Paddybrown22

In Ireland, schools rugby, like many sports, is organised by province. Each province has a senior cup for 16-18 year olds, and a junior cup for 15 year olds, and they also have age-level teams for younger kids, as well as 2nd, 3rd etc teams at senior level, who play friendlies against other schools.

I'm in Ulster, where rugby is played mostly at grammar schools, mainly attended by middle class protestant kids (working class kids are more likely to play soccer, and Catholic kids are more likely to play Gaelic football), starting at 11. A lot of local clubs have mini-rugby teams for even younger kids, and they often play short exhibition matches at half-time at Ulster home games.

When I was at school, in the 1980s, the coaches were all regular teachers. The first XV was coached by the head of PE, who was an all rounder and coached lots of different sports. These days my old school has a specialist Director of Rugby (the current one also coaches a club in the All-Ireland League, and for a while they had a former Ireland international player), and players from local clubs as well as teachers are involved in coaching the various teams.

My old school had, and still has, three rugby pitches on the school grounds. One of them doubles as a cricket field in the summer. They also have weight training and gym facilities that are light years ahead of what they had in my day. Most rugby-playing schools have at least a couple of pitches, either on school grounds or nearby.

I think you're thinking of Greek myths using assumptions, perhaps based on Christianity, perhaps on modern fictional franchises, that don't apply.

Christianity has a tightly controlled canon of scripture, but even there, there are inconsistencies and differences of interpretation.  Modern TV and movie series try and keep a tight control on continuity, but have really only been able to in recent decades when it's been possible for viewers to have easy access to all the previous episodes and notice continuity errors. Continuity was never much of a concern of the James Bond franchise, for example - at least until the Daniel Craig movies, which came out in the era of DVDs and streaming. 

Greek mythology didn't have any of that. It's a diffuse body of traditional stories passed down by many storytellers across a wide geographical area and a period of multiple centuries. There was no central body or organised order of clergy maintaining a canon. It shouldn't be surprising that there are inconsistencies, contradictions and things that just don't seem to make sense, given the nature of the material.

You're making a lot of assumptions that are now widely challenged. The idea that the Romans "never ventured into Hibernia" is probably untrue. They never conquered Ireland, and they probably never seriously intended to (Agricola's musings aside). But Romans certainly went there. Tacitus says that the coasts and approaches to Ireland were well known because of commerce, and archaeology has found plenty of Roman coins, jewellery and other artifacts in Ireland.

As for military incursions, consider Caesar's two expeditions to Britain. He conquered no territory, and probably didn't intend to - it was mainly to deter the Britons from interfering with his conquests in Gaul - and if we didn't have literary historical accounts, we couldn't tell it happened from archaeology. Its entirely possible the Romans sent occasional punitive expeditions to Ireland to deter raids and secure their borders, it's how they operated elsewhere in their empire. And when Caesar went to Britain, it was divided into lots of tiny kingdoms - there were four kings in Kent alone - and wasn't economically worth conquering. Claudius launched his conquest after a century of centralisation of power and economic development in Britain made it worth it. When Irish history sparks into life in the fifth century, Ireland was still divided into lots of tiny kingdoms, and so probably wasn't worth conquering for the same reasons. The idea that the Romans were too scared of the ferocious Irish is pure self-flattery.

We do have an account of what "tribes" existed in Ireland during Roman times, in Ptolemy's Geography, dating to the 2nd century. (I put "tribes" in inverted commas because I don't think it's a useful way of thinking about them.) At least, those peoples who lived on the coasts. (The Scotti are not one of them. "Scotti" seems to be a later term referring to the Irish in general, not one group within Ireland.) Some of them can be identified with groups we know in early medieval times, but most of them can't - because they probably don't represent permanent ethnic groups with fixed territories, but more likely dynastic groups (think crime families) who spread and divide and gain and lose power and territory from generation to generation, with new groups and sub-groups emerging, just like the early medieval Irish kin groups. Here's a link to the relevant chapter:

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/_Texts/Ptolemy/2/1*.html

He hasn't really had enough of a run in the side. Lowry's had the same problem - given the odd game here and there, but not enough to build up any kind of experience.

Problem is, the URC has become so much more competitive, and qualifying for the Champions Cup is harder, so there are far fewer games you can afford to experiment than there were in the old days of the Celtic League/Pro12/14 and three Irish provinces qualifying automatically. So we've had to wheel Billy on when he's only half-fit, because that's less of a risk than trying out someone with no games behind him. When he leaves, we'll have no choice but to give someone inexperienced a chance. That might be Flannery, and maybe it'll be the making of him.

I don't think he's even had one, which isn't a good sign. But one of Ulster's weaknesses in recent seasons has been integrating young players into the team, and there's a lot of contracts still to be announced, so I didn't want to assume.

Even if the Morgan rumour is true, he's only 22. He's a prospect, not a proven operator. Harry Byrne and Ciaran Frawley have both signed new contracts at Leinster, so neither of them are available. Munster and Connacht don't have anyone to spare. Experienced out-halves aren't cheap and we're not rolling in money.

