Triumph leaves growling Hook looking like dog without a bone

TV VIEW:"I WOULD put Kidney in charge of the room list. You can print that," said George Hook nine days ago. So there it is printed for the second time. "Ireland will play like heroes and lose like heroes," he said at the weekend. We'll print that too.

Thanks George. As ever, Hook was eminently quotable early on Saturday morning, continuing his prized style of blurring the lines between analysis and light entertainment.

But it was early and you really needed to bring your ‘A’ game just to take all that guff before your bowl of Cheerios. Ireland’s Call sung by a choir of Kiwi angels, Hook, Popey, Frankie Sheahan and Tom McGurk all before 9.30am on RTÉ’s Rugby World Cup coverage was Saturday’s early morning Alka-Seltzer.

Hook was at his blustering best, huffing and ventilating, growling and chewing his words before spitting them out, often contemptuously during one of his patented solo runs.

It was all harmless fun picking holes in the Ireland game, highlighting their ineptitude, their almost ruinous streak of form and expounding the ‘Big Bang’ theories of rugby. And really everyone was on solid ground unless, of course, Ireland beat Australia. Perish the thought.

In fact the studio was more certain of Ireland’s frailties than Jim Williams, formerly of Munster and now part of the Australian coaching team.

He was asked if the Wallabies might be overly confident given poor Ireland shipped a bit of a mauling from Eddie O’Sullivan and the uppity Yanks.

“Not at all,” replied Williams. “Declan Kidney is too good a coach.”

On UTV, they had assembled a bench of former internationals in Ireland’s Girvan Dempsey, South Africa’s Francois Pienaar and Aussie, Michael Lynagh. It is Dempsey’s first foray into television punditry and he brought to it what he brought to the Ireland fullback position, a safe pair of hands and understated certainty.

As a player Dempsey had always been articulate and unflustered and that will stand to him. But he is unfailingly polite too and you wonder how that instinct will fair.

“Ireland have found the spark, lit the fuse,” UTV told us at half -time.

On RTÉ we were presented with a different view. “The reason winnable has become possible is because it is a terrible match,” observed George with Frankie’s plaintive voice from the other side of the studio urging him, hands spread out in an open, pleading gesture, to acknowledge the good work the Irish demolition team were doing to the Australian pack. Hook pursed his lip and shook his jowls. He was having none of it.

“I know the work these guys do out on the back pitch, their heads and necks hanging off them,” said Frankie having obviously survived years of medieval torture as the Irish hooker. This was his territory, talking up the props and the hookers and the second rows and the flankers. Who was it called second rows the ‘drain cleaners?’ Trevor Brennan maybe. This was their day and they shone.

“Australia are the ones under pressure, not Ireland,” said Pope at the break. He was right and we all know what happened in the second half.

Afterwards Hook assumed his default look, the sour curmudgeon. Ireland had won. His raison d’etre had vanished. His ammunition, which was the defeat and humiliation of the Irish Rugby Football Union team on the World Cup stage, had been swiped from under his nose.

What it all did was highlight the weakness of the occasionally bawdy, locker room style of the show and the extreme opinions McGurk often looks for and Hook often delivers.

The package only works well when the Irish rugby team is struggling. Hook particularly is a bad performance diva, a defeat jockey. His energy and momentum comes from losing.

He can’t do kind words as well as he does evisceration. His gas and his fulminating evaporate when Ireland play well because when that happens he is left without a target. When the Irish Rugby Football Union team soars his bluster falls flat and as he often was on Saturday morning, left looking like the dog without a bone.

Post-match Australia damned Ireland with faint praise. Their coach Robbie Dean called the Irish performance “effective.”

Gee thanks Robbie.

James Horvill, the Wallaby captain chimed in with “we played some dumb footy. We were giving them some easy penalties, putting them in the game.”

Gee thanks James.

It was the Serena Williams reaction. Serena is never beaten by her opponent’s tennis ability, she loses the match because of the things she didn’t do.

Ronan O’Gara, as he often is, was candid. “This game has been on our minds . . . been on my mind for two years,” said the outhalf. Intense.

Hook sat with his chin on his chest possibly ruminating on how Kidney’s rooming arrangements brought such a sparkling change in performance and character. McGurk prodded him.

“I’ve never been happier to be wrong,” he growled, his best damning lines unused.