UR TV CAST

We had a lot of new guys in the side last year who were keen and eager, and we kept a pace up from the start that they couldn’t live with.”Win or lose against Biarritz in the Heineken Cup this afternoon, Stringer and the other Munster representatives will join up with the Ireland squad in Dublin tonight, with the team to be named tomorrow and an audience with the Pope on Wednesday on the agenda.O’Brien was one of the five selectors for the 1983 Lions tour of New Zealand who controversially chose Ciaran Fitzgerald as captain, and by default the No 1 hooker, ahead of many people’s favourite for both jobs, England’s Peter Wheeler. Ireland had won six of their eight Five Nations matches in the two seasons before the tour and now, as then, championship performances will count uppermost in selection.Most pundits at present envisage Ireland’s representation in Australia being little more than the green turnover on the Lions’ socks, but Stringer is unconcerned. “The tour is in the back of my mind, and I’d like to see a number of Irish guys on it. I suppose the two players that stick out at the moment are Keith Wood and Brian O’Driscoll. But everyone has a chance to prove themselves in the next couple of months.”. England’s first trip to the Millennium Stadium is nigh.

The Six Nations’ Championship committee have granted permission for the Cardiff ground to be fully enclosed when Clive Woodward’s team arrive next Saturday, though whether the visitors can raise the roof in the metaphorical sense remains to be seen. The record book shows that England failed to do so on their first trip to Cardiff. In fact, it shows that the Victorian equivalent of new technology helped to beat them at the Arms Park in 1893

England’s first trip to the Millennium Stadium is nigh. The Six Nations’ Championship committee have granted permission for the Cardiff ground to be fully enclosed when Clive Woodward’s team arrive next Saturday, though whether the visitors can raise the roof in the metaphorical sense remains to be seen. The record book shows that England failed to do so on their first trip to Cardiff. In fact, it shows that the Victorian equivalent of new technology helped to beat them at the Arms Park in 1893.
Then, as now, England were in confident mood They had, after all, never lost on Welsh soil before. But then, Andrew Stoddart, the England captain, and his players had never seen a sight quite as ghoulish as the one they beheld at the Arms Park on the eve of the match.

“It was like a scene from Dante’s Inferno,” the correspondent of the London Morning Leader reported.In an attempt to beat the severe January frost, the Welsh Rugby Union had employed some 500 “fire devils”, coal-filled buckets pierced with holes and mounted on bricks. “Imagine if you can,” the man from the Morning Leader urged his readers, “an acre or more of ground heaped several feet high with live coal from 500 fires blazing far up into the dark night. Dozens of dark, ghoul-like figures were threading their way about the fires, heaping on fresh fuel. Like Wellington atWaterloo, your reporter walked over the field at midnight, and found it in fairly good condition.”England were in fairly good condition the following day, racing into a 7-0 lead at half-time, but ultimately met their Waterloo. They did so at the hands of Arthur Gould and Billy Bancroft, or rather at the feet of the latter, who struck the dramatic winning blow in the final minute when he became the first player to drop-kick a penalty goal in international history. It was Gould, though, who inspired Wales to their historic 12-11 victory.