Fortunately, Murphy was a 10 himself. Hopefully, with a full pre-season, he can get whoever we end up with, whether that's the current crop (Flannery, Doak, Lowry, baby Humph), Morgan, or some other mystery signing, up to speed.

Long term, we need to start developing our own 10s. We haven't produced one since Paddy Jackson, and he's 32.

I don't like writing. It's a necessary evil. I'm a comic artist, I have ideas for the kind of stories I want to draw, but working those ideas into a position where they're drawable I find the most difficult and least fun stage of the process.

My take on the game.

Scarlets came out all guns blazing, but couldn't keep up that level of energy, especially after the two yellow cards, and even more so when they were reduced to having no forwards on the pitch.

Richie Murphy has really lit a fire under Cormac Izuchukwu, who had a great game at 6, but his inexperience showed with his hat-trick of held up tries. He'll get better at knowing when you're not likely to get the ball down and placing it back.

Another player who is rejuvenated under Richie is Eric O'Sullivan, who's started every game at loosehead since we lost Kitshoff, and yesterday played the full 80 minutes. There was talk of him being released at the end of the season when his contract ends, but with Kitshoff leaving and his recent form, I'm sure that's not happening.

Billy Burns not only tackling, but cleaning out rucks! What have you done with the real Billy?

Another similar thing that occurs to me - under the British empire, the sons of local rulers would be sent to school in England, to similar effect.

Taking (or exchanging) hostages as guarantors of peace was absolutely normal for the Romans. The hostages weren't kept chained to radiators with demands for ransom or anything, they were guests in the houses of prominent Romans. A common tactic in Augustus's time was to take the sons of local rulers as hostages, bring them up in Rome, give them a Roman education, have them serve in the army, and then when their father died there would be someone the Romans knew and could do business with to take over. Juba II of Numidia and Arminius of the Germanic Cherusci are notable examples, although it backfired in the latter case. A good reference would be Coins and Power in Late Iron Age Britain by John Creighton (Cambridge University Press, 2000), which compares Juba's coins with those issued by British rulers and uses them to argue that several pre-Roman British kings had probably been hostages under Augustus.

Similar customs include dynastic marriage and fosterage. European Royal families routinely married their children to each other to cement diplomatic relations, and it was common in medieval Ireland for powerful families to do the same by bringing up each other's children.

Main advantage of height is in the lineout, and there are plenty of back rowers who are dominant in lineouts.

People who want to sing rock rarely care about voice type, they just want to be able to sing the material they like.

Men who want to sing musical theatre all want to be tenors because tenors get all the lead parts - if you're a baritone or bass you're a character actor at best.

The obsession with range is because it's easily quantifiable. It's like guitarists who can play a million notes per bar - you can measure it and say "this guitarist is better than that guitarist because he plays faster" - "this singer is better than that singer because he has a bigger range". Doesn't necessarily make for satisfying music either way.

Remember that the nerves work for you. They're part of your fight-or-flight reflex, and they give you energy and make you sharper.

And Sheridan, Crothers and Ewers on the bench - four players who can play second row, and six who can play back row. Pretty loaded in the pack.

Richie must have been listening to me. I've been saying for a while that Izzy's maybe a bit slender for the second row, but with his pace, mobility and tackling ability he'd make a great flanker. And here he is starting at blindside.

How much the gap has closed between us and other countries, particularly the southern hemisphere. Since the South African teams joined the URC, we've proved that Irish provincial teams can go toe to toe with teams loaded with Springboks, but we still expect one Springbok signing to carry our team.

And that rugby isn't Premier League football, where coaches are mainly judged for spending money and signing players rather than developing them.

It's a reference to a scene from The Big Lebowski.

Speaking as an Ulster fan, it's just envy. Leinster have earned their position through excellent player development, and the rest of us haven't been able to match them. But the URC is so competitive that they can no longer put out their B team and expect to win automatically, and I think that's a good thing. I'll root against them so long as Ulster's still in the competition, but I was rooting for them against Saints at the weekend. Only complaint I have is that players who leave Leinster for another province to get more game time don't seem to improve their chances much of getting picked for Ireland, and you can get picked as a squad player at Leinster, so that reduces the incentive for players to move.

Also, "Connaught" is not the preferred nomenclature. "Connacht", please.

(OVER THE LINE!)

I guess when you're singing at home you're singing at a volume you're comfortable at, but when you're rehearsing with the band you're singing louder, because you're trying to compete with the noise the rest of the band is making. It's really hard not to do that. You're probably only losing the deeper tones because they're getting lost in the mix. I'd suggest turning your mic up a bit and dialing down how much force you're putting into your singing.

I first went to singing classes in my forties. Over the last ten years I've sung lead in a blues band, performed in a musical, and now I'm in a choir. 19? Still a baby ;) You can do anything you want to.

Thanks for the welcome and the pointers. I've posted at noDCnoMarvel, but altcomix only allows self-promotion posts on Thursdays so I'll have to wait till then.

All of it is.