RUGBY WORLD CUP:Before they take over our living rooms for the next six weeks, The Irish Timesbrought RTÉ's rugby pundits to dinner. This is what unfolded, warts and all
The Lovely Ingrid
Conor O’Shea: Can Popey [Brent Pope] and I actually go away? What we’ll do is take the picture and then you’ll have nothing in the interview with the two of us.
George Hook: I have to go to Dún Laoghaire to an antiques fair.
Tom McGurk: Are you selling yourself?
Brent Pope: He’s selling Ingrid. (Laughter)
COS: Popey be careful.
GH As I said to a fella once, I got a set of Ping irons for my wife to which he responded, ‘Now that’s what I call a trade-in.’
TMcG: Are you selling some Nazi memorabilia? (directed at Hook)
BP: George, tell us the Vietnam story when someone came up to you when you were walking behind Ingrid.
GH: We were on holiday in Thailand and this aged Thai man came up and said: ‘You westerners, in Thailand women are inferior and walk behind their men. With you, I see your wife striding out in front of you. I said, ‘Yeah there are lots of landmines left over from the war’.
TMcG: That goes down well with the politically correct department in RTÉ.
GH: I was doing the quiz in Milltown , which I had done for years, and used to add a little patter between rounds. On this occasion I said, ‘The latest news is that the bones of Dr Mengele have been discovered in the Amazon jungle’. This came as a great relief to me as I thought I had been married to her for the last 13 years. And she [Ingrid] was in the audience and stormed out. Those were the bad days. It doesn’t happen anymore.
COS: Never ever bring her to along to an after dinner .
TMcG: We have taxi drivers talking about the lovely Ingrid. She has entered popular culture.
GH: The first thing to establish here is seniority. Tom [McGurk] is in his 50th year as a broadcaster.
TMcG: I’m in my 37th year in television, going from black and white to colour.
COS: Willie John McBride never took a lineout ball off him!
GH: Willie John said in his autobiography that the only secondrow he could never get a ball off in the lineout was Tom McGurk.
TMcG: That’s right.
GH: The second most senior, surprisingly is you (turning to Brent Pope).
BP: I am the most capped on the panel.
GH: You came on board when?
BP: 1995 for the World Cup.
BP: Mick Doyle was there too. Mick Doyle’s wife hated me for ages because he would say after every match, “come on, let’s go and have a whiskey.” He was a brilliant storyteller. We would sit until one or two o’clock in the morning, half twisted. He would blame it on me, saying “this young fella, Brent Pope, wants to go drinking every night.”
COS: (turning to Pope) It was true, though.
Rhinoceros on dope
(Fledgling steps in journalism, paltry pay packets and shooting from the lip)
GH: The Sunday Presssent me down to the 1995 World Cup. It was my debut in journalism. When I got on the plane at Dublin airport I had a job to report on the Rugby World Cup. When the plane landed I was met in Johannesburg by Karl Johnston [rugby correspondent of theIrish Press at the time] who said: 'George, the paper is shut'.
COS: There was widespread rejoicing amongst the (laughter).
GH: It was the start of my television career because John D O’Brien came up to me and said, ‘I want you to do an interview before the Welsh game with Fred Cogley by the pool. I am doing this because I realise that you have a huge travel bill.’ I said: ‘That’s very kind of you, John. How much am I getting?’ £25 [was the reply]. Twenty-five pounds went a long way towards the five and a half grand I owed Eugene Magee travel. It took me four or five years to pay Eugene back.
BP: I’ll tell you how much money was in the rugby coverage then. Niall Cogley [RTÉ Sport] contacted me for Ireland’s opening game of the [1995 World Cup] tournament against New Zealand. I was due to go home to New Zealand. He asked me to come in and do this one [game] and fly out the next day. So I did it and that night we all went out for dinner. Bill O’Herlihy said: ‘People have been ringing in and said it [the show] was great’.
So RTÉ contacted me and asked me to stay. I said I would on the condition that they pay half my airfare home; so I did the entire World Cup for £250. Soon after a headline, ‘RTÉ’s Big Earners,’ appeared. I was getting £6,000 but was included alongside Eamon Dunphy.
