is it just me?

[Oldschoolsocks]

while reading through the IT I came across Gavin Cummiskeys Article on returning Irish players for the French match:

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/i ... -1.2102050

nestling gently roughly halfway down the page was a little Journalistic Gem:

“I’ve scored a load of tries off the bench,” Healy doth protest, harking back to younger days understudying for Ollie le Roux and Stan Wright.

I was halfway through the next paragraph when my eyes were subconsciously brought back to the offending text.

Healy ... understudying for ... Stan Wright.

Stan Wright, legend that he is was a specialist tighthead, and while Ollie le Roux was a fine loosehead it seems far more likely that Cian was understudy to Reggie Corrigan. In fact saying Cian Healy was understudy to Stan Wright is about as accurate as saying Johnny Sexton was understudy to Brian O'Driscoll.

so Three questions:
Is it just me or does this lack of very basic rugby knowledge and/or a willingness to publish articles without proper research or fact-checking annoy anyone else?
OR
Am I just being a bit of a pedant who has his knickers in a twist over a small journalistic oversight?
OR
Am I in fact 100% wrong and Cian Healy did indeed (or may well have) develop his technical Scrummaging expertise under the tender tutelage of the aforementioned Stan Wright?

[johng]

Stan played both sides. And yes you are getting your knickers in a twist over f all

[Oldschoolsocks]

fair enough, knickers in a twist over lazy Journalism, I can accept that, must be the reason for that pain I have in my backside.

However I do think that in general in Cian Healy's breakthrough season Stan the Fromt Row was pretty much 1: Reggie/Ollie 2:Bernard 3: Big Stan, with Stan coming off and Ollie moving over to TH.

open to correction on above

[johng]

Ollie joined when Reggie retired. I don't think their Leinster careers overlapped. I also don't remember Ollie playing TH. Although I am also open to correction.

It would have been Stan that played both sides.

When CJ VDL arrived (and Ollie left) Stan played loose head a fair bit. So I'd say you probably owe some journo an apology.

[Oldschoolsocks]

Arrrgh... I'm just gonna have to do some research on this. I always remember Stan playing 3, never playing 1 and certainly never consistently.

Rest assured I will apologise to Mr. Cummiskey if proven wrong.

Also pain in backside has subsided, knickers now seems to be sitting correctly.

[johng]

He played 1 a fair bit after Ollie left. He even played LH with Ronnie Mc at TH. Which is hard to believe.

So you could say Healy learned a lot from Ollie in 07/08 and Stan in 08/09.

Perhaps he learned from Reggie in 06/07. But that was his u20s GS year and he hardly played for Leinster.

[Oldschoolsocks]

Ok it's not the Reggie/Ollie thing that' I don't agree with, that's now a bit of a red herring tbh. (Though I fully admit bringing it up in the first place)

it's Stan Wright playing loose head that I cannot get past.
Cannot remember Stan Wright playing LH. And certainly remember him playing most consistently at TH.

[Made Of Ale]

Ok it's not the Reggie/Ollie thing that' I don't agree with, that's now a bit of a red herring tbh. (Though I fully admit bringing it up in the first place)

it's Stan Wright playing loose head that I cannot get past.
Cannot remember Stan Wright playing LH.

I can, very well. I'm afraid you're wrong and the journalist is right. To be honest there are plenty of factual errors in the Irish Times rugby section so it shouldn't be too hard to find somthing to get annoyed about, if that's your thing.

[offshorerules]

Also, and as a former back I admit to not knowing the first thing about propping, wouldn't a young loose head learn a lot from scrummaging practice against a tight head ?

[Oldschool]

Ok it's not the Reggie/Ollie thing that' I don't agree with, that's now a bit of a red herring tbh. (Though I fully admit bringing it up in the first place)

it's Stan Wright playing loose head that I cannot get past.
Cannot remember Stan Wright playing LH. And certainly remember him playing most consistently at TH.

As far as I can recall, Stan was signed primarily as a TH with dual capability but turned out to be a much better LH.
Presumably this was thanks in main to everything he learned from Healy and to a lesser extent OLeR
So the journo is wrong Stan understudied Healy not the other way around.

[cormac]

Stan started 75 games for Leinster, 26 of them at loose-head.

7 in his first season (2006-07) with Will Green at tight-head.
6 in 2007/08 with Stephen Knoop or Juan Gomez at tight-head.
6 in 2008/09 with CJ vd Linde at tight-head.
7 in 2009/10 with CJ vd Linde at tight-head.

[Peg Leg]

6 in 2007/08 with Stephen Knoop or Juan Gomez at tight-head.

The horror

[johng]

Stan started 75 games for Leinster, 26 of them at loose-head.

7 in his first season (2006-07) with Will Green at tight-head.
6 in 2007/08 with Stephen Knoop or Juan Gomez at tight-head.
6 in 2008/09 with CJ vd Linde at tight-head.
7 in 2009/10 with CJ vd Linde at tight-head.

I knew cormac would come in and save the day...

And that doesn't even cover the times he started at th and moved across.

[Dave Cahill]

6 in 2007/08 with Stephen Knoop or Juan Gomez at tight-head.

The horror

Knoop was a cracking scrummager, unlucky with injury though. I remember him and Stan giving Toulouse a right going over in the RDS in 08

[Peg Leg]

6 in 2007/08 with Stephen Knoop or Juan Gomez at tight-head.

