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Over the last two months, our hit rate and popularity has been on an increase of about 10-20% a week. A nice gradual increase that has been very pleasing to those of us behind the scenes here. It helps greatly that you like what we are doing. and spurs us on to do even more and to keep the content fresh and updated more often. For five or six consecutive days last week we had a large increase in hits, resulting in our being listed as Number three on the Irish Blogs list of sports blogs every day for the last week. (Just Behind “My Anfield” which was number two, “Arseblog” the Arsenal fans site is Number one, absolutely massive and way out of reach to us ordinary mortals, but we’re well ahead of quite a few prominent sports blogs including one from a well known Radio Sports Columnist.) We haven’t even hit AIL time yet, which historically has been our crazy time, along with Heineken Cup and international weekends.
We’d just like to say a big thank you to all of you for dropping in whether it’s once a month, once a week or once or twice a day (there’s more than one of you logging on over 5 times some days, thanks for your loyalty and for adding us to your RSS feeds. )

We’ve been trying to increase the amount of information going up on the site by spreading the load over a few people and there is some fine posting being done by the lads involved with the J1 and J2 ‘s who produce their own match reports, as well as our new fixtures sec. who updates the site as and when he gets new fixtures information. To all of these guys I wish to say thanks, and keep up the good work. There’s more coming, The Under-age section will be updating regularly in the very near future and The Tickets information will be kicking off once we get into H.Cup and International Season.

Keep logging in.

By the way for those interested, here’s a breakdown of the countries that we’re getting hits from. I’ve only listed those that have more than ten visits by the way. Last weeks worth. (P.S. Dell is listed as U.S. as far as I can tell).

The columns are as follows: Flag, Country, country code, individual unique hits, total pages read, total amount downloaded and finally a graph showing those three columns.

United States	us	7712	37076	300.17 MB
Ireland	ie	1913	14125	103.22 MB
European Union	eu	908	3846	23.78 MB
Germany	de	437	783	12.46 MB
Great Britain	gb	387	3489	28.15 MB
Unknown	ip	234	731	5.80 MB
Canada	ca	148	291	4.49 MB
Australia	au	127	867	5.92 MB
Netherlands	nl	111	330	3.89 MB
Austria	at	50	51	1.76 MB
China	cn	41	72	764.96 KB
Malaysia	my	34	34	0
South Africa	za	32	258	2.33 MB
France	fr	30	400	2.54 MB
Belgium	be	24	116	1.03 MB
Spain	es	18	348	1.96 MB
Argentina	ar	11	155	1.00 MB
Japan	jp	10	40	287.16 KB

Just as a reminder as I was asked during the weekend, older posts are viewable a couple of ways: By clicking on the categories on the Right lists all the posts in a particular category, clicking on tags under the posts lists all the posts with those tags. The latest 9 posts or so are shown on the Left, the Archives are clickable with a dropdown link on the right a month at a time and you can also access the posts by date using the calendar which also lets you go back a month at a time as well (under the Ads), holding the mouse over a date lists the posts (If any) for that date.

Finally if all else fails do a search using the search box on the Right.

Now surely ye can handle one of the above ways to get at a post if you need to 🙂

It struck me earlier tonight that in the last month the first XV have beaten three Senior clubs from divisions above them, one Former division one team now playing in Div. 2 and two Div. 1 clubs. As little as three years ago these teams were beating us by 60 and 70 points in the Senior Cup.

Now I remember some years ago being at a game in which the last penalty decided whether we would be demoted to Junior Division three and discussing the ramifications of that in Keatings bar well into the early hours of the morning with John “Bull” Hayes, Pat Dunne, Pat “Scoby” O’ Callaghan along with our host Ger Whelan.

In the years in between we have won under 16, under 18 and under twenty All-Irelands. We have taken on the most famous, most glamorous and have come through. We have numerous Community games wins, We have won all of the Munster under-age competitions and Munster Junior competitions (except the Junior Cup which evaded us, due in no small part to the great rivalry with Nenagh Ormond). We have been through three AIL Round Robin series having won the Munster Junior league three times, qualifying finally on the third attempt with a clean sweep. In the three years as a senior club we are reigning Division three champions and have now laid our hands on the Limerick Charity Cup, both for the first time. We have a referee in the International and Heineken cup series, we have had players or former players on all of the provincial and National representative sides, including Lions. We have had former players return to play in their own provincial leagues in the southern hemisphere.

We have a great solid membership, a good clubhouse, fine grounds, nice facilities improving constantly, are getting match standard floodlighting to enable nighttime matches when we are required to do so. We have introduced the game of rugby football to many, many, primary and secondary schools throughout the county, where it had never been seen before. We have spread the good word and continue to do so.

We now “Box above our weight” on a regular basis.

When other clubs have folded under the pressure we have met all the challenges and have raised the bar constantly. We are recognised throughout the length and breadth of the country as one of the most progressive clubs in all facets of our development (It’s true, I’m not simply blowing our own trumpet).

We’re not doing too bad at all for a small little country club in the middle of County Limerick. We evolved, we did it our way (to paraphrase the great Frank). We need to keep evolving, together, changing to meet the challenges of the future as we have done in the past.

We cannot rest on our laurels.

As I count down the hours and minutes to “Le Crunch Match” a few questions are running through my head that I would like to ask you all to share your views on.

Are we doing our traditional “Play crap against the crap and step up for the big ones”?
If France don’t get a fifteen point lead in the first twenty minutes will they fold under the pressure from the crowd and the weight on their shoulders (The Croke Park effect…… in reverse…..only worse…..).
Can we break out of the malaise and actually perform?
Are we tired or has the preparation been totally wrong?
Is Eddie O’ Sullivan actually capable of bringing the differing styles of Munster, Leinster etc. together to gel into something far greater than the sum of the parts, which are pretty awesome in their own different ways when under someone else’s tutelage?
How or why can the best winger in the premiership be incapable of performing in a green jersey? Is he being “Spancilled” to coin a colloquialism? Or have we a manager that tries to micromanage so much that if you don’t pass the ball or play his way you get dropped, thereby stifling all freedom to express any creativity (The hallmark of Geordan Murphy)? Can he actually not recognise that unpredictability and innovation is exactly what is needed at this time. Can he not see that Murphy is a WINGER? It’s pretty bloody obvious to me, but then I’m not the Irish Manager, I’m also not under the thumb of a skulking Hidden group of D4 XMEN. I thought that Warren Gatland had actually managed to break the mould but it would appear not so.
Did we manage to win a couple of Triple Crowns DESPITE the manager rather than BECAUSE of him?

The other way hasn’t worked, it’s time for plan X, not plan b or c …. Am I the only one that sees this or am I talking through my Bruff woolly hat?
Whether we like it or not the next 5 hours will show the world whether we are actually capable of doing what we have promised for the last four years but we haven’t actually delivered. YET!

Or are we the worlds second greatest CHOKERS? We’ll soon know.

Anyway please note that the above is my own opinion and not that of anyone else, If you have a problem with it talk to

Me.

The Blogger.

For those of you that are either too young to remember it or just want to forget, I managed to get a copy of the original photo from Declan Hehir after a bit of research and can show you the Mural that started the ball rolling so to speak. It was back around 1989-1990 (I think) , Declan had the exact date as it was printed in the Leader at the time but I’ve forgotten it. This caused quite a stir as some people reckoned that such a “demonic looking creature” had no place next door to the Church, that it was an image of the “Divil Himself” but the hullaballoo died down after a while. Anyway here is the “Fairy Tale”. (Apologies in advance for the quality of the scan, the original print had the whole pub)