The keyboard warriors had their say on Ireland v New Zealand.

Peter Burke

Ireland played host to New Zeland last friday and by all respected pundits and jornalists, it was the worst performance by an Irish team under Farrell. Some argued as to why some players were included, was Andy still playing the loyalty card to some key players, why didn’t he include some more of the younger lads and so on you get the idea and have probably read a lot of the criticism of his selection over the past few days. Below are a selection, not all bad, but they do give an insight into the often mistaken and uninformed ‘armchair punditry’ that we ‘love’ to partake in as Ireland supporters.

“Is it time for O’Connell to go?? The lineout is shocking and a host of players are done… Henderson was a complete liability….”

“It’s amazing the amount of you “experts” in this group that love to ride on the coat tails of success but yet stick in the knife when we’re losing. I’m sure Andy Farrell, every tv sports analyst ever and Co are rushing to their screens to hang on your every word…….. Well maybe that last scenario is in your deluded head. You remind me of those parents that shout at their kids on Sunday morning matches and assume winning makes you a better parent, maybe that’s the way you were brought up but the reality is you’re just projecting your own failures in life.

You may have noticed the World rankings and how they change over time, remember when England, Australia, France, Argentina and South Africa were top dogs and we weren’t even at the races???? You do??? In those days we knew we were going to be beaten and yet we still turned up, sang our hearts out and supported our team. Remember the 80s??? We were the Italy of rugby ,wooden spoon, yet we still turned up, Ciaran Fitzgerald, Where’s your f#ckin pride???? What has changed????? How did we become so obnoxious????

If you’ve nothing positive to say shut up, maybe rugby’s not for you but soccer perhaps might be more suitable. Many of you are new to rugby and bring that soccer supporter mentality with you but a lot are here since the bad old days. Personally I’ve played, supported , reffed and coached since the 80s and still line out for our local 2nds even today. The strength of a team is in their fans and believe me they are as annoyed as we are but they’ll still step up Friday and try to rectify their mistakes. Be there for them …”

“So John Fogarty hasn’t fixed the scrum in over a year, Paul O’Connell hasn’t fixed the lineout in over a year, and now Andrew Goodman looks to be killing the attack too. Where do we go…?”

“Same old same old .every WC cycle is the same. All other countries are blooding whole teams, while Ireland plods on with their first 23,however old they are and then we exit at the QF because of lack of experienced young players.”

“Australia

England

All Blacks..

all trying out young players..

Ireland bring Murray Healy Henderson o mahony off bench..

ahh Hello..”

“All the armchair supporters on here slagging the team and players. Get a life, lads.”

“Who would want to be an Irish rugby player these days, one day you are the best in the world because you beat South Africa, the next you are not fit to play for your local junior 4ths because you lost to New Zealand”.

“Fair weather supporters happy when we are winning but as soon as we lose it’s amateur hour. Honestly so funny and to think back 10 years plus how we performed against teams like All Blacks who would beat us with a 3rd string team. This team has come a long way, the level they are at now is equal to top teams in the world. Which all could play each other 10 times and you would get 10 different results. One loss doesn’t define them contrary to what people think. They will come back and come back stronger.”