FUNNY? Or just plain lewd? Anyway, all this money floating around in the new era of professional rugby must be driving the unfortunate Irish players around the bend - how else can you explain indifference to an incentive of £2,000 a man to inflict their version of le crunch on the French in Saturday's Five Nations encounter at Lansdowne Road?

"Ambush marketing," roared the IRFU, who are already offering their men a £3,000 win bonus. "Extremely bad taste," insisted IRFU secretary Philip Browne.

And the reason for their disapproval? A play-on-words in a Cellular World. advertisement in The Irish Times yesterday urging the Irish team to rediscover its fighting spirit and, a harder mission, to rediscover its winning ways.

If you'll pardon our French, the advertisement ran: £2,000 pour chaque homme qui break les Bolleaux de la France. Roughly translated, and forgive the poor grammar, it means: "£2,000 for each man who breaks the garlic of France". Now, what's the harm in that? Surely some light-hearted diversion and the possibility (no matter how remote) of a few extra bob in the pockets of the players beats coaches getting the chop and a seemingly endless string of defeats.

But the game's dignity comes first, it appears. "The IRFU totally disassociates itself from the type of global marketing engaged in by Cellular World ... we regard it as being in very poor taste," the Union responded.

And it seems the players agree, although they were requested to stay mum on the issue. Manager Pat Whelan, however, supported the view expressed by the IRFU. "The players have not shown any enthusiasm for the proposal. In fact, they are totally ambivalent about it," he said. "If any firm wants to help the game in this country, or support it through sponsorship, it will be gratefully acknowledged. There is, however, a specific policy laid down in relation to these matters and official channels through which they should be conducted."

A similar financial incentive by a South African company to the Springboks when the World Cup was held in South Africa in 1995 was firmly rejected by their manager Morne Du Plessis and the SARFU. Since then, however, rugby union has become blatantly professional and the amount of money floating around in the game has ensured the noble game has changed forever.

The switchboard at Cellular World hardly stopped ringing yesterday, which - in the marketing world at least - probably indicates the garlic crunching ad was a winning try!

"We've had a mixed response," admitted the company's customer services manager, Peter Burke. "Some claimed they didn't approve of the bad language and others queried the word `Bolleaux'. And when we explained it meant garlic, they told us that wasn't what we meant. However, we also received a large number of calls and faxes congratulating us on the ad and, importantly, quite a lot of business out of it."

Intriguingly, the company also received a huge number of calls from people and sporting bodies suggesting they were more worthy of sponsorship than the Irish rugby players .... and there was one definite winner out of the affair when Cellular World agreed to throw £5,000 into the kitty for GOAL, the Third World charity,