Gerry Thornley
speaker
2,299 appearances
10 recordings
3 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 18 Sep
Gerry Thornley’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 4.
Appearances
a 10.5-hour trek yesterday for the squad and us to Tokyo yesterday, followed by an 11.5-hour trek from Tokyo to Auckland next Sunday, followed by the 24-hour trek home from Auckland on Sunday week.
So you can well see why the RFU, with player management at stake, that they were not prepared to undertake such an arduous three legs in a row at the end of a long, hard season.
which the majority of the squad have made URC and Champions Cup finals and, you know, really gone deep into the season a year on from Alliance Tour.
So you have to think of the players a little bit.
It's an unequal competition, no doubt about it.
Japan and Fiji are the invited nations, the other 10 are the shareholders.
and it's probably loaded against the two relative rugby minnows, but that's the way it is.
It would have been absolutely inhuman to ask the Irish squad to undertake such an itinerary at the end of the season.
This is why this competition is going to have it.
It had a magnificent launching pad last weekend, but it's still going to have its teething problems.
Yeah, whereas Wales and Scotland have got Fiji at the start and the end of their three-match series.
They're only having two-week trips and they're back-to-back.
England, I don't know why England agreed to that.
It seems like a savage itinerary as well.
I presume the main reason Fiji moved all three games to Europe is for commercial value, commercial reasons, and the fact that most of their squad, nearly all their squad, is based in Fiji, or a lot of their squad is based in Fiji anyway.
So I'm guessing that, but that would be, that's an interesting test case.
Because Ireland will have South Africa, Fiji and Argentina at home this coming November in reverse order, actually.
Argentina first, Fiji second, South Africa third.
But then in 2028, they will have to go negotiate those three fixtures as England have done this year.
They will have to do that themselves in two years' time.
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