GH: The headline actually said that ‘Dunphy, Giles and Pope earn £300,000’. (Laughter)
BP: Six-and-a-half thousand for a year’s rugby. I rang Niall Cogley and said ‘Jesus Christ, I don’t want people thinking I’m earning that’.
COS: It’s more than the players got.
GH: Were you there in 1995?
COS: I was. Do you not remember calling me a rhinoceros on dope? (Laughter)
GH: I couldn’t have.
COS: That was pre ‘the frontal lobotomy in vision’, comment. George has given me some really good raps: a frontal lobotomy in vision and a rhinoceros on dope. But other than that I am alright. You went through a period . . . you called Justin Bishop a homing pigeon on dope. He [Hook] liked the frontal lobotomy because Mark McCall [now coach of Saracens] got the frontal lobotomy [comment about] in defence (laughter).
GH: It is to Conor’s everlasting credit that having been the butt of my irony for half his career he hasn’t held it against me, unlike many a rugby player. Trevor [Brennan] famously took it badly when he was captain of Mary’s – Popey was the coach – and they won an All-Ireland League. I said something nasty about him. He threatened to take me down a darkened laneway and beat the living s*** out of me.
BP: I threatened to go with him (laughter).
COS: I have never got the whole thing of people believing when they’re written up well and believing what’s said when they’re written up badly. People choose to read the stuff that’s nice about them and believe it. Then look at the stuff that’s not right and say it is garbage. A lot of the time these guys [referring to the panel] have blooming valid points to make. Take the build-up to the last World Cup in 2007. All you were hearing was ‘It’s a happy [Irish] camp’. Everyone knew that it wasn’t. We were saying it. Yet you had people saying, ‘I can’t believe these pundits who are suggesting the camp is not happy. They don’t know what they are talking about’. A month later, the World Cup finishes . . . [and word was out that] it was terrible, it was shocking, we all knew it was bad. We [the panel] know what’s going on. There are people who know what’s going on in different camps. The biggest break we got as a squad was in 1999, when we lost to Argentina in the lowest point of anyone’s rugby career. Thankfully the RTÉ studio had to go . . .
TMcG: They cut us off to go to the news.
COS: That was probably lucky because I can imagine your man over there [looks at Hook] was ready to unload the double-barrelled shotgun.
BP: I have been cornered by players on a number of occasions. As a player you always knew when you played well yourself. It didn’t matter if someone gave you the player of the day. You’d be embarrassed if you knew you didn’t have a good game.
COS: It is part and parcel of how the game has gone where it is because it’s everything; the sponsorship, the media, the players. It’s driven by the players. Every part of the wheel has a function [within the sport].
TMcG: We are part of the link between the public and the sport.
BP: Major linkage.
TMcG: We are the warm-up band. We are a soap on our own in a way. People said to me that the last World Cup didn’t exist because we didn’t do it; in a sense. What we try to do is that for all those people who don’t understand rugby . . . like what a scrum is . . .
BP: We complicate it.
TMcG: . . . You’re trying to provide balance, make it more interesting for them, reach out to them in a way; they end up watching the circus.
BP: People would go back to New Zealand and tell my parents how much they love the coverage. It’s unique in a sense. It works because it is different. We’d like to think they watch it for rugby but quite often it’s for the entertainment. The day of the recent England game people were racing home, saying ‘I can’t wait, George is going to slate the Irish team’.
COS: Myself and Popey said there’s no point [in us] going back . People are saying, ’Oh my God, what’s George going to say?’
GH: There is no other television station that would employ us. That applies to soccer as well and to a lesser degree Gaelic football. Some of us are very old and television is probably the most ageist medium there is. A lot of sports television wouldn’t employ old fogies. With the exception of Conor, none of us are internationals. Some television stations only employ ex-internationals, irrespective of whether they can speak English or not (laughter).
GH: Also, to be fair, as a national broadcaster, RTÉ has not been driven by political correctness. The ultimate in political correctness is NBC’s coverage of the Olympics where they won’t show boxing but they will show gymnastics; where the panel consists of a black person, a white person and a yellow person. All have perfect teeth, all have perfect hair, all are good looking and there is a man and a woman; they tick every box. I am absolutely sure that if NBC could find a black lesbian in a wheelchair they would put her on the panel . . . she would tick all the boxes. If you watch as I have done, they don’t put people on who know anything about sport. They just tick boxes. I am very grateful to RTÉ because I wouldn’t have a job without them.
