Broken Play by Jeff Pagano - March 1, 2025

A Saturday morning online rugby ramble

HELLO

Welcome to Broken Play, my new weekly column for my new Substack account where I return to the written rugby word by picking a series of topics, picking up the ball and running with it. As I type it’s early Saturday morning - no matter what I do on Friday evenings I always seem to be wide awake at this stage every week so I’ve decided to make something of it and produce some regular content.

PREVIEW SNAFU

Keeping a social media presence going in your spare time certainly is not easy. Or should I say, keeping it going and making sure all the content is accurate certainly is not easy. I like to think I’m just OCD enough to make sure all my facts are right before I produce something for Harpin, but sometimes, that just doesn’t work out.

On Friday the Leinster team was announced at 12pm as it usually is. Neil ‘Keego’ Keegan, who I have only met a handful of times in person over the years, has recorded over 100 pods with me in that time (we even did a series leading up to the 2020 US Election would you believe) and generally we do a quick 15m Zoom call every week to preview the next Harpin’-featured match, be it Leinster or Ireland. Yesterday was no exception, and as usual we were set to record at 1pm for Leinster v Cardiff.

I’m using this article to hold up my hand and admit that I did not know Alex Soroka had a brother. I probably, ok let’s go as far as to say definitely, should have known this if I want to call myself a week-to-week content-producing Leinster fan, but what can I say, I just didn’t know it.

So when I see Ivan’s name in the Leinster 23, and that this will be his first cap for the province, in the hour between the team being named and recording the pod, I assume he is a younger brother instead of taking the few seconds to Google him for some basic info.

And it’s not like I’m going to make the entire video about the chap, just at one stage I say this :

“We’ve got Oliver Coffey, scrum half, getting his first cap if he comes on. And Alex Soroka’s younger brother Ivan as well, starting at loosehead. Just the week we’re talking about Church retiring, we have a new loosehead starting as well”

The post was barely up a couple of hours when I get this comment on YouTube from @poc9652 :

“Ivan Soroka is in fact 6 years older than Alex. 30 year old Ivan had a season with Connacht in season 16/17. Now a Clontarf regular.”

Busted! What can I say. Obviously I’m ashamed at my own lack of research, while still a little bit grateful that people are actually taking the time to watch enough to catch me out when I fail (though this may stop them coming back again!).

And the irony of this is that I was inspired to come clean about my transgression here by the absolutely bonkers goings on over in the White House on Friday, when Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was sitting with those two Putin lackeys who are supposed to be representing the American people and chose not to let them lie about what’s happening in his own country.

Obviously these are two VERY different scenarios, particularly in relation to relevance to The Grand Scheme of World Things, but my point is that if I feel like I’m on the side of truth on the internet, then I should do my best to be responsible for it in my very teeny, tiny corner of it.

I fucked up, I failed to do the research, it is ‘my bad’, and I’m not going to hide from it.

The irony comes from the fact that the Soroka family are themselves Ukrainian natives and back when the (second) Russian invasion began he launched an appeal to raise funds and awareness for his fellow countrymen, an admirable pursuit for sure.

So my apologies go to his family for my error and I wish them all the best on what must be a proud day at the Aviva with both brothers involved, and they also go to my readers for the error, I will do my best to correct my info in future.

Anyway, if you haven’t want seen the preview yet and still want to after my excellent promo for it leading up to now, here’s a link to it.

PAGANO JR

Speaking of family pride, Saturday March 1 is an historical day of sorts for my own in that I am finally bringing my 9 year old daughter to her first Leinster rugby match. She has been at me for ages to bring her along and it’s not that I haven’t want to, it’s just that generally I sit in the media box with my laptop and what-not taking notes, so this was a one-off that had to be planned well in advance and a 3pm Saturday afternoon kickoff during the Six Nations shone like a beacon on the calendar for me to bring her.

To be clear, none of my four kids are really “into” rugby. They consider it “dad’s thing” and that’s fine by me. But my youngest is definitely into sport in general (she plays regularly for a local soccer team, don’t tell anyone will you?) and I will never forget what her mother told me she said back in 2023 the minute she heard Leinster had lost another Champions Cup final : “Oh no…I just want Dad to be happy!”