The horror

Knoop was a cracking scrummager, unlucky with injury though. I remember him and Stan giving Toulouse a right going over in the RDS in 08

He was great when he gave a shite

[Dave Cahill]

Ah he was bollixed with injury, his neck was f%~ked. I remember interviewing him when we were doing Blood Sweat and Beers and if he wanted to turn his head he had to turn his entire upper body - not good for a prop

[Ruckedtobits]

offshorerules wrote
Also, and as a former back I admit to not knowing the first thing about propping, wouldn't a young loose head learn a lot from scrummaging practice against a tight head ?

Correct and right (Wright!). That is precisely how a young loose-head learns most. In the case of Stan and Ollie, both were great with the young props and spent a huge time post-training, demonstrating the "old ways" that were in danger of being forgotten by new, technical, coaches.

[Oldschoolsocks]

offshorerules wrote
Also, and as a former back I admit to not knowing the first thing about propping, wouldn't a young loose head learn a lot from scrummaging practice against a tight head ?

Correct and right (Wright!). That is precisely how a young loose-head learns most. In the case of Stan and Ollie, both were great with the young props and spent a huge time post-training, demonstrating the "old ways" that were in danger of being forgotten by new, technical, coaches.

But this is the nub of it, learning by performing against a player in a different position is exactly not what being an understudy is. Understudy is a well known and clearly defined term:

to study an actors role in order to replace them in an emergency

. Even if Healy did learn some technical info from big Stan, it was not in order to replace him because as has been stated above: Stan Wright signed as a specialist TH who could also "move over" to LH.

So I cannot imagine Healy actually replaced Stan to take over his position as:
Stan to play TH and moved over to LH = no replacement by Healy
OR
Stan start at LH and then either play for 80 mins and then move to TH when CJ ran out of wind.
AND
To take this one step further, if Cian was in fact understudy inch Stan then surely he would be as comfortable on both TH and L H side as Stan was?

Open to correction on detail, and more than happy to apologise to Mr. Cummiskey if proven incorrect, but as it stands I cannot accept Cian Healy as acing as an understudy to Stan Wright is in any way a fair statement.

[Xanthippe]

In 2007/08 Stan started 5 games at 1 and was replaced in 3 by Healy
In 2008/09 Stan started 6 games at 1 and was replaced in all 6 by Healy
In 2009/10 Stan started 7 games at 1 and was replaced in 4 by Healy

I'm not making any statements here, I'm just giving some numbers - you can make of them what you wish.

[Oldschoolsocks]

cormac wrote:
Stan started 75 games for Leinster, 26 of them at loose-head.

7 in his first season (2006-07) with Will Green at tight-head.
6 in 2007/08 with Stephen Knoop or Juan Gomez at tight-head.
6 in 2008/09 with CJ vd Linde at tight-head.
7 in 2009/10 with CJ vd Linde at tight-head.

I knew cormac would come in and save the day...

And that doesn't even cover the times he started at th and moved across.now it does get a little interesting: (maybe not -- I think I'm all alone in this tbh but feic it anyways)

Postby Xanthippe » February 15th, 2015, 4:36 am

In 2007/08 Stan started 5 games at 1 and was replaced in 3 by Healy
In 2008/09 Stan started 6 games at 1 and was replaced in all 6 by Healy
In 2009/10 Stan started 7 games at 1 and was replaced in 4 by Healy

I'm not making any statements here, I'm just giving some numbers - you can make of them what you wish.

thanks lads, especially Johng and Xanthippe -- I cannot find access to the stats you quote (or more precisely the detail) but I would really appreciate if you could share the source

after reading all answers above, assuming the stats given in the posts above are correct and combining with the Stats here: http://www.leinsterrugby.ie/

I have reasoned the following:

Season 2009-2010:
Stan starts 7 games at 1 to be replaced by Cian Healy in 4,
but Cian Healy starts 17 games at 1 in this season, so this Healy starts 4 times more at LH than he repalces Stan Wright, therfore this season must be seen as Cian Healty as a mature LH prop and can be counted as Healy being favoured to Stan Wright at LH for this season.

Season 2008-2009 Stan starts 6 games at 1 to be replaced by Healy in 6
but Cian Healy starts 15 games at 1 in this season so this Healy starts 2 times more at LH than he repalces Stan Wright, therfore this season must be seen as Cian Healty as a mature LH prop and can be counted as Healy being favoured to Stan Wright at LH for this season. Cap this with the HC win against Leiscester with HAealy starting at 1 and Wright startng at 3

Season 2007-2008
Stan Starts 5 games at 1 to be replaced by Healy in 3
Cian Healy starts 3 games this season at LH , so Healy has repaced Wright equal to his number of starts this season this is the figure which shows when Healy was not yet an established first squad chouce so we do need to dig into two figures a little deeper:
1: Cian Healy appeared as a replacement 10 times this season -- 3 to Stan Wright --- who did he replace the other 7 times?
2: Stan Wright had 26 starts at TH and 5 st LH (assuming stats given above by ...are correct) so Stan is for sure seen as e Th specia
3: who was seen as the LH specialist on 2007-2008 -- the answer to this is Ollie Le Roux -- started 15 games at LH in season 2007-2008

so in I must admit to being a little bit torn on this one -- this being my first post and all that. I think my memory and the Stats to all point in the same directions:
1: I am correct -- it is not fair to state that Cian Healy was an understudy to Stan Wright
2: therefore this was an exam[;e of lazy reporting on Journo's part, i.e., not correctly fact checked.
3: however I have found the stats hard to come by (lads please please do share the source for your stats ) AND
4: In answer to the question posed -- I do in fact believe that it is just me ...

Rgds,
OSS