Don King in a headlock
TMcG: In a sense it began when Dunphy wrote that book, It's Only A Game. Traditionally sports journalists were deeply conservative. They existed in a rarefied world. When the panel started and Dunphy gave his opinion and Tim O'Connor supported him I can tell you that the FAI and IRFU were not desperately well pleased at what the panel was doing. But O'Connor, to give him his due, supported us, stood up with the panel, would take no s*** from anybody.
BP: I think it is down to the mix of the panel. I didn’t know George from a bar of soap. I knew Conor. And I didn’t know Tom. We just fluked upon the right mix.
(Conversation turns to initial impressions of one another)
BP: (Looking at Hook) A blunderbuss; still is.
GH: Still remain the same as they were 10 years ago. We don’t like each other. In a sense . . .
BP: I like Conor (laughter). We don’t knock around together.
GH: That’s the point. We don’t go to each other’s houses . . . the thing I am most proud of as a group, not individuals, is the integrity of what we say. It has never been my experience that I said something that I don’t believe. Like you must remember I was an argumentative bollocks . . .
BP: Was?
COS (Louder): Waaaaaasssss?
BP: Replace was with is.
GH: No, what I am saying is that I was an argumentative bollocks before I ever went on television. What you see now is exactly the same as you would have seen 20 years ago. There’s no difference just because I am on television. We’re all the same people. If you took any one of the four of us off the camera you would see the same person. I am very proud of that. Are we not? Are we not proud?
COS: I certainly don’t change.
BP: I don’t think it’s anything to do with the way that you run the show. We’re no different to any other panel in a sense. I think it is the dynamic of the personalities that makes it. People watch it like they watch the X-Factor.
TMcG: We have managed to offend everyone.
BP: George has had every coach sacked, every player. The number of apologies . . . Tommy Bowe is too slow and will never make it . . . [Brian] O’Driscoll is over the hill, [Andrew] Trimble is useless.
COS: There is a massive, massive misconception I think amongst the playing group, and it’s so long since I was there but it would have been there at the time, is the preference from George and not anyone else [on the panel], is that Ireland don’t succeed, so he can go on the offensive.
There is nothing further from the truth. He will speak his mind about what he sees, whether it’s right or wrong on the day because he’s emotional about what it is. His passion for Ireland to succeed is enormous. There is a thing out there that he wants them [Ireland] to lose . . . rubbish; absolute rubbish.
TMcG: After Stephen Jones’s penalty dropped under the crossbar [in the Grand Slam game in 2009], and the whistle went, everybody was crying in the studio.
GH: I don’t know about that.
COS: I wasn’t crying.
TMcG: You were crying, George. Even Popey was crying and him a Kiwi.
BP: I think Conor makes a good point about George. People would give out about him but George is incredibly passionate about Ireland doing well.
COS: George, I wasn’t trying to justify . . . but people do think your preference would be that you can be negative about Ireland.
TMcG: You are a disaster junkie.
BP: That’s a good description, disaster junkie. (Mention of differences between Hook and Dunphy promptly dissolve into laughter when Pope continues) Eamon Dunphy is an intelligent, good-looking fella.
BP: When was the last time you were in a nightclub, George? 1977?
GH: No, speaking of nightclubs, I was in Kyrstle . . .
T McG: 1847?
GH: Last week. There is a semi-circular bed and the owner told me that’s Popey’s bed.
TMcG: Did Ingrid know you were in Krystle?
GH: No I was in Krystle in the early evening launching Kevin O’Brien’s book [Ireland cricketer].
BP: I was coming out of the Taste of Dublin thing and there’s an Indian guy waiting by his taxi and he calls me over (cue very good Bollywood accent). ‘I can not believe it. Brent Pope in my car. He said I love that game. I came from Mumbai and my kids love it.’ ‘When did you come over [to Ireland].’ I said: ‘1988 or ’87’. He looks round at me while still driving. ‘I can not believe it, you left New Zealand in 1947.’ I said: ‘that makes me about 90.’ He replied: ‘yes, you look very fit.’
