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Matt Banahan hoping to win British Lions place

Making an ass of himself in the Jersey vs. Guernsey game.

 
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would have been interesting if he had played second row instead of wing, could have been a courtney lawes type of second row just more powerful but then again he could have been awful...
 
why does everyone seem to hate bannhan he is clearly a good rugby player, he scores trys off loads well and has good acceptable hands. he also does some crunching tackles.

He has something to offer at international level, but his skillset is limited. I think some people can see that. To be an international you need to meet certain criteria and he maybe meets 3/5, which means sometimes he does stuff that is expected at the top level, but not all the time. He makes mistakes, takes wrong options, silly decisions.. he's got this terrible habit of blindly chucking the ball behind him as he's tackled, I watched one game where he did it 4 times, 2 were knocks on and the other two went nowhere. On one occasion, England were running rampant against a 6N team, in their 22m, the other team was on the backfoot MB, made a break and all he had to do was go to ground, England would have recycled and scored. He threw one of his tard passes. Then did it again 10 mins later! You would get your arse kicked at U16 for that and then you wouldn't do it again unless you were 40 points up.
 
C'mon, he's not that bad


I was there. Me and my friend, who was supporting England, spotted the overlap some time before the ball came out. He was screaming for them to get the ball out. I then told him it was Banahan on that wing. He then started shouting for them to keep it in the maul. We both saw this coming.

He's impressively crap.
 
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Compare him to the 'boshing' winger that say Wales have and he doesn't stand up too well though...
 
I was there. Me and my friend, who was supporting England, spotted the overlap some time before the ball came out. He was screaming for them to get the ball out. I then told him it was Banahan on that wing. He then started shouting for them to keep it in the maul. We both saw this coming.

He's impressively crap.

Wow, I've never seen that before. I don't want to crucify the guy, because I have seen him do some good stuff, but that is just woeful finishing considering the time and space he had and the fact he's a foot bigger and 30kgs heavier than Shane Williams! Good passing from England, that should have been try time.
 
Wow, I've never seen that before. I don't want to crucify the guy, because I have seen him do some good stuff, but that is just woeful finishing considering the time and space he had and the fact he's a foot bigger and 30kgs heavier than Shane Williams! Good passing from England, that should have been try time.

Banahan is a left wing, for whatever reason he was selected on the right and had a poor day at the office.

His last appearance for England was good, he came on in the WC QF and opened up the French backline (ultimately leading to a Cueto try), an unfairly maligned player I feel.
 
In that situation it didn't really matter which wing is his preferred side (or 12, or 13....) as it was a 5m run in against a chap half his size!
I'd have put money on any player on the pitch scoring that try, especially any player of his size/strength.
 
In that situation it didn't really matter which wing is his preferred side (or 12, or 13....) as it was a 5m run in against a chap half his size!
I'd have put money on any player on the pitch scoring that try, especially any player of his size/strength.

Tindall's pass (while good for him) was not quite slick enough and MB had to check his run. Banahan looked out of sorts on the right wing in that game and while he should have scored I think it would be wrong to read too much into it, any player can have a poor day at the office.

If you want an example of where he got rid of a hard tackling wing to score, you only have to look at his try against Argentina where he bumped off tough-tackling Camacho to score - you don't hear people talk so much about that (of course, that was on the left wing).
 
Banahan is a very poor man's Shane Horgan. Now there's a big wing with no pace who did a serious job.

In other news there's a lot of rumour flying about that Joe Schmidt has been offered a position with the Lions.
 
I've read that Banahan has dropped nearly a stone for this season somewhere. I think one of his main problems is that he focused far too much on being physically imposing, with the dimensions of a second row, but lacking the pace to make his physique any use in the backs. Shifting the attention away from being big might actually be a revelation for Banahan, and he's definitely young enough to still have some sort of international impact. I just hope that he proves it first instead of being shunted ahead of all the wings that actually deserve a look-in for the national team and/or the Lions.
 
I remember that tackle,

he sees Shane and fancies his chance of stemrollering the little man to make himself look spectacular rather than going for the easy try in the corner
I don't think it's that...He would not have had the pace to go around shane...shane's prefered method of tackling from what I've seen is giving the winger a yard on the outside and hitting low... However as opposed to a bosh had he ran it straight and used a fend while maintaining a leg drive he'd have bloody waltzed over..
 
If anyone can, its Matt Banahan. One of my favourite english players
 

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