Ronan O'Gara has been one of Ireland's most important and better players from the last 15 years. A fine club player? A fine club player doesn't go on three Lions tours, scores over 1000 international points, is the top scorer in the Heineken cup and also was awarded best Heineken cup player of all time. He has won countless games for Ireland single handed and dragged the team through along with O'Driscoll and O'Connell. Threatening the line is not part of his game but he did play in an Ireland backline that scored some unbelievable tries and you cannot say he wasn't involved in them. The stick O'Gara gets in Leinster is ridiculous considering that without him Ireland would have one, or 50%, less Grand slams and one or two less triple crowns. You've made him out to be an average player when he was probably the best tactical kicker in the world in his prime and was third overall only behind Jonny Wilkinson and Dan Carter two of the best to ever play the game. An average player does not have a grand slam, 2 Heineken cup winners medals, two more losers medals and a handful of triple crowns. For what he was, what he did and what he acheived it is hard not to say that O'Gara was one of our best 10's ever.
Bottom line for me is - if the Ireland team from 2000- had Jonny Sexton steering the ship from 10, we'd have won a helluva lot more than a few triple crowns and 1 grand slam.
Radge looked great behind possibly the best forward pack ever assembled for the HEC (Munster). He looked all right for Ireland because of the presence of O'Connell to put pressure on the opposition lineouts.
IMO, he is not a great 10. Never was, never should be considered one. There always were far too many large and gaping flaws to his game to be compensated for by his first class kicking game. A very, very, very good kicker. Not much else.
I don't even rate his much vaunted "game management". Kicking the ball away 90% of the time is not "game management", especially when the correct option would be to run it, it is merely the limitations of the man being explained away by talking heads in the media that don't want to face up to the truth.
It actually annoys me watching Munster, when rucking on the opposition 22 with an overlap developed in the backs, the ball comes out to Radge, the backline are all sweeping in and it all looks set for a good passing move to a try... then Mr "Game Management" just boots the ball away into touch for a 5m lineout. Then... most annoying of all... the lemmings in the crowd stand up, clap and cheer, thinking Radge has just done something brilliant, when in reality he has completely f**ked up.
[Yes, I agree he has been one of Ireland's most important players... fly-half is one of the most important positions on the field, so by default any man that plays there for an extended period of time (though lack of options or otherwise) needs to be considered important.]