(Pause while the laughter subsides and two narrowly avoid choking)
BP: We’ve had some laughs. But we [George and I] were talking about coaching the women’s rugby team and he told me that was great but some of them didn’t like to shave after matches. He walked into the changing-rooms [on one occasion] and one of them looked like they had Don King in a headlock.
The threat of violence from within
TMcG: Coming back to the show, the thing that I am most proud of is its authenticity. Most television is not authentic. You have someone plugging a book and someone playing the game of asking them the right question. When was the last time anyone turned round to an author and said this book is a heap of s***? These three guys are brave warriors: absolutely authentic with a passionate love for the game. They care about it. Some people get hurt; some people get blown on their faces. I think the public sense it’s authentic. So much of it is not.
BP: We have had our fair share of rows.
TMcG: Serious rows before and after the programme.
GH: I don’t think the tense in the question is right when you said used to have rows (laughter). I threatened to thump him.
BP: When you say him?
GH: Tom [McGurk]. It was 1999, Lansdowne Road, Ireland v Australia.
TMcG: He was licking that man’s arse.
GH: Alan Jones, the former Australia coach, was in town and RTÉ asked me did I know any Australians for the panel and I suggested Alan Jones. I knew him because he had coached Australia when I coached America back in 1987. The USA played Australia and I got to know him; he said he would [come into the studio]. Tom took great offence to the fact that I was sitting next to my hero, the man who I saw as John the Baptist; the great messiah. Tom decided, as Tom only can do. He said something to me on air and I got out of my chair in front of the camera and was about to plant him when I suddenly realised I was live on air.
COS: What did you say to him [George]?
TMcG: Probably, stop sucking up to that Aussie.
GH: Ireland v Australia matches with you [Tom] and me are always really interesting. [Remember] Australia [WC 2003]? I am having a discussion with Tom and it’s getting pretty testy. Tom, usually because he’s got the worst kidneys of any of us, goes to go out during the commercial break. I followed him out into the corridor and caught him by the shirt front and said, ‘if you do that again, I will plant you.’ I haven’t actually given him a dig but we have been very close to it.
TMcG: We kiss and make up afterwards.
GH: We make up!
(There is a short interlude while photographs are taken)
TMcG: Will I go in the middle as the taller (a remark accompanied by loud guffaws from the other three).
Audible chorus: He loves that.
COS: Do you want me to go on the outside because I am the youngest?
TMcG: George, you’re the prettiest.
GH: Ben Kay is on the panel for this World Cup and Tom made great play at the press day, that he is quarter of an inch taller than Ben Kay.
COS: And that he’s never lost a lineout to him either.
Doing a runner and parting the sea in Dún Laoghaire
GH: These guys have always had money, always had a job, gainfully employed and everything. Were it not for RTÉ I probably would be living in a mobile home somewhere.
TMcG: I have no pension.
GH: But you were never poor. You never did runners from hotels because you couldn’t pay the bill.
BP: You did them even when you could pay the bill (laughter).
GH: I changed my life.
BP: The story about George, in his book he writes about depression and the fact that he went to Dún Laoghaire pier and took his shoes and socks off and contemplated taking his life. The truth is he went down there, stood and looked out to sea, raised his arms and when the sea didn’t part, he went home (laughter).
GH: [RTÉ television was] unbelievable for me. Out of that came writing and radio.
TMcG: What’s interesting about your success, George, is that at the end of it all the public love something that’s authentic. We must be the most uncool things imaginable.
GH: Although Frankie Sheahan has said in public that he wants my job.
COS: One Cork man for another.
BP: Did you like that?
GH: No, I didn’t like that.
COS: I feel so lucky. I’m going . . .
BP: So you should (laughter).
COS: The Millennium Stadium for the Heineken Cup when Munster won for the first time was one of the great days: being in the studio, the Grand Slam year, when Jack Kyle came in; those sorts of things. You’re just so lucky that when you finish playing a game, to be involved the way we are. It’s difficult because at times you have to react just like the coach/player to the emotion you feel straight after a match. You are not able to take in all the information that’s there. You don’t have an hour or two to look at the video again to examine in detail what went wrong. It’s a very quick, gut reaction and trying to get that right. We talked early on about the players being offended at times. The reaction we have to give is the exact same; a split second reaction to try and capture what that game was about.
