Panic for steady eddie?

[HappyMonday83]

There is talk of him starting a near full strength team for the first match. Is eddie begining to panic after the shambles that was the WC warm up?

[Sound]

BOD will get a run as well as most of the pack. This is exactly what he did 4 years ago so it's not even a surprise.

[liam2me]

There is talk of him starting a near full strength team for the first match. Is eddie begining to panic after the shambles that was the WC warm up?
sounds like it, he's even talking of starting BOD, which is madness IMO

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/irish/6977474.stm

[HappyMonday83]

The first team badly need to get a good performance under the belt. Putting a cricket score up on namibia should help the confidence, as long as no one get's injured.

[Sound]

I reckon he's counted these in as warm-up matches. It's not ideal as we're criminally short in vital positions but it's his modus operandi and we can only hope that he proves the doubters wrong.

In other news David Humphreys has done his ankle so we're stuck with Wallace if ROG gets injured. This terrifies me.

[Stuck in Dumpland]

He also may be thinking down to points difference as it's quite possible ourselves, the Argies and France will one game each against each other, and qualification comes down to who battered the others by most.

I'd rather he sent out the full team for the first pointless match rather than the second, thereby increasing recovery time for the key players.

[Proinsias]

This team needs time together. They may have played 20-30 tests together as a team but at the same time, all the recent time they've had to play as a team has been the 6 nations and one poor warm match against Italy. Oh and the hammering in france. In more than ways than one...

[Sound]

Lenihan has a piece about this today in D'Examiner. He reckons the NH have snookered themselves by ceding to the FRU's demands to start the RWC a month earlier to facilitate the French LEague. That month sees the SH sides still in top condition with the game time under their belt- are the rest playing catch up?

[Eoin]

No harm in getting the team to play together a couple of times before the big matches. Be good if the likes of BOD & Wallace can get some game-time in as well. And points difference could definitely come into it at the end, so the more we score against the 2 weaker teams the better.

[HappyMonday83]

If he fields a strong team we should be looking to stick 70-80 point up on namibia.

[mirps]

If he fields a strong team we should be looking to stick 70-80 point up on namibia.

Surely after what SA did to them in a warm up game a couple weeks ago, though, I'm pretty sure Namibia didn't show their full hand in that game.

[HappyMonday83]

Surely after what SA did to them in a warm up game a couple weeks ago, though, I'm pretty sure Namibia didn't show their full hand in that game.

We need to score a massive amount of points in our first two games, poind diff could be vital.