For this brief post, we’re not going to be harpin on rugby, instead we’ll be harpin on Harpin On Rugby.
The blog started exactly six years ago today on August 21, 2008, with a very, very boring post; we simply copy/pasted the RTÉ report of Leinster’s pre-season win at Padova.
Luckily by the next fixture we had plucked up the courage to write our own opinions and, well, we all know how that 2008/09 season ended - Heineken Cup for Leinster and Grand Slam for Ireland, lubbly jubbly.
Since then we have gone beyond our original remit of offering a Monday morning opinion of the weekend’s Leinster/Ireland match…going into social media, writing parody songs, running competitions, hosting guest bloggers, taking photos that go viral, getting on the telly, and just yesterday, even having the privilege of being at the mercy of commenters on The Journal/The Score!!!
Of course, to be fair, a few things have gone wrong for us over the years, but we’re not going to post links to those because, well, that would be silly.
We plan to bring you more of the same coverage for the 2014/15 campaign, with a few additions…
- Our new “Front 5” feature where we start your day with 5 links & quotes from the ruggersphere has proven very popular so far
- Having been fully won over to women’s rugby by #WRWC2014 we’ll bring you coverage this season of the Women’s AIL, interprovincials and Six Nations.
- Plans are in place for a podcast; some logistics to work out before we can launch but hopefully it will be up and running in time for the Rugby Champions Cup.
All this plus more features to be announced soon.
We hope you’ll continue to let us harp on at you for the foreseeable future. Many thanks for all your support up to now. JLP