BP: It’s more of a buzz for me. I’m a foreigner. I pinch myself every day. These guys are all Irish. For me it took a lot longer to be accepted. It still does to a certain extent. George can say something about the Irish team, Conor and Tom too. To a certain degree I can’t because I’m still regarded as a Kiwi, a blow-in to a certain degree, even though I have been here for 20 years.
COS: He did play for St Mary’s, though.
BP: To meet some of these legends of the game, Ollie Campbell, Fergus Slattery, that I grew up watching on a black and white television in New Zealand and never thought I would have the chance to meet, has been great for me.
GH: If Ireland were to reach the World Cup final against New Zealand, we’d know where your loyalties lie.
BP: And so they should. George is right. To come over here and be accepted by Irish internationals and chat to them after matches have been huge in my life.
GH: One of the things Popey has never talked about, what people have to understand, is that he is whatever thousand miles away from home which has been devastated. I don’t know how I might react if I was abroad and Foxrock was levelled. I felt for him when it happened. I have met him there; had a beer with him in Christchurch. People don’t realise about him, and I criticise him a lot for it, is that the amount of work he does for charity is quite extraordinary. I don’t know another person in Ireland who does as much work for charity as he does. I really don’t. I find his commitment to charity quite unbelievable.
TMcG: He’s down for President isn’t he?
COS: That kids’ book. My wife saw it and said my daughter won’t get this. I went up to bed and said [to my daughter] this is your present from Brent and read it to her. She absolutely loved it. I had to read it again and again . . . which irritated me by the way. It’s those things. It’s a book for charity. It’s a blooming good talent and I don’t know do many people appreciate that.
BP: Thanks very much, guys.
COS: I still have to read that book loads. (Turning to Brent) And the Postman Pat toy wasn’t great. She’s a girl. Anyway.
Jesus Christ, Westlife and...
(There is a brief discussion about what they are asked about most away from the studio)
COS: Definitely about George: is he the same off screen as he is onscreen?
BP: Exactly that. Young girls will come up (puts on high pitched voice), ‘Oh, I love George; he’s so cuddly.’
TMcG: So long as taxi-drivers call you by your first name; you get in a cab and they say ‘Tom’. Think that says something about the show.
BP: Rugby has grown exponentially from when I first came over here. I said to someone the other day that George is possibly the best known face, or one of them, in Ireland.
TMcG: Irish rugby and the people who run it must think about the fact that the national broadcaster can no longer show the Heineken Cup. The worst day of our lives was the last day at Thomond and they came across the pitch with a big banner and said goodbye to us. I would like to think that in the eight, nine years we did the Heineken Cup, we put it on the map in this country; the game grew enormously because of it. We went to audiences of 200,000 to a million. Suddenly one day it was taken away. Conor and I sat in the press box [Ireland v England, most recent game], a stadium paid for by €240 million of Irish taxpayers’ money, taken over by Sky with a deal done by the IRFU and the [English] RFU, and we end up showing the highlights. They are always talking about preserving Irish rugby, protecting Irish rugby and its relationship with the people of this country. A huge part of that relationship is ensuring that people can see it in their thousands. The audience yesterday for Ireland v England on live television was about 50,000. Can you believe that?
GH: That doesn’t include 50 people in a pub.
TMcG: It is still nothing like the 700 or 800,000 that would watch it [on RTÉ]. My aunty Nancy won’t go to a pub to watch it. Why should kids be dragged to pubs to watch it? [Green Party minister] Eamon Ryan tried to do something about it and all the f*****g politicians, the Fianna Fáilers and Fine Gaelers; it was an anti-Green campaign.
GH: It’s like putting your finger in the dyke, Tom.
TMcG: I always put my finger in the dyke, George. That’s why the show works.
