Interpro heroics mask structural deficiencies
7 years ago
Monday, May 4, 2009
Men's IHL draw completed
The draw for the 2009 Irish Hockey League was concluded this afternoon at Grange Road with the Munster sides and the wildcard entrants completing the line-up.
Enticing ties appear throughout the competition with Pool B having some particularly eye-catching ties in the offing as Ulster and Munster champions Cookstown and Cork C of I joined by IHL finalists Glenanne and Three Rock Rovers.
Annadale and Lisnagarvey's development will be slightly further along.
To that end, Corinthian - as the only newcoming team - can look at their group as a decent opportunity to progress drawing the currently weaker Munster side, Cork Harlequins while they have produced a couple of decent results against Pembroke this season to suggest they will not face that match with the champions with as much trepidation.
Pool A: Pembroke Wanderers, Instonians, Banbridge, Monkstown, Corinthian, Cork Harlequins
Pool B: Cookstown, Glenanne, Three Rock Rovers, Annadale, Lisnagarvey, Cork C of I
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24 comments:
When are the home and aways decided?
Thats a big group b
Are the groups seeded or why is group B so much clearly a higher standard than group A?
The reason the groups are lop-sided, as is also the case with the women's draw, is because they are organised in such a fashion that prevents all teams from one province being drawn with each other, as could happen under an open draw.
The format is fixed thus:
Pool A: Leinster 1, Ulster 2, Ulster 3, Leinster 4
Pool B: Ulster 1, Leinster 2, Leinster 3, Ulster 4
Munster 1 and 2, plus the two wildcard winners, are then drawn into each pool. Essentially, the strength of Leinster hockey is what causes the imbalance; see this season where all four finalists were from Leinster.
By doing the draw this way, the IHA are at least ensuring it remains an 'all-Ireland' league; I'm sure people would be far unhappier if all the Leinster sides were drawn together?
come on cookstown. prove the critics wrong and do the business against the biggest teams north and south... bar pembroke of course!
Red Man
Also lets not forget how Cookstown struggled to beat leinsters 4th place Monkstown and 6th place Fingal in the Irish Senior Cup.
3 Leinster teams in group A makes it a very tough group. Corithian beat Garvey 4-2 and were top qualifier.
Pembroke beat Cookstown 6-0 and Annadale 4-0! Glenanne beat Cookstown 5-2! Ulster hockey is weak. The top three sides in the country are:
Pembroke, Glenanne, Three Rock by a mile.
Conor & David Harte are Munster players by the way!
The gap in Leinster is smaller too. Pembroke and Glennane are not too far ahead of their chasing pack when you look at individual matches against their top 5. As for the talent being mainly in Glennane and Pembroke - Maguire, Darling, Pelow, Doherty, Lee and Watkins (to pick just 2 from the other clubs) might have something to say about that.
this 26 seconds is a bit of a misnomer...
the time was stopped on 17:04 on the public clock but onyl after glenanne had completed their celebrations and the push-back to restart the game had already just taken place.
sure it may not have been a full 26seconds between the two incidents but is worth noting that the disparity between the public clock and what was on the official clock might have been a lot smaller.
the TD followed protocol for the situation in case of such a circumstance arising, in fact fairly clearly written in the rulebooks so blaming the TD is not fair.
the time-keeper is the one who cuased the ruckous.
as for Leinster being arrogant, this gets thrown at them virtually every time they win stuff. pembroke remained particularly quiet throughout the last month ahead of big games on this site and the players got on with just what they could control. similar thing with glens and three rock.
since winning all there is to win, a bit of congratulations and back-slapping is par for the course. its a leinster-based site, of course people are going to be proud of their club/province on here. there is an incredible amount of noise about Bann and Cookstown on here, why not get behind your own province on your own site rather than allowing these boys their day in the sun?
during the ehl, egara scored a goal on the buzzer in KO8. yet this wasn't allowed as the buzzer had gone, the umpire pushed away egara players saying that the timing is done on the buzzer. so surely if the ihl is meant to induce the ehl rulings, surely when the buzzer goes that's the end of play?
Stephen - Has it been decided the home and away matches for each team yet?
id say this years semi finalists will be the same next year again, definatly the top 4 teams in ireland at IHL
I think that it shoes the state of our sport that post are being removed due to their nature. These blogs started out to give information and so people could inter-act as if they had just finished a game and in the bar. Unfortunately i think they are now bad for the game and i am sorry they should not be allowed.
They are making the sport more confrontational, and i feel unhealthy.
I do know that people read what is said by them and they are hurt, nothing of a personal nature should be allowed for these blogs to survive, it will not be long until a case appears in the courts, as has happened in the UK.
I'd agree with the last comment to a degree. Guys, when you get on this blog and start going on about this and that just picture yourself like Drogba last night for chelsea at the end of the match. Didn't do much for him... and it doesn't help much here either when you kick off...
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