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Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

Any chance of a DMac sabbatical to Leinster? One of my absolute favourite players.

November 8, 2025 at 8:22 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

Quite a lot of the 'well Japan were tired in that last 30 minutes' narrative going around.

Okay, but cutting out the sloppiness of our own making has nothing to do with their tiredness.

November 8, 2025 at 8:06 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

To be clear, I don’t begrudge Farrell his debut.

BUT can you imagine the absolute headloss that would be currently unfolding if we were giving a cap to a 32 year old player who played for Leinster.

Cian Ó Muilleoir @rugbykino.bsky.social · 4d

Ireland team vs Japan

Ireland (vJapan):
15. Jamie Osborne (Naas/Leinster)(9)
14. Tommy O’Brien (UCD/Leinster)(3)
13. Tom Farrell (Lansdowne/Munster)*
12. Robbie Henshaw (Buccaneers/Leinster)(82)
11. Jacob Stockdale (Lurgan/Ulster)(39)
10. Jack Crowley (Cork Constitution/Munster)(27)
9. Craig Casey (Shannon/Munster)(21)

1. Andrew Porter (UCD/Leinster)(76)
2. Rónan Kelleher (Lansdowne/Leinster)(40)
3. Thomas Clarkson (Dublin University/Leinster)(8)
4. James Ryan (UCD/Leinster)(73)
5. Tadhg Beirne (Lansdowne/Munster)(62)
6. Ryan Baird (Dublin University/Leinster)(30)
7. Nick Timoney (Banbridge/Ulster)(4)
8. Caelan Doris (St Mary’s College/Leinster)(52)(captain)

Replacements:

16. Gus McCarthy (UCD/Leinster)(6)
17. Paddy McCarthy (Dublin University/Leinster)(1)
18. Finlay Bealham (Corinthians/Connacht)(52)
19. Cian Prendergast (UCD/Connacht)(5)
20. Jack Conan (Old Belvedere/Leinster)(52)
21. Caolin Blade (Galwegians/Connacht)(3)
22. Sam Prendergast (Lansdowne/Leinster)(10)
23. Jimmy O’Brien (Naas/Leinster)(10)

November 6, 2025 at 1:03 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

Suddenly I really like the idea of the 20 minute red card

November 1, 2025 at 8:26 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

Sexton’s coaching already paying dividends for Crowley

November 1, 2025 at 8:23 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

It’s my toddlers bedtime and I’m just putting her favourite album on #IREvNZ

November 1, 2025 at 7:15 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

The absolute indignity of being asked about a (false) bad review from 2017 when trying to book a house on AirBnB. Take your €500 for 2 days and g’way. A hotel would never.

October 30, 2025 at 10:33 AM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

A fairly callow named team. We should win but I also feel we’re tempting fate with this team.

October 24, 2025 at 11:15 AM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

This was called for unnecessary roughness. Game is absolutely gone.

October 21, 2025 at 4:04 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

Dunno what all the fuss is about - he looks delighted to have November off.

Riaan Louw @ringo26.bsky.social · 23d

Incredible television

October 18, 2025 at 7:10 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

Sitting right in front of the posts and Crowley has missed every kick he’s taken in the warm up so far #LEIvMUN

October 18, 2025 at 3:45 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

He's talking about the irish squad named yesterday btw.

David O'Sullivan. @dos13.bsky.social · 25d

Oh, I'm not suggesting Munster have players good enough for this list.

October 16, 2025 at 10:37 AM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

Really enjoyed this from Faz Snr. Rare you get such a long interview out of him.

The Andy Farrell interview

open.spotify.com

October 13, 2025 at 7:44 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

Edinburgh absolutely collapsing here. Crazy stuff.

October 10, 2025 at 8:27 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

Decent chance that we are about to lose 5 games on the bounce tbh.

October 10, 2025 at 11:39 AM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

Buzzing for my grandchildren’s grandchildren to be at the opening of the metrolink.

Darach Ó Séaghdha @darach.bsky.social · Oct 2

Mmmm hmmm. Ooooh yeah.

Dublin's Metrolink project has (finally) been granted planning permission jrnl.ie/6832816

Dublin's Metrolink project has (finally) been granted planning permission

The 18.8km route will connect Dublin Airport to the city centre.

jrnl.ie

October 2, 2025 at 11:19 AM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

I’ve played in J5 teams that look less like a scratch team than Leinster #STOvLEI

September 26, 2025 at 6:43 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

Games gone.

September 25, 2025 at 3:36 PM

Reposted by Rob Gardner

This Matters To Somebody

@tm2s.bsky.social

Well, here we are, halfway through our introduction the #URC and the time has finally come to address the most successful team in the league one of the best in professional rugby: Leinster.
www.leinsterrugby.ie

September 16, 2025 at 1:09 AM

Reposted by Rob Gardner

derek guy

@dieworkwear.bsky.social

I wrote something about respectability in dress over on Twitter. The topic is nuanced for me, so unfortunately the post had to be long. Since Bluesky (reasonably) has character limits, I can't easily import the text here. So I'm including screenshots, if you would like to read it.

ON RESPECTABILITY IN DRESS

Every once in a while, people here will get mad at me. And it often involves the same issue: respectability in dress. Or its related cousin: dress codes.

Judging someone's deeper, more important qualities based on attire often feels so natural; people get upset when I refuse to engage in the same judgment. To them, it feels as though I'm denying something so obvious, I'm dishonest.

I've written about dress respectability no fewer than half a dozen times in my 15 years of writing about menswear, but never so thoroughly and comprehensively on Twitter. This post will be long, but I hope it is engaging. And I hope you stay with me because I find this sentiment to be so noxious — so antithetical to any notion of "good," whether religious or secular — that I hope I can convince a few people to resist such temptations.

