Brent Pope and the Hookster, George Hook, sat in the RT╔ studio with Tom McGurk ready to deliver the sound bites on Irish rugby faster than any other trio on the box. The gap next to Hook was where Leinster coach Matt Williams was to sit. Williams, so successful with the province this season, had been on the RT╔ panel before for European Cup matches and the network wanted him back.
Obliged to clear such matters with the IRFU, as Williams is under contract to them, there the matter stopped. The governing body believed it to be inappropriate for Williams to appear on the show as he had helped Ireland with various moves during the week in Dublin before the team departed to Wales.
RT╔, according to executive producer John D O'Brien, had no problem with this.
"I'd a conversation with Philip Browne (IRFU chief executive officer) about it. We agreed that it might be inappropriate and we've no problem with it," he said.
The fact RT╔ agreed with the IRFU is, well, cosy. That the IRFU had the final say in the matter because of Williams' contract and that they effectively pulled the Leinster coach from the panel is an interesting move. Okay, RT╔ did not cause a fuss over the issue but they wanted Williams on the programme and he did not appear. That's what matters. You might also wonder why it was deemed so inappropriate. If Williams conducted coaching with the Irish team, he need not have discussed it nor referred to it.
Mick Galwey was on the panel two weeks previously. The Kerryman watched his Irish colleagues fall to pieces against Scotland and was able to articulate his opinion without making enemies or creating ill-feeling or without revealing anything of Irish coaching sessions. Injured players who are current internationals have regularly turned up on panels. Rob Henderson was on BBC.
The IRFU did not pull Galwey despite him having played with the Irish team 36 times and despite being one of the most celebrated second rows in the country. Galwey knows more about the Irish team than Williams ever will, so what's the deal over Williams?
Had the fact that Warren Gatland was under considerable pressure for his job and that Williams had just guided Leinster through one of their best phases since the game went professional anything to do with it? Of course not. It was just, well, inappropriate.
The close up shots of Welsh coach Graham Henry and Gatland typically said more than words. Two Kiwis under pressure for their jobs. At best one would lose out, maybe even both. Gatland was simply stressed looking, Henry, particