All Blacks v Ireland part III - July 16 8.05am Ireland time

For minority sport nationally and globally rugby does grab a lot of the print media and I suppose we have had some level of success nationally with it as well as within the club game.

However there are a few things working against rugby moving forward, none more so than the concussion/injury issues that aren't going away. It will always make it a difficult sport for parents to start their kids in.

While great work has been happening to grow the game in areas where it hadn't been traditionally strong I do think we need to get to the business end of a WC to glue together that progress and get more kids interested in the sport. Right now I think we are a few key injuries/loss of form of a 38 year old away from getting to the business end of the WC.

A great series win against NZ no doubt, papers well full of it and rightly so, but NZ will be a different outfit in a year's time..Will we?

There's a contradiction in calling the Ta'avao red 'lucky', and then separately calling the Porter yellow 'lucky'. You can't have it both ways. We were probably lucky Porter only saw yellow, but not lucky in the slightest that Ta'avao was sent off.

So New Zealand were lucky to win the single test they did, because Ireland's best player was off injured for most of it.

Roger that.

I mean, yeah, the initial post was a bit hysterical. But to be fair, the "luck" element is something I've been reflecting on myself. I don't think many would dispute that NZ win the third test (i.e., the series) if Porter had been red carded. And given current refereeing practice, I think he sees red more often than he doesn't. So we can't really conclude that we were anything but lucky here.

A lot of the luck going the other way is also somewhat immaterial. NZ were lucky that Leicester F wasn't red carded, or that a penalty try wasn't awarded for the early hit on Ringrose, or that they played a two-minute stretch of that match with a man extra on the field. But all these incidents were in the second test, which we won anyway.

Sexton's injury is really the only thing here I'd consider both lucky and impactful on a result.

I'd consider our failed executions, missed tackles, poor decisions etc to be something we can control and improve upon. I.e., things we have agency over and less to do with our opposition's luck. Unless you want to extend all victories and defeats to the "luck" of being better or worse than your opposition!

Also, Barrett would have been carded quite late in the first test, if I recall correctly. I.e., long after the game was lost.

When I think about "luck" impacting things, I am thinking specifically about situations that were largely external to either team's agency and directly impacted one of the three results. So for me, it's Sexton's injury in test 1 and Porter's card in test 3. Can't think of any others for now...

There's many differences between the two. Ta'Avao's was clearly accidental, Porter had plenty of time to adjust, making it look much more like a deliberate thing.

I do find it strange a few comments coming in about the ball carrier running in a straight line into contact somehow contributing to a high tackle. Surely a player trying to avoid contact while a tackler goes in is much more likely to result in a serious incident. With a player running straight, there's no surprises at the point of impact. It's not like Porter didn't have time to prepare, he made a conscious decision to stay high. Not to mention that Retallick is what, 6'8"? Takes some effort to complete a high tackle, even if he is running with his head slightly down.

It's all academic anyway. Ta'Avao's was a red card, the Citing Commissioner decided that Porter's should have been as well.

Depends whether you think a red card to Porter would have been the winning or losing of the game.

The problem is that people are drawing false equivalence between the Ta'avao and Porter incidents. Unless we go back to the situation where any contact with the head is a red, they're not comparable.

TBH, I think the Porter yellow was fair, but Aki could have got (at least) yellow for his headfirst clearout, so I think we did get a decent run of luck in the third test. We got shafted with a couple in the first test, these things usually balance out.

They have the hearing to discuss the actual case. To give the player the opportunity to show cause for why they shouldnt be treated as if they were sent off. A red card in a game means an automatic citing review.