Jim Stokes (archive)
- Mark Orlovac
- 20 Mar 07, 01:45 PM
London - So after five weekends of thrilling action, the dust has settled on another Six Nations campaign.
Before the tournament started, our team of 91Èȱ¬ Six Nations bloggers sat down to select a combined team of the tournament and we did the same three games in.
Now hostilities have come to an end, the votes have been painstakingly counted and we can exclusively reveal what we think is our definitive starting XV.
Triple crown winners Ireland provide six of the team, with champions France and Italy having four players apiece.
Youngster David Strettle is England's only selection while Wales and Wooden Spoonists Scotland miss out altogether.
Six players from the original team have kept their places, and interestingly five of them are in the pack.
Let us know what you think of our selections, what we've got right, what we've got wrong, and let us know how your Six Nations XV would look.
Continue reading "Team of the Tournament"
- Jim Stokes
- 13 Mar 07, 10:14 AM
Belfast – Now that my very temporary support of England (for very selfish reasons you understand) has quickly evaporated in the thermals above Twickenham, I can look forward to what should be a thrilling Six Nations finale.
While I didn’t honestly think , I was even less convinced that rolling to a Grand Slam.
But fair play to Brian Ashton’s boys - who took advantage of a French team that looked asleep for most of the game. So much so, they should have worn their pyjamas, particularly out in the three-quarters.
Continue reading "Possession the key on St Paddy's Day"
- Jim Stokes
- 8 Mar 07, 12:40 PM
Belfast – Brian O’Driscoll will equal Keith Wood’s record of captaining Ireland on 36 occasions when he leads the team out at Murrayfield against Scotland on Saturday.
Undoubtedly he will soon pass that mark, so, is Drico a good leader? He is certainly a good player, indeed a great one. But is he a good captain?
Continue reading "In B'OD we trust"
- Bryn Palmer
- 5 Mar 07, 01:34 PM
London Before the Six Nations began, we had a con-flab here in the 91Èȱ¬ Sport website office about who would be in our combined team of the tournament.
After three rounds of action, our original team have not entirely justified our faith in them...Only six of the original XV make our latest combined XV, which has been based on aggregating my selections with four of my colleagues.
Controversially (or not given the results/?), there's no room for a single player from Scotland, Wales - or England.
We will revisit the subject after the final two rounds. Anyway, see what you think..
Continue reading "Six Nations XV - take II"
- Jim Stokes
- 5 Mar 07, 09:46 AM
Here's my team of the tournament so far:
15 Clement Poitrenaud (Safe, great hands and a good counter attacker)
14 Shane Horgan (Literally head and shoulders over any other contenders)
13 Brian O'Driscoll (You could play him anywhere, but outside centre will do)
Continue reading "Jim Stokes' Six Nations XV"
- Jim Stokes
- 26 Feb 07, 09:42 AM
Belfast – Wow. What a beautiful day Sunday was. It was only after I had finished my weekly jog around the green pastures of the Stormont Estate that I was able to take it all in. Like Saturday, it needed a sharp intake of breath.
I have been attending international matches since 1961, but none have matched the power, passion and emotion that emanated from
I had to pinch myself, to realise Ireland had stuffed England out of sight. Okay, okay it was a very poor England team, but there again, who cares...
Continue reading "How Ireland stood tall"
- Jim Stokes
- 23 Feb 07, 02:14 PM
Dublin – There's one sure thing that unites Irishmen and that is a confrontation with the English. Somehow, I suspect it could be the same with the Welsh and Scottish, but don’t quote me!
And if there's one thing that really fuses the Irish together, then it's when an Englishman says that they're not really up to it. Well, the 91Èȱ¬â€™s very own Brian Moore has now given Irish coach Eddie O’Sullivan the perfect motivational material for his pre-match pep-talk.
"Ireland can take no comfort after choking - again," was the headline on Moore's usual hard-hitting column in the Daily Telegraph column following the last-minute defeat to France.
And when 91Èȱ¬ Northern Ireland’s took him to task for his views - and indeed general Irish perceptions of bias - Moore, in his typical Pit Bull style, took an even harder line - insisting: "If people are honest in Ireland they ought to be furious about this because the team has blown yet another Grand Slam".
Continue reading "Moore blast provides perfect Irish pep"
- Jim Stokes
- 20 Feb 07, 02:30 PM
Belfast - The England team will travel to Dublin this week well versed in the historical importance of Saturday's Six Nations match.
Former Ireland full-back is now the (English) Rugby Football Union's Director of Regional Academies and to allow rugby to play on the hallowed turf.
O’Shea would have been the perfect intermediary as his father was a genuine GAA star who won three All-Ireland medals with Kerry in the Fifties.
Reams of paper, a spectrum of radio waves and have been filled explaining what Saturday’s visit of England really means. Hopefully history does not overshadow the future.
Continue reading "Why England may win historic Croker contest"
- Jim Stokes
- 16 Feb 07, 11:46 AM
Belfast – Apart from the obvious, will Eddie O’Sullivan tinker with his line-up against England next weekend? Going by previous selections I doubt it.
There will be no new faces emerging into the 22-man squad next Tuesday, that’s for sure.
Watching the Ireland A performance last week in Belfast where they were well and truly whipped by the England Saxons, there was certainly nobody putting their hand up.
