Are-ireland-and-leinster-the-biggest-chokers-in-world-rugby ?

Dont be a silly billy

Oh great…this chokers/ bottlers bullsh1t all over again. If we say 'yes', will you go away with your myopic mis-assessment of high level sport. You have already identified there are two nations that are difficult to beat in this sport. NZs best performance in 4 years put us out of last WC….and then I guess they 'choked' afterwards cos they didn't win the tournament.

Mcilroy, Leinster and Ireland have won major tournaments. Have they some win rights we do not know?

"Yes, but it's the same type of style though, with the way they play," he (Burger) suggests. Its called playing rugby…something SA have turned their back on, admittedly with success. Hope it doesn't last, seriously ugly wins the last two WCs. Did the article address that?

No the back to back 6n champions are not chokers.

Its part of the mind games for SA match, nothing more. Id take it as a compliment they feel the need to do this. Rassie is at his usual messing too

Oh right, so the sport is competed by a collection of chokers, except one non choker every 4 years (WC) and yearly (EC). That's a convenient assessment that wraps up the entirety of the events in those competitions. I am glad we are done with this assessment - I feared it had more depth and we would be here for at least another 6 or 7 minutes. Probably more convenient you restricted it to only the last 2 years for both!

. Losing is celebrated here

Well, Andy Farrell and the Ireland team are deeply unpopular among a certain cohort of Irish people so I don’t know about that.

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m shocked that Schalk Burger is a bit a of a dick. Shocked, I tell you.

Its incredible how fragile so many South African ex-pro's are. They need to hammer home how unbothered they are by Ireland at every turn.

Sorry actually, please don't bother.

Yawwwnnnnnnnn.

Is the only way for an underdog to win that the favourite must be a choker?

I played rugby for 22 years, won some big matches we had no right to and lost some matches where we expected to.

Were we chokers when teams turned up well and got one over us on the day? No.

Were our fancied opposition chokers when we beat them against the odds? No.

Sometimes it just your time, other times it's not.

yeah Leinster winning their first 4 finals gives a lot of breathing room compared to Clermont

While I wouldn’t go as far as to say they are chokers, I can see why there is at least a discussion about it. Over the last few years both Leinster and Ireland, with a large crossover in players, have failed to make the most of their opportunities. But the teams they lost to were if not better teams, certainly on a par with their Irish rivals. The fact that neither team has been able to get over the line, both figuratively and factually, when the win was there, does point to some weakness, which other teams have capitalised on.

I’ve never put much stock in world rankings, we were top of that list in 2019 shortly before the WC, but I don’t think anyone thought we were actually the best team in world rugby at the time, which was brutally exposed in front of my eyes in Shizuoka.

It's also down to the fact we've been probably the most screwed of any nation with the RWC draw with the exception of possibly Scotland.

Two RWC's in a row where we had to beat another top 4 side regardless of where we finished in the pool in order to get to a RWC SF,

It's part of the reason why I think anyone who uses the recent RWC as evidence that Ireland are "chokers" are either trolling or are just desperately try to find any evidence to fit their narrative, this is even more apparent when they dont label France bottlers despite the fact they also went out in the QF's.

Like do people Seriously think England arent bottler's just because they got to play Fiji in a QF rather than NZL/France? And even then they nearly screwed that up.