Wake-up call for the blazers

TV View: There was general agreement that Ireland versus Argentina represented the most important game of rugby in the history of the State. Tom McGurk said so. Therefore, it must be true, writes Keith Duggan.

Grand Slam matches and Triple Crown games go out the window when it all boils down to emerging from the wonderfully named Pool of Death.

It was a pity, therefore, that not many of us were able to get a precise handle on when the blasted game was taking place. Sunday morning, yes. But at what hour? Rising obscenely early in mid-winter to watch sport beamed in from Adelaide is behaviour sufficiently heroic in its own right without having to tinker with the Greenwich Mean Time in addition.

"It really is confusing," sympathised Jim Sherwin. "Particularly with Ireland going back an hour, Australia going an hour ahead and then Adelaide having an extra half hour."

This was news, the people of Adelaide just electing to add on a half hour here and there, willy-nilly. Sounds like a good basis for an election manifesto. Morning Lie-Ins For All! Length Negotiable!

In Montrose, they were taking no chances. George Hook, who has taken to sharing his nocturnal patterns and fancies with the nation over this tournament, patriotically declared that he, for one, had bounded out of the bed at five a.m. announcing that this would be a great day. I, for one, was troubled by this, and not simply because of the image of the Hookster in his preferred nightwear of genuine Ginger McLoughlin rugby shirt and replica Wayne Shelford stockings. No, the trouble was that we could not be sure if big George had risen at five old time or new. And the devil is in the details.

From the outset, we were encouraged to be worried about Argentina. Not from an economic viewpoint, just from the perspective of their meatier representatives pounding the Irish boys for 80 minutes flat. So it went, and at half-time, with the score at 10-9 to Ireland, McGurk turned sombrely to the camera and informed the country that "we are holding our fingers and we are taking a commercial break".

On that commercial break we were treated to an advert featuring Brian O'Driscoll flogging something or other before winking at us and following what Del Boy would describe as a couple of sorts into a canteen (!) for a bit of, well, how's your chicken panini.

"So you can get on with the things that really matter," hinted the Irish centre with a bit of well-rehearsed ho-ho about him.

Later, McGurk found himself asking the question, "what is wrong with O'Driscoll?", which caused Hookie to screw up his mouth as if he had downed a pint of curdled milk. From what I could see, there was nothing wrong with Drico; the delivery was perfect, he looked well and the product was perfectly placed. McGurk, though, was talking about O'Driscoll in the context of rugby.

"If we are calling this guy the best rugby player in the world, then he has to start performing like the best in the world," grouched Hook.

The panel was nervous and they plainly wanted O'Driscoll to ignore the fact that he had five Argentinians in his face whenever he came near the ball and to score two or three tries for fun.

The Drico debate is just one of several themes that are serving the Montrose boys well over the course of the tournament. The other chief concern is that eternal Irish question: who to play at outhalf. The withdrawal of David Humphreys in favour of Ronan O'Gara reopened that can of worms. Hook was under no illusions as to which man he preferred.

"It's about a vision and understanding of what the fly-half position is about," he said of O'Gara's attributes. "Rog" to start against Australia then.

After the one-point win, there were smiles all around, but there was little time to hear Brent Pope and Hook elaborate on their favourite post-match theme, "Why We Were Right". Instead, it was off to Melbourne for the game that illustrated everything that is dreary about Woodwardian England and indicted the heedless way that world rugby has gone about embracing professionalism at the expense of potentially its most natural practitioners.

Clive Woodward looked a shaken man for long stages of his team's game against Samoa. What transpired hammered home the truth that no amount of preparation and money and professionalism and club structure can hope to match the imagination and lightness of touch that even a broken Samoan team can bring to the sport.

England forces its will upon the game; Samoa lives by the will of the game.

If this encounter didn't convince the power brokers of world rugby that the Pacific teams are worth investing in and nurturing along, then nothing will.

Beaten they may have been, but rugby can thank them for bringing a lacklustre tournament alive.