Saturday came and the Six Nations lurched along. You could say that it wasn't Division One stuff, what with no England and, ahem, no Ireland.
France-Wales had a strong whiff of Division Two about it, but was no less thrilling or absorbing for all of that, while Scotland-Italy was strictly Division Three, and accordingly belonged to the watching-paint-dry category.
For sure no referee will ever again be immune from criticism of his performance, and given the complex laws of the modern game not to mention the International Board's pre-championship edicts, who'd swap places with them? However, criticism of any referee who oversees a Parisian cracker seems a bit harsh. It's true that Alan Lewis's call against David Young at a collapsed scrum late on which enabled Christophe Lamaison to kick France back in front would have been a hard one to take for Young and Wales had it decided the match. Nevertheless, it should be balanced with the equally questionable scrum penalty against the French front row when they led 16-3 in the first half and gave Wales a handy three points at the time. The penalties at scrum time probably balanced themselves out, though Lewis's refereeing of them didn't entirely convince.
There might, too, have been an argument for issuing or at least threatening to issue yellow cards at times when it seemed Wales were culpable of deliberately killing French momentum near their line. Those relatively minor grumbles apart, Lewis unobtrusively let the game flow while still ensuring gross liberties weren't taken at the breakdown or with the offside line. Let's give a ref a bit of slack once in a while.
It all depends on one's perspective of course: we'd have been waxing lyrical too had Anthony Foley produced a Scott Quinnell-type blinder, had he and Peter Stringer conjured that Robert Howley try to awake Ireland from a difficult first-half plight, and had Ronan O'Gara sealed off such a famous four-tries-to-two win with a 28-point haul and such a masterful end game a la Neil Jenkins.
Yet, like the RTE studio analysts Brent Pope and George Hook, it was hard not to feel sorry for the French. With the unheralded Gerald Merceron pulling the strings, even if Wales were brilliant in the third quarter especially, France looked the better side and played the better rugby for most of the game.
France panicked, lost composure and failed to close out a hat-load of chances; Wales cashed in everything that came their way, save for one missed Jenkins penalty. Good luck to them. But the fall-out in France has been predictably, well, French.
Reacting to the sound of 80,000 people jeering the French side, the president of the French Federation spoke of French rugby being "murdered and sinned against today". That's a great help to Bernard Laporte, and the French coach has duly guillotined six of Saturday's squad in a reshaped panel of 27 who now go into three-week camp (Irish rugby take note).
Quite how Saturday's bald wonder Christophe Moni can be axed and Olivier Magne (who is having a poor season by the great man's standards) remain, doesn't really add up. However, along with sudden talk of building a new young side with the 2003 World Cup in mind, this is typical of Laporte's increasingly reactive rather than proactive reign.
Their main problems are a bloated domestic championship, lack of structure, excessive player demands and fitness levels which have slipped behind others. Furthermore, there is no real sense of where Les Bleus are heading, either in personnel or style.
IN the ever intensifying desire for a quick fix, unions and federations are beginning to ape soccer. The consequent lack of continuity has destroyed Italian soccer, and if the Italian Rugby Federation sack coach Brad Johnstone at the season's end it will surely set them back years. Their organised, gutsy and unlucky defeat to Scotland was further proof of his loaves-and-fishes job.
What's more, the Azzurri received few favours from referee Joel Dume in his 19-11 penalty count against them, and you sensed it would pan out that way when Martin Leslie was yards offside in charging down a Diego Dominguez kick early on.
Carlo Checchinato was crucially sinbinned for twice playing the ball illegally on the deck, yet Budge Pountney was penalised three times for similar offences and never even spoken to. As for the 78th-minute penalty which gave the Scots a decisive four-point lead, the decision against Andreo Lo Cicero when the excellent Italian loose-head came from behind the ruck, stayed on his feet, picked up and drove forward, even commentators Bill McLaren and Gavin Hastings were forced to acknowledge the unfairness of it.
And, on the subject of unfairness, is it just me or have some English contributions to the debate over the disruptions caused by the foot-and-mouth outbreak displayed an age-old superiority complex? First off we have the Northampton owner Keith Barwell suggesting that Ireland should be asked to withdraw from the championship. Then we have the BBC sports department of all people, conducting a tabloidese Internet poll asking that very same question - and getting no for an answer. In addition, we have Jeremy Guscott pontificating on the Irish Government's over-the-top reaction to the foot-and-mouth crisis, blithely ignoring the fact that the threat of the disease spreading hereabouts emanates from Britain amid strong suspicions of an under-the-top reaction from the British government.
And they wonder why opposing countries in the Six Nations are motivated against their boys in white?
gthornley@irish-times.ie
