idea.

We had sympathy for Paddy Jackson in Llanelli on Friday night as the Ireland Under-20s outhalf went through the most excruciating mental jarring a rugby player can experience when his matching-winning conversion attempt of David Doyle’s 80th-minute try bounced off the upright. The game finished 26-26 as a result. The stuff of nightmares but, equally, an essential rite of passage for any kicking number 10 with aspirations of making the leap to the professional ranks.

It turns out Jackson has already lined out for Ulster in the Magners League this season and he is not alone. In a welcome development for Irish rugby another eight members of Mike Ruddock’s squad have tasted senior professional action.

Craig Gilroy and Luke Marshall also cut their teeth in Magners League action for Ulster, while Connacht backrowers Aaron Conneely and Eoin McKeon are joined by winger Tiernan O’Halloran.

Leinster’s Andrew Conway and Brendan Macken, like Gilroy and Marshall, have been lost to Ruddock already this season due to the needs of the province taking priority. The other is centre Nathaniel McDonald, who has featured for Coventry in Englands League One.

ITALY ROARED HOME

THE biggest roar in a media centre for a long time came at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on Saturday about 20 minutes before kick-off.

It was for Italy as they repelled three French scrums to cling on for an historic, and worrying from an Irish World Cup perspective, two-point victory over France.

The roar of approval from Welsh, Irish and English hacks alike was quickly replaced by an equally resonating groan as all the screens were switched to a pre-game James Hook interview just as Italy’s South African coach was skipping across the Stadio Flaminio pitch like a character in The Sound of Music.

“Fullback Maxime Medard said the players were ashamed by the defeat at the Stadio Flaminio. ‘If I had a rope, I’d hang myself,’ he told French media. ‘Well, I’m kidding, but I’d like to go and hide somewhere.’

Iron Duke: tops 50 hard men list in Welsh rugby

WE made a hasty retreat from The Principality on Sunday with a memento tucked under our arm entitled, The Iron Duke: Bobby Windsor – The Life and Times of a Working-Class Rugby Hero.

Those reared on 1970s rugby will be aware that the great Welsh backline owes a depth of gratitude to men like Windsor who presented them with enough clean possession, through some mucky methods, to produce their wizardry. The Pontypool hooker played on Willie John McBride’s 1974 Lions, or The Invincibles as they are still known in South Africa. The Duke sits on top of the Western Mail list of the top 50 hard men in Welsh rugby: “Who else? A steelworker by trade, The Duke was as fiery as the furnaces he used to tend. The commander of the Viet Gwent, he was a larger-than-life figure who used to dispense summary justice with a grin and a quip, but could walk the walk as well as talk the talk.”

The pair in Windsor’s immediate slipstream are backs: the great JPR Williams (“His clenched-fist salute following his try-saving hit on France’s Gourdon in the 1976 Grand Slam game said it all”) and, of course, Scott Gibbs, mainly for the iconic moment when he bowled over Springbok prop Os du Randt in the 1997 Lions Test.