Team play down the Crown, pundits play down the assault

TV View:That was one peculiar weekend. Are we alone in recalling those salad days when capturing the Triple Crown precipitated mildly hysterical and frenzied celebratory merriment, where grown men who had feuded for a decade over the Leylandii hedges that divided them would hug each other over the garden fence, united in their ardour for Ginger McLoughlin?

There we were on Saturday, another Triple Crown, but this one was greeted with a shrug, like we win Triple Crowns every year. Which, in fairness, we almost do. "It was a bit like a bottle of champagne that you've left out for a fortnight and it's sort of gone flat," as John Inverdale put it to Keith Wood at full time in Edinburgh.

"Yeah, it was desperate really," sighed Wood. "I never won a Triple Crown, I would have loved to have won one, but this shows you where we're at, that we're almost upset."

So, from those salad days to a one-point win over Scotland: in other words, a bowl-full of limp lettuce, chunks of blue-moulded tomato and heaps of soggy scallions, sprinkled with a dressing that sat in the fridge almost as long as Inverdale's champagne. God, but our expectations are lofty these days.

Which, of course, is a very good thing. Roy Keane, for one, would approve. Keith Wood for two.

"I still think a Triple Crown is worth celebrating," insisted Tony Ward, as the Irish players trudged off the pitch, their expressions suggesting they'd lost 2-76 to clinch the wooden spoon.

Their mood, of course, was dampened by whatever happened Ronan O'Gara. As Brent Pope put it yesterday of the incident, "Unless you're an earthworm looking up you're never going to know".

But Eddie O'Sullivan's fury about what was done to O'Gara had Tom McGurk batting alone against Pope and George Hook.

That's the thing about rugby sometimes: even thuggery of the most provable kind is explained away by the auld "it's a man's game" line; if we see similar violence in GAA or football, eyes are chucked heavenward.

McGurk's panel missed the point. It wasn't, as Hook suggested, about whether the alleged assault on O'Gara could be proved in a court of law - how many assaults on sporting fields make it that far? - it was simply about whether it happened at all.

And if we were to believe O'Sullivan's allegations, based on what he was told by his players, wouldn't a bit of outrage be apt, rather than a "ho, hum, these things happen"?

"We've all found ourselves at the bottom of a ruck," said Hook, not, in truth, speaking for us all, "no player in my opinion would risk killing another player."

Well, indeed. But fellas do things in the heat of the moment, even if they didn't leave home that morning intending to strangle the Irish outhalf.

"He doesn't look like a guy who's just won the Triple Crown," said Tom as they watched a replay of a revived O'Gara leaving the field.

"But he doesn't look like a guy who's claiming someone tried to kill him either," said Pope.

"What does that sort of guy look like?" asked Tom.

Anyway, Hook was more concerned with O'Sullivan's misdemeanours. "He has committed a calumny on a Scottish rugby player by saying that he deliberately attempted to choke somebody into unconsciousness," he said.

Seeing as O'Sullivan didn't actually name anyone it was hard to see where the calumny occurred, but if you accept that it was unlikely the Irish eyewitnesses were lying - why would they? - then you'd imagine O'Sullivan's (non)calumny paled next to the urgency of finding out who left O'Gara close to unconsciousness and remove him from the fields of international sport.

Yes indeed, it's a man's game, but you'd like to think it's not a dangerous thug's game. But you'll knock us over with a feather if anything comes of this. Rugby, eh?

On to yesterday. Could the Sweet Chariots do us a favour? Absolutely not, according to George. "I think France will run out reasonably comfortably at the end," he forecast.

First half, George: "You have to say, France look reeeeeally good . . . I haven't seen anything that says to me this is an English team that's going to deliver a win . . . I think England are teetering on the edge of implosion. I must say, I see no control about this side at all . . . Watching Tindall, you have to wonder why this guy is on the side, he brings nothing to it . . . I can't see England scoring tries against this French defence . . . the whole thing dies with Tindall in midfield."

Second half? You have to say, England looked reeeeeally good, they scored two tries, the clincher from Tindall, they delivered a win. "Never has Sweet Chariots sounded so sweet," said Tom. Indeed.