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Watch: Ireland's fastest rugby players have been revealed

Leinster’s Daly the fastest rugby player in Ireland

Rugby is a game of attrition in the northern hemisphere, played throughout the winter and hence doesn’t always lend itself to the pure speedsters seen in other sports.

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With obvious exceptions when it comes to the back three, these positions often focusing on dynamism instead of sheer bulk.

Munster’s Head of Fitness Aled Davis spoke in relation to the competition within the Munster squad surrounding the 40-metre dash.

“In the past, we may have considered speed over 40 metres an important metric but we would rarely set that up in training due to the [potential injury] risks involved,” said Davis.

“We now prioritise accelerations and deceleration over that straight, 40 metre burst.”

“It would probably surprise you to see who our quickest players are, in those short bursts.”

“There are a few backline players in the top five [for speed] but a couple of forwards.”

“Whereas runners need steady speed over certain distances, rugby players focus on being efficient and effective over those first couple of strides.”

With that in mind, here are Irish Rugby’s fastest players:

  1. Barry Daly (Leinster) – 10.5 metres per second.
  2. Rory Scholes (Connacht) – 10.0 m.p.s
  3. Jacob Stockdale (Ulster) – 9.97 m.p.s
  4. Simon Zebo (Munster) – 9.85 m.p.s

Simon Zebo, currently sidelined with a rib injury comes in fourth, with Ulster’s Jacob Stockdale currently in action on the wing against Connacht in third.

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The number two spot goes to Rory Scholes, previously of both Ulster and Edinburgh

Leaving first place to Barry Daly who burst onto the scene this season having scored a hat-trick in Leinster’s defeat to the Cheetahs.

Daly starts tomorrow’s local derby against old rival Munster, showing the faith Leo Cullen has in the 25-year-old.

10.5 metres per second is an extremely impressive stat once put in the context that in Usain Bolt’s fastest ever 100 metres, his average speed was 10.44.

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Clearly an exciting prospect for Irish rugby and Leinster, as the below clips demonstrate.

Credit: Leinster Rugby TV

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J
JW 36 minutes ago
Why England's defence of the realm has crumbled without Felix Jones

This piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.


I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.


Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.


The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.

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