Sir, – Never mind Shane Ross’s tweet about togging out “for the second half”, or IRFU chief executive Philip Browne’s claim that Ireland still had a “fighting chance” – it was Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” that did the damage.
With the grand design of attracting 450,000 visiting fans (Gerry Thornley, September 26th) in mind, Yeats’s poem read by Bob Geldof as part of the Irish bid team’s pitch, was ill-chosen. Although the speaker resolves for Innisfree, his journey there is a fantasy and never actually occurs. Ominously at the end of the poem he is still standing on a grey pavement in London.
Given the hedonistic tendencies of rugby people, particularly on tour, surely Paul Durcan’s “Making Love outside Áras an Uachtaráin”’ would have struck a better note with the Technical Review Group? – Yours, etc,
Dr DAVID JAMESON, Ph.D,
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Dún Laoghaire
Co Dublin.
Sir, – The Rugby World Cup is meant to spread the game and that was the justification for selecting Japan to host the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
However, then to use criteria for 2023 which favour large multi-use venues in a country which has already hosted the tournament rather than a mixture of rugby and non-rugby stadiums in a new candidate country famed for its team spirit on and off the pitch, is a backward step.
The criteria need to clearly favour new candidates, otherwise the sport will never expand.
Despite the PR spin, rugby has largely stayed as an eight-nations sport (five-nations and tri-nations) partly due to this type of short-sighted thinking and planning. – Yours, etc,
FERGUS CULLEN,
Ballinteer,
Dublin 16.
Sir, – James Riordan’s tirade against the recommendation endorsing South Africa’s Rugby World Cup bid (November 1st) made me laugh.
Mr Riordan stated, “Two months ago a bus carrying 36 tourists was held up at gunpoint in Johannesburg and all were robbed of all their possessions . . .” Is Mr Riordan aware of the tracker mortgage scandal in this country: where Irish banks held tens of thousands of people to ransom and . . . were robbed of all their possessions? – Yours, etc,
JOHN NAUGHTON,
Leopardstown,
Dublin 18.