GH: The reality is sport cannot survive with funding from television and commercial funding in turn. I turned on to the BBC to see what was going on and they had the Rugby League Challenge Cup final on. There’s the World Athletics going on, there’s Test cricket going on; the BBC have none of it. It’s a complicated argument. Sport will go to the highest bidder because the sporting organisations want the money.
BP: It is sad in a way.
GH: In relation to Popey saying that I’m more popular than Jesus.
BP: That’ll be the headline: ‘Hook Says He’s More Popular Than Jesus’.
GH: I was presenting certificates to young people going on parole. I said to the social worker who had organised it, ‘These people aren’t going to know me from Adam. I don’t think there’d be too much rugby watched in the ’Joy, or wherever’. She said: ‘No, it doesn’t matter, we just wanted someone to present them with their certs’. They all came in, boys and girls between 17 and 21, and went: ‘Oh it’s him, the fella from Sky.’
(There is a brief interlude as Tom McGurk slags George with regard to an Aprés Matchsketch depicting Hook as the Honey Monster rubbing his tummy and going 'money, money, loads of money')
GH: When I leave here I’ll go to Superquinn. I’ll be pushing the trolley around and I’ll be two aisles behind [Ingrid] as people stop me. (George is being slagged throughout the story about brand placement). My telephone number is in the phone book so I get all these loonies ringing me up and saying ‘Was O’Gara any good?’, or whatever. When we go on holiday, Ingrid says: ‘no one has recognised you today, are you okay?’ I love people coming up to me and that’s why I leave my number in the book.
TMcG: Before a Heineken Cup final the police cleared all the streets of traffic. All the thousands of supporters were hanging around the stadium in bars. We were walking from the hotel . . .
BP: We were like Westlife.
TMcG: It was incredible. Even better the DG [Director General, RTÉ] turned around and said ‘Pat f*****g Kenny doesn’t get this sort of reception’. We couldn’t get into the stadium until we signed a thousand autographs.
BP: That day was phenomenal. We had to walk to the ground and all the Munster supporters were either side. It was like being in a band. We were mobbed. Remember when we got back we were soaked in champagne, dripping wet.
GH: Cardiff was amazing. In all modesty we don’t think we’re that important. (laughter)
BP: Back up the truck.
COS: We’re not.
GH: The reason I like people coming up to me is imagine if I was doing what I was doing and no one knew who I was; then clearly you’d be a failure. It’s an affirmation of what we do, that people watch it. I never experienced anything like it that day.
BP: Do you like the fame?
GH: I adore it.
TMcG: When the autographs start I flee. I say: ‘Here’s George.’ I get embarrassed.
COS: WHAAATTTT? (massive laughter) That’s a load of rubbish.
BP: I’ve heard it all now (more laughter). More like (you Tom), ‘Get out of the way, George’.
COS: [We’d be saying] ‘It’s time to go, Tom. You can’t stay there all day.’
BP: (Apeing Tom) ‘Get out of the way George, it’s me they want.’
Calling a spade a spade and World Cup winners
GH: I will concur with the general assumption that New Zealand will probably win but the only team that can beat them is Australia. If France can win the World Cup with Marc Lievremont as coach it will be an extraordinary performance.
BP: France possibly has the team.
COS: If they had the right coach.
BP: Australia can beat New Zealand. Nine times out of 10, New Zealand will beat Australia. The one time when it’s important Australia will beat New Zealand. It is crucial for New Zealand that they win the World Cup. I don’t know how badly it will affect the economy, the mentality after the earthquake . . . but it would be catastrophic if they don’t win at home.
COS: New Zealand at home, no matter who is up against them, that weight and passion, it’s nearly a 17th man.
GH: They don’t even pretend to be neutral in New Zealand. No press man, no broadcaster pretends to be neutral. He is pro All Black.
BP: We [New Zealand] are so far away. You’re [Ireland] in Europe. You take how hard it was for bands to get out of New Zealand and to make something. The first step was Australia. For music here you could go to Europe, sport here go to Europe.
