Thomond78 said:
The good news is, half that Irish team were still schoolboys
Thanks for that but it's the other half that is the problem for our lads. A few of our lads have been signed up for one of the 4 Super14 professional academies and you won't recognise them 5 months after they get home and have reported for duty.
When Ireland Schools toured here in 2004 they played against our schoolboys. U/18 lads who had left school early were not eligible to play against that Ireland team. Nor are they allowed to play against visiting schools teams now. And in the days when there was an U/19 IRB tournament and a few older schoolboys would have been good enough to be picked; they weren't allowed to be.
I'm just pointing out how separate the administration of schools rugby is here.
When the Ella brothers played for Oz Schools yonks ago they played against Schools teams only on their EOYT, IIRR. It would have been good to have the same equal contests for our boys touring now. That early team was undefeated but our tourists had no hope of duplicating what that team did because their playing field is not level.
PS - that 2004 Irish schools team had a 6ft 8in lock Devin Toner. He's 2 inches taller now and doing OK isn't he?
There was also a lad in the team from Clogowes Wood College going by the name of Rob Kearney.
He played fullback and was goodish - whatever happened to him?