Ben Youngs - "I was an Idiot"

[Skin_and_Muscle]

It's a bit of storm in a teacup this. He's learning the limits of the edginess he should bring to a game and won't do it again.
As for the hi mum comment, they were all having a laugh and a joke- after a few beers and his first international trophy you can give that to him!!
I do agree that the Llanelli celebration was a bit much, though.

[JWM]

The sense of personal assurance that verges on cockiness is obligatory for a scrum half surely (viz The Mouth). But it has to be the right sort of cockiness.

[G.K]

We call him Baby Ben Youngs - for a reason!

[4071]

This comment from the Sky Sports website:

......if this young fella wants to develop and improve, keep his place in the england side or even push for a future Lions spot he needs to play behind a pack that goes backwards from time to time, he's not going to get that a Leicester......does he want to improve or just play for the fashionable clubs, unfortunately i feel it's the later...

is quite possibly the most deranged and illogical piece of claptrap I've read in hours (I've was on 606 on the BBC this morning).

Does this idiot genuinely think that the only way talented young players can develop is at underperforming clubs? What happens if all the talented young players end up at the underperforming clubs, and those clubs start winning because they've got all the talented young players? Do they have to move back again?

Or is it that the clubs have to be set up so some of them have all the good forwards and the others have all the good backs. Perhaps all players should be centrally contracted, so that each week a panel can select which players get to play for which teams in order to ensure that all the best players get tested in different environments?

[Hull Fan]

This comment from the Sky Sports website:

......if this young fella wants to develop and improve, keep his place in the england side or even push for a future Lions spot he needs to play behind a pack that goes backwards from time to time, he's not going to get that a Leicester......does he want to improve or just play for the fashionable clubs, unfortunately i feel it's the later...

What a plonker!
What sort of reason is that, he plays for a team that challenges and wins trophies regularly so he is a glory hunter. How is he going to improve playing for Newcastle or Sale?
Lets pick all the players from weaker teams because they must be the best players!
What a plonker!

[4071]

A few incidents have given me cause for concern about Ben...

-shushing the Llanelli crowd after he scored in HCup;
-yellow card against Ireland;
-push against Eoin Reddan at scrum;
-antics behind Nick Easter when he lifted the 6N trophy ('hi mum!') -see video on BBC website, was it really appropriate after a pretty shocking individual performance;
-fitness? seemed out on his feet in first half in some matches.

Hope he hasn't got too big for his boots -

1. Shushing the crowd was blown out of all proportion - they were booing him as he crossed the line, so he shushed them. Other players have done worse with less fuss being made.

2. That was poor play - if he was going to prevent the quick throw, there are more subtle ways.

3. Standard bit of SH cheating. He got caught. If he hadn't, then it would have been good play. It's not as though it was very obvious, and it's not as if the ref was payign very much attention to anythign that happened at scrum-time, so it was a fair bet.

4. What are you on about? He and his teammates had just won England's first 6N title in 8 years. What was he supposed to do? Don sackcloth and ashes and flog himself mercilessly?

5. Total fiction.


As a list of crimes go, it's not exactly the Kray twins, and if you're trying to build a case to claim that he's getting 'too big for his boots' then it'd be thrown out of court before you could say "ludicrous overreaction to a poor performance in an otherwise excellent season".

[Norfolk & Goode]

...perhaps Cockerill needs to bring him back down to earth.

The most down to earth bloke you'll ever meet with no delusions whatsoever and a huge huge credit to our club and country.

Tut tut tac106 - way off!!

[Granby]

If and I stress IF necessary, I am sure that in time honoured tradition a few of the senior pros will give him a bit of slipper at the bottom of a ruck in training.

[G.K]

Is such deviation Rugby related? Mods ruling please.

[Rizzo]

Seems reasonably rugby related to me.

[mol2]

Pretty dumb - when he could have dropped the ball at touch judges feet and prevented the quick throw.
Equally dim slapping Reddan's arm when he was just a few inches from the ref!

These were not errors of pushing the margins of the laws too far, but the antics of a little boy over excited on Christmas Eve.

Talented yes but naieve & still got a lot to learn. Needs to realise you do things for a purpose & if there isn't one then don't waste your efforts.

[4071]

Pretty dumb - when he could have dropped the ball at touch judges feet and prevented the quick throw.
Equally dim slapping Reddan's arm when he was just a few inches from the ref!

These were not errors of pushing the margins of the laws too far, but the antics of a little boy over excited on Christmas Eve.

And whilst I agree that they were mistakes, I don't see the subsequent jump to 'little boy over excited on Christmas Eve'.

Everyone gives away penalties when they push the edge of the laws. The only problem with what Youngs did is that he lacked the experience to know what he could get away with and got spotted and penalised for both offences.

Other players commit pretty obvious offences and get away with them. He didn't. That's all.

The problem for Youngs was that he got spotted tapping Reddan's arm and that he misjudged the mood of the ref for the yellow card. Given that the Irish wandered off with the ball a few times when the ref had blown for an England penalty (and didn't even get marched back 10, let alone a warning or a card), then he may have just got unlucky or just committed the offence in the wrong part of the field. He was alert enough to realise that there were no other English players near him and that he couldn't defend a quick throw on his own. He just wasn't alert enough to be more subtle about preventing it.

It's not as if his offences were of a petulant nature, or in a part of the field where the Irish wouldn't have been able to gain a significant advantage had they taken the quick throw. At least there was reason behind his actions, even if the execution was poor.

[tac106]

Norfolk & Goode wrote
Tut tut tac106 - way off!!

Just keeping Ben honest - as fans, it's what we have to do. Make sure they know the value of the shirt.

The antics behind Nick Easter still intrigue me, though. Not just Youngs but Strettle, Care, Doran-Jones, Haskell - they of Wellington College filming themselves fame and other Australian-based antics. Mildly worrying.

[Kinoulton]

Please not let's go the way of football (my other love) where people are carded for quite innocently falling over when they've not actually been fouled (an inevitability in a full contact sport), revealing their T shirt when they're scored, celebrating with their own crowd, or a myriad of other "technical" offences.

In the good old days, Youngs would have been told "Oi! I saw that. Do it again and you're off. Go fetch the ball, return it to your opponent, and apologise to him nicely for being a plonker."

[Noggs]

Please not let's go the way of football (my other love) where people are carded for quite innocently falling over when they've not actually been fouled (an inevitability in a full contact sport), revealing their T shirt when they're scored, celebrating with their own crowd, or a myriad of other "technical" offences.

In the good old days, Youngs would have been told "Oi! I saw that. Do it again and you're off. Go fetch the ball, return it to your opponent, and apologise to him nicely for being a plonker."

Have to agree. The yellow card was a rediculous decision in the circumstances (ball dead; no chance of a quick throw; etc.). A dumb thing to do and worthy of a word and no more.

On the wider point, Ben is an exceptionally talented young player who IMO justifies his first choice selection for England and club. This does not mean that he does not still have much to learn and he would be the first to admit the same. The sky comments were born of ignorance, so no change there then