What is respectability in dress? It's the idea that you can show respect through clothes, such as wearing a suit to a wedding. Or the idea that people in certain clothes are more deserving of respect, such as a man in a suit versus another man in a hoodie. I will address each in turn.

I believe dress is a form of social language. And thus, you can signal certain things through clothes. For instance, if I were to attend a wedding, I would wear a suit as an outward expression of a sentiment in my heart (e.g., "I'm happy for my hosts and wish to honor them on this day"). The suit is simply a representation of my sentiment, which already exists, even if I was in jeans.

However, if I arrived at a wedding and saw someone not wearing a suit, I would not judge the person's more important qualities based on their attire. Perhaps they didn't have time to buy a suit. Perhaps clothes shopping gives them great anxiety. Perhaps they can't afford a suit that fits. If I wanted to know whether that person is of good character, I would judge this off their more direct actions, such as how they treat the people around them. Are they genial to g…

In 1852, Cardinal John Henry Newman penned an essay, initially delivered as a university lecture, titled "Definition of a Gentleman." A gentleman, he says, is someone gentle and kind, considerate of others, humble in social relations, and respectful of boundaries. He compares a gentleman to "an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue." He writes:

"The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast — all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at his ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favors while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring."

There is notably nothing in his essay about clothes.

It's impossible to judge a person's deeper, more important qualities based on clothes because people are often just following social conventions. To go back to the wedding example, many people wear a suit not because they hold a particular sentiment in their heart, but simply because a suit is protocol. A friend who works as a wedding photographer revels in telling me stories about suited guests getting into fistfights—certainly not a way to honor your hosts. The irony of dress codes is that the stronger the enforcement, the less you can tell about someone's character based on dress.

Let's now turn to the idea that people in certain clothes are more deserving of respect. The sharpest, most pointed counterargument for this is Pierre Bourdieu, who in his 1979 book Distinction, pointed out that our notions of "Good Taste" are often nothing more than the habits and preferences of the ruling class.

Edward Carpenter, a gay British reformer in the late 19th century, understood this a century earlier. He hated suits. In an essay about the "simple life," he compared suits to coffins, as they have "stiff layers upon layers of buckram," which he believed prevented people from getting enough sunlight and air. But more importantly, he hated suits because he recognized that Victorian dress codes weren't about dress codes at all — they were about status signaling and social hierarchy.

In May 1889, Carpenter wrote a letter to The Sheffield Independent about how 100,000 of the city's residents were struggling to find sunlight and air, enduring miserable lives, and dying of illnesses because of the thick, black cloud of smog arising out of factories like smoke from Judgement Day. Meanwhile, as Melton-clad plutocrats nattered on about proper dress codes, they concealed their cruelty and vulgarity under refined manners. They weren't concerned with virtue, but rather with showing their supposed higher moral status. And then those socially under them aped those manners to seem higher class. (A dynamic that German sociologist Georg Simmel recognized in his 1902 essay "On Fashion.)

Our judgements of dress are often more about the person underneath the clothes, rather than the clothes themselves. We see this with the pre-war British Guardsmen, who dropped their Edwardian-inspired fashions as soon as they were adopted by the "ruffians" known as Teddy Boys (and some Teddy Gals). Or how the slacker hoodie became a symbol of meritocracy in the New Economy when (white) coders wore it in the early 2000s, but it symbolizes criminality when worn by black teens.

Clothes ind…

I'm fundamentally opposed to any notion of respectability in dress, as I find it antithetical to a fundamental moral principle: you should treat everyone with respect unless they behave in a manner that suggests otherwise. And so, if John Fetterman lumbers through the halls of Congress in hoodies and shorts, you should object to him based on his politics, not his dress. If a student shows up at Oxford Union in sweats, you should consider his ideas, not his pants. I am perfectly fine with saying certain outfits are ugly. I'm deeply uncomfortable when people make moral judgments based on clothes. A person is not more or less deserving of respect based on dress; they can only do so based on more meaningful behavior.

My guess is that you know this in your heart. As you travel through the world, look around you. Are your poorly dressed cousins and uncles bad people? Do shabbily dressed teachers or nurses on the train not actually serve society in positive ways? Do suited politicians not occasionally commit crimes? The idea that appearance doesn't always match character can be found more melodically in Fela Kuti's 1973 album "Gentleman."

If you are already interacting with someone on a meaningful basis, you've hopefully already gotten enough information about them to form a judgement and thus can ignore dress. If you haven't interacted with them in meaningful ways, you can simply withhold judgement.

I will end with an excerpt from Stuart Hall, a Jamaican-born British cultural theorist. In an essay about pluralism, he made a distinction between "common culture" and "common society," encouraging us to embrace differences.

"It should not be necessary to look, walk, feel, think, speak exactly like a paid-up member of the buttoned-up, stiff-upper-lipped, fully corseted and free-born Englishman, culturally to be accorded either the informal courtesy and respect of civil social intercourse or the rights of entitlement and citizenship. Since cultural diversity is, increasi…

September 18, 2025 at 8:26 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

I’m doing my part. Are you? 🫵

September 18, 2025 at 1:08 PM

Rob Gardner

@robgardner.bsky.social

Huge amount of nastiness from Munster fans towards Conor Murray following the release of his book & the particular extracts in the paper.

One of the greatest Irish & Munster players. Top 3~ in his position of all time.

Contextualise & critique his comments, but don’t disavow your own legend.

September 12, 2025 at 12:44 PM