Our oval-shaped 'bidet' fails to flush out those tattooed English
IF YOU ASK ME:It rained and it rained and it rained, we lost Zebo, we lost Sexton, we lost to England, the south stand jacks in the Aviva Stadium broke down, even the Pope decided to throw in the towel. And now they tell us there’s horse in the lamb. They do get around don’t they? From now on you’d better be careful if you’re using the phrase “there’s an elephant in the room”, that it’s not the one on your dinner plate.
Forward planning may not be a forte in Ireland, but maybe the architects knew what they were doing when they designed the Aviva Stadium to resemble a bidet (“a low, oval-shaped bowl used for washing the genital and anal area,” according to my dictionary) because that’s exactly what it felt like last Sunday.
A very big, nicely appointed, shiny bidet, but a bidet nonetheless and one – for all its shininess – distinctly lacking in atmosphere.
Of course we can’t really blame the stadium or the unrelenting misery in the sky or Ireland’s bizarre error-count, because despite all those factors, there remains the distinctly irritating feeling that Ireland could have and should have won this match.
As Matt Williams pointed out in the lead-up, as only he can: “Ireland need to dominate the corridors of power.” And I think I actually understood what he meant. Not a common occurrence it has to be said.
In the first half Ireland played facing the ‘swimming-gala-seating end’ and managed to conjure up one of the few creative moments courtesy of a familiar source, a Brian O’Driscoll skip pass to Keith Earls nearly resulting in a try for Rob Kearney.
Polite request
It was the only thing to raise either an eyebrow or a pulse, apart from the English man sitting in front of me who knocked a pint of stout over himself or the skirmish that followed Cian Healy’s polite request of burly citizen Dan Cole, if he wouldn’t mind terribly putting his foot down so that his chum, Conor Murray, could have the ball please. At least he asked!
Cole has the look of someone denying a sinister past on The Jeremy Kyle Show and he didn’t seem too keen on Healy’s approach for some reason.
Fumbles, snatches, shanks, wrong options and open season at the breakdown where England slowed Ireland ball without so much as a “non” from referee Garces, all conspired to make it as frustrating as trying to push a marshmallow into a parking meter. Why would you do that? Well even thinking about it was preferable to watching at times.