Now she didn’t start showing an interest in going to a match until this season, and to be honest, had I brought her back then I am pretty sure she'd have been bored out of her bin after 10 minutes of the match. Now she’s a little older, I can at least warn her that I think she may be bored but she has assured me she’ll be happy to stay to the end and you know what, I believe her.

Back in 2008 when I started Harpin’ On Rugby as a blog my principal goal was to capture the experience as a fan up in the stands as that was the year I had my first season ticket. With that being the year we won our first “star”, my writing quickly became more about the rugby on the pitch, and when I started getting to watch from the press box I obviously got further away from my original intentions.

So for this weekend anyway I’m going to try and capture the atmosphere for the paying spectator once again, and for the “bonus chat” after our pod recording on Sunday evening myself, Tom and Conor are going to harp on it in a bit more detail.

For now my daughter is busy putting together her assorted Leinster paraphernalia to wear and bring to the match today, I have a feeling I’m going to be dispatched to the shops for blue face paint before the morning is out.

SUPER SAM

As of now I can’t find an actual video to link to but you’ll just have to trust me there’s a clip going round of something Sam Prendergast did during the match against Wales last weekend where as he was about to be tackled he moved the ball around behind his back before handing it to a surprised yet still ready Andrew Porter to keep the phases going.

Wait - found a video - here it is…

I have to say the extremes to which people are going online the “prove he’s not good enough” are getting worse by the minute. Don’t you know how many tackles he missed? Haven’t you seen this montage I took hours putting together to show how poor his positioning is? Can’t you see this totally confirms my theory that he’s only in the team because he’s from Leinster?

What’s most annoying about that narrative is that if those people read this article they’d automatically assume I think he’s the best thing since sliced bread and never ever ever puts a foot wrong. THIS is why we do our match wrap pods the way we do, going back over the 80-minute timeline to harp on what actually happened throughout a match as opposed to cherry-picking the bits we want to support our own narrative.

Yes, he made some mistakes, and guess what, I pointed them out on the wrap pod. For me, neither he nor Gibson-Park started the second half well, and a botched wraparound pretty much led directly to the Rogers try that gave the Welsh a two-score lead. But they changed their plan, going to a territory game, and together with a fine team defence for the rest of the match they squeezed their hosts into submission, with numerable position contributions from Sam which the detractors conveniently leave out of their views which frankly put the “anal” in the word “analysis”.

Can we not just leave the lads alone while they’re winning and get behind the selections?

Anyway, if you want a report on Sam’s defensive output that actually has proper receipts, check out this thread on BlueSky from the stat master himself RugbyKino.

RINGROSE BAN

Won’t harp too much on this because my views are very simple. Was it right for Ringer to get red for this challenge in my view? Yes. Do I approve of the 20m red? No. Am I glad we could avail of it last Saturday by bringing on Bundee? Of course. Do I think a three-match ban reduced to two, one that is effectively a one match ban since he was never playing against Cardiff, is fair? Of course not. Do I care that some of those answers seem to contradict the others? Nah.

WOMEN'S RUGBY POD

During the week I recorded a bonus pod where I spoke to Ailbhe from the @IrishWomens account on BlueSky about the women’s season so far and looking ahead to the Six Nations. I would LOVE to be able to devote more time to the Women’s game, like for example take this season’s Celtic Challenge. The two Irish sides are locked in a battle at the top of the table with the Gwalia Lightning and in the final two rounds both the Wolfhounds and Clovers must travel to play the Welsh outfit. In an ideal world I’d be all over both those matches, with previews and writeups/wrap pods but as you can see from earlier in the article, I barely have enough time to keep up with the Leinster men’s team properly!!!! But I will still follow the women as much as I can and wish them all the best for the W6N.

I also of course wish Ailbhe all the best for her own upcoming pod titled “MudderRuckers the Irish Women’s Rugby Podcast”, do keep an eye out for it.

NEXT HARPIN’

Right that’s enough for now, could harp on a few more topics but I’m about to head out for some blue face paint.

Leave a comment on our Facebook page after the match today let us know what you thought. Tom Coleman & Conor Cronin will be joining me for the wrap pod on Sunday.

In the meantime please don’t be shy with the commenting, liking, sharing, and subscribing and as ever be sure to enjoy your rugby wherever you are. JLP