Hookie yearns for old days - when men were men and flankers knew their place

Sports on TV and Round-up:IT'S UNLIKELY that George Hook would ever be snatched from a crowded street by a talent spotter for Armani or Gucci or any famous fashion house. This irreverent TV pundit, who once claimed that Marcus Horan's arse simply wasn't big enough to perform on the international rugby stage, but never suggested transplanting his own, was nevertheless at his spirited best with his tongue on Saturday.

As he sat alongside two of the better-looking rugby analysts - Brent Pope, nominated on Friday night's Late Late Show by Pat Kenny as "Ireland's most eligible bachelor", and Conor O'Shea - in the cabinpac that makes do as RTÉ's television studio for these rugby shindigs, Hookie was in no mood to throw out garlands to team management or players ahead of the must-win meeting with Scotland.

"Can I rain on your parade?" grunted Hook as he listened to his fellow analysts outline the positives ahead of the meeting.

As far as Hook was concerned, the only positive thing that had happened to the Ireland team was by accident when Girvan Dempsey was forced off injured and Geordan Murphy was drafted in at "12.15", as George informed us, the previous day.

Otherwise, it was a tale of being unconvinced that Tommy Bowe was "very, very quick", and of more doom and gloom and hangovers from the the World Cup as Ireland prepared to take on a Scottish team who, let's be honest, have had an even worse time since returning from France. So, who would win? Funnily enough, for once O'Shea, Pope and Hook all agreed: Ireland.

But, having the last word as usual, Hook predicted it would only be a margin in the region of nought to seven points.

Sure enough, by half-time, Hook was feeling vindicated by his pre-match forebodings. While the RTÉ match commentators had used words like "dynamic best" (Tony Ward in describing Brian O'Driscoll's part in the build-up to Rob Kearney's try, Ireland's second) and "spellbinding" (George Hamilton in describing the same move), Hook felt obliged to point out the inadequacies of the Scottish defence in contributing to Ireland's opening try by David Wallace.

As Hook would point out, pining for the days of yore when men were men and before the advent of professionalism, "all of these men are getting paid more than the stats man in number 10 Downing street.

"Fifty years ago you wouldn't have let that try in off the back row . . . 40 years ago Niall Brophy wouldn't have gone off the wing like that. What has happened with all this money, training twice a day, players can't do . . . "

Unfortunately, as he tends to do, Tom McGurk cut in to stop Hook's great, philosophical observation and we never did get to find out where he was leading us.

Even after Ireland's best win and best performance of the championship, Hook was still inclined to pick holes. But there was a moment we thought we'd never, ever witness in our lifetime. Hook apologised.

"Do you want me to grovel?" he inquired of McGurk.

"You've got a lot of grovelling to do," replied McGurk.

"Two weeks ago, I said, and my exact words were, 'young Trimble is a big, strong and robust Christian, which is great if you want to save the hay but no good to unlock the French defence. I thought he had a smashing match, not just defensively . . . anyone up in Ballymena or wherever the heck he comes from, well done, young man." So there, a Hook apology to set in stone.

But he remained to be convinced by Bowe's alleged quickness, despite, as McGurk put it, "two tries from the birthday boy, (from) Emyvale's under-12s."

To which Conor O'Shea suggested maybe Hook should take on Bowe to actually discover how quick the Monaghan man was in the flesh. Of course, Hook had an answer, reminding us that some 15 years or so ago GOAL's John O'Shea had made a similar accusation of lack of speed against Mick McCarthy, to which the Ireland soccer international responded by taking up the challenge . . . and proceeded to pull a hamstring, which kept him out of an international match. Funny, we don't think Bowe will feel required to take on a speed merchant like George to prove his point.

Later that night, over on BBC, eight hours after he had joined presenter John Inverdale in the box for the rugby fest of three back-to-back matches, Austin Healey responded to England's win over France by focusing on the emotion shown by the team's coach Brian Ashton after Richard Wigglesworth's try confirmed victory.

"That's what players want from their coach - emotion, proof that they care as much as the players."

On Match of the Day later, the soccer analyst Alan Hansen was talking about a different kind of emotion as he discussed the sickening injury sustained by Arsenal's Eduardo, a compound fracture so extreme that television producers decided not to shock viewers by actually screening the more shocking footage.

After a day of fine rugby viewing, Hansen's observations put sport into perspective: winning is not everything.