COS: A couple of [Harlequins] coaches went out over the summer to spend a week with the Crusaders to see if they could learn a few things, bits and pieces. Sean Fitzpatrick is on the board of ’Quins. I arranged for the boys to meet Graham Henry for a chat and a coffee. They said it was like going back to a different world in describing a meeting with the All Blacks coach. They went to a local rugby club, a shambolic little place in the middle of nowhere and he was standing behind the bar with people on bar stools asking him questions. That’s the way it was. It is old-fashioned. They don’t have glitz and glam; they have hard work. They ultimately want to win.
What we have to be very careful with, all the money that has been pumped into the sport, is that we don’t get them [players] above their station. We have a huge risk, in my opinion, when O’Driscoll, O’Connell and O’Gara leave, not because we don’t have quality coming up behind them but because you’re having a generation that haven’t been really exposed to the old values. I sound like an old fart that I used to get really irritated by when I heard them going on about the old days and the values of rugby. Now these guys are so professional they could lose sight of actually what reality is and that’s a massive part of Irish rugby.
BP: How are Ireland going to do at the World Cup?
COS: Quarter-finals.
BP: Whatever positive spin this Irish team puts on the performance doesn’t matter. In town [the night following defeat to England] it was empty. When Ireland beat England in the Six Nations – it was harder to get tickets for the recent friendly – they said town was awash until four or five o’clock in the morning; people out celebrating. To me, if they [players and management] keep putting out the spin [in terms of] we’ll get a performance. Every other coach and captain the world over the last month, Victor Matfield, Robbie Deans, Warren Gatland, Martin Johnson . . . it doesn’t matter if we don’t play well we need a win going into it. The difference for Ireland was [concentrating] on ‘We’ll we get a performance’. I think that’s the easy way out. It goes back to an Irish psyche. The joke is now we were well favoured to do well in 2007 and look how we did. Let’s go in as the underdogs. Coming from New Zealand, how does that work? You have to have self-belief.
COS: What you believe within and what you say to the public . . . humility is a massive part of what Irish people are about and professional rugby players are an example.
(There follows a long, passionate debate about the composition of the Ireland squad and some perceived deficiencies)
BP: What is not refreshing [is that] people expect us to give a straight answer on the TV; we haven’t had a straight answer [from the Irish management and players].
TMcG: How dare he [Declan Kidney] patronise us; how dare he tell Tracy [Piggott] to put on the green f*****g jersey. Who the f*** does he think he is? He talks about all the money people spend to go to games, all the money supporters spend to travel down to France; the stuff we say and take it in the neck or otherwise, the players. He comes on and takes the p*** out of the lot of us. The subtext of what he is saying is ‘f*** off, and mind your own business, we’re not talking to you’. He is only doing the interview because he is contracted to do it.
BP: All I got [from punters on the night of the recent game against England] was ‘What a load of s***’. Yet you have to switch on the television and hear that there are a lot of positives to take from that [match]. The people who are paying for tickets, paying the wages and the salaries of these guys aren’t seeing it that way. Sometimes it would be nice for someone to come on, Roy Keane style – and I admire the guy – and say ‘The buck stops with me’. It is unacceptable.
GH: It was incomprehensible from day one that Declan Kidney did not have two number sevens. If we go out against Australia with Seán O’Brien at number seven I will throw up. He will be like Little Red Riding Hood in a forest of wolves. He will be eaten alive by David Pocock. Kidney’s lack of understanding of the role of number seven in the modern game baffles me. Like everybody, I couldn’t and cannot understand why Tony Buckley is on the plane. It just defies everything I know about this game in a lifetime involved in it. I cannot believe it.
Despite all the preparation, despite all the programme management; we are going there as undercooked as we were there in ’07. I am as worried, concerned and depressed as I was in ’07. When I came home from France in ’07 I said this will never happen again. It can’t happen. [Former IRFU officer] Eddie Coleman says coming away from Lens, ‘This will never happen again’. They came away from Paris saying this will never happen again.
They have created precisely the same situation: giving the coach a contract before the World Cup, going over there underprepared, going over there with the wrong players. It should never happen in Ireland. We have a small number of players, we are a small island, we could throw a stone from one rugby club to the next; we’re not bloody England or New Zealand and they still can’t get it bloody right. It’s incredible. I would pick the Leinster backline en masse and put in Joe Schmidt [coaching the backs]. I would put Kidney in charge of the rooming list. You can print that.
