Ah here, would you ever learn how to spell Fergus' name.hugonaut wrote:Very well said. I agree with you 100% and was going to mention just the same thing in my latest paean to A Ferg Supreme.CiaranIrl wrote:A quick comment on McFadden: I felt that the way the game panned out really justified his selection. Not only did he play pretty well with a smart try scoring pass and an important, smashing tackle, but the versatility argument was backed by the need for blood substitutions. It would have really hurt our momentum if we had to reshuffle the entire backline just to deal with blood injuries. Having someone on the bench that can slot in anywhere is fantastic from a continuity perspective.
HIAs and blood bins are now parts of practically every test game - it's not just a case of a] a player going off injured for the rest of the game or b] making a deliberate tactical substitution. You'll frequently enough have players going off for 6 or 10 minutes [as we had yesterday].
When you've got one player covering four/five positions [your outside back sub] then there is a trade off between having an 'impact' sub on the bench who only plays one position, and leaving yourself a hostage to fortune. McFadden came on for 8 minutes for Trimble [No14], 4 minutes for Henshaw [No12] and 9 minutes for Payne [No13] ... and every time he just slotted in to the position of the injured player, with nobody else being discommoded.
Beyond that, his 10 tries in 31 tests [15 starts] is a very respectable strike rate, and the fact that it's actually 12 in 32 is even better. I've made this point before on the DM blog, but that neither he nor any of the other players who played and/or scored against Fiji in Thomond in November 2012 is credited with their accomplishment [this game: http://www.irishrugby.ie/rugby/fixtures ... s/5303.php ] sticks in my craw when it comes to mind.
The game wasn't a Wolfhounds fixture - Jamie Heaslip captained the side, and he was the national captain that year - and it was played against a national side. That it was played at Thomond was because the IRFU didn't think they could sell out a Lansdowne Road fixture against Fiji on the back of a stodgy 2012 Six Nations, and their deal with Aviva means that they can't play a home test match anywhere but Lansdowne.
The tries scored by Rob Kearney, Shane Horgan, Drico and Keith Earls [2] in the corresponding fixture three years earlier [this game: http://www.irishrugby.ie/rugby/fixtures ... s/5254.php ] - played against the same opposition, at the same time point in the season, in a provincial ground [the RDS] - go on their test records, while Craig Gilroy's hat-trick and Fergus McFadden's brace don't go on theirs, solely because of a commercial deal the IRFU did with a sponsor in the interim. It's a bit of an injustice.
It's Fergus McStander.