So I reckon O’Sullivan will not be making too many changes other than the much-missed Brian O’Driscoll, and Peter Stringer returning to action for the second game at Croke Park - which I'm not sure is ideal for hosting rugby union.
Continue reading "Tips for O'Sullivan & my Croker verdict"
- Jim Stokes
- 12 Feb 07, 08:33 AM
Dublin - Ah well, the old can be tucked away for another year.
That old warrior Jack Kyle was sincerely hoping that the days of him being wheeled out to talk about Ireland’s chances of emanating his '48ers would end this season.
I’m afraid that title is now going to be as elusive as Kyle was in his Pimpernel days in the late 1940s when the French tried to seek him here and seek him there, but failed to stop him dancing over the try line.
Continue reading "Slam slips away"
- Jim Stokes
- 11 Feb 07, 06:09 PM
Croke Park - I was one of the 82,000 or so spectators who witnessed Sunday’s historic Six Nations encounter as Ireland's dream was shattered by France.
See if you agree with my ratings for players on both sides.
Continue reading "Ireland v France player ratings"
- Jim Stokes
- 8 Feb 07, 03:39 PM
Dublin – La France, un accueil chaleureux au parc de Croke.
Gauls against Gaels at the cathedral of Irish sport where this weekend .
The French are certainly accustomed to what Dublin itself has to offer, and were well used to the concrete mausoleum that was with its shifting, swirling winds.
However, the little corner in the north of the city may surprise, or even shock the visitors. They’ll enjoy themselves, but hopefully not too much on the green acreage around Jones’s Road!
Yes, Les Bleus do like to embrace their rugby in the purest sense, particularly on hard, perfect surfaces with wide open spaces like the one that will be offered on Sunday.
Continue reading "Why Ireland could be undone by Croker choker"
- Jim Stokes
- 5 Feb 07, 09:33 AM
Belfast - Jeepers, ! Somebody hadn’t read the original script at the Millennium Stadium.
Shame on those darn Welshmen trying to spoil Ireland’s party before it even started. Do they not realise that Ireland have not won the Grand Slam for nearly 60 years!
Okay, the Irish did win in the end, and I suppose you could not argue about chalking up three tries to zilch. But let’s be honest, it was a fairly ugly, dog-day victory only punctuated by sublime performances by Gordon D’Arcy and Denis Leamy.
While D’Arcy and Welsh scrum-half Dwayne Peel were the apple of the pundit’s eyes, I have to say that for me Leamy was the outstanding player on the field.
Continue reading "Ireland's close call"
- Jim Stokes
- 30 Jan 07, 01:24 PM
Belfast - In the Nineties, during my days as a cavalier rugby journo of ill-repute, I adored travelling to Cardiff for three particular reasons. There are more reasons, but...
The first was the fact that Ireland usually won at the old ; the second was the singing; and the third was rubbing shoulders in the media area alongside two of my favourite players of all time - Gerald Davies and Phil Bennett.
By the way, they are only topped by a certain , but that's for another time.
Continue reading "When the Welsh re-invented rugby"
- Jim Stokes
- 26 Jan 07, 03:34 PM
Belfast - The rugby posts are up at Croke Park … but nobody has seen them yet, except the players of course.
The general public are being kept in the dark until the gates of the Gaelic Athletic Association's 83,000 capacity emporium in the suburbs of north Dublin are opened for the visit of on 11 February.
It has been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster ride for the GAA and one can understand their nervousness after 123 years preserving and cultivating national pastimes with Croke Park the citadel. One may wonder today as to what constitutes a national past time in Ireland, but I won’t go into that!
Continue reading "Stoker from Croker"
- Jim Stokes
- 17 Jan 07, 01:45 PM
I was always a man of letters ... I worked as postman for two years before changing tack.
My first job as a sports journalist more than 30 years ago, was as a sailing correspondent at the Belfast Telegraph, that is, until I became becalmed one weekend on and ended up writing about the wildlife.
That trend continued when I became rugby correspondent.
For 16 years, I was a dedicated traveller covering the game from the days of the amateur ethos to the present professionalism of playing by numbers and taking in four World Cups. And I finally succumbed to a change of life when I joined "Auntie" six years ago.
It was inevitable that I would end up as a sports journalist. Sport was my life from my early school days with rugby, football, basketball and cricket my tour de force.
I played rugby for my local Belfast team Malone, and captained the club back in the 1972/3 season and collected an Ulster Senior League medal and Ulster Senior Cup gong.
I was a bit of a rare breed who started life as a fly-half one season, and ended up playing number 8 the next. I don’t think the rugby world was ready for a side-stepping, dummying, two-footed kicker in the back-row who had a penchant for dropping goals from the base of the scrum.
During a short break from rugby, I played for the Northern Ireland Youth international team in the 1962 European Championships as a goalkeeper.
But some fella by the name of Pat Jennings strangely got to play in the final against England at Wembley.
They won 4-0. Soon after that, won two caps in the 91Èȱ¬ International series that year, drawing 1-1 with England at Boundary Park where George Best wore the Northern Ireland jersey for the first time.
Now, my engine just keeps on running, literally. I’m a regular jogger and cyclist, having done a couple of marathons and a stream of 10Ks. I can still give my 24-year-old twins a run for their money, much to their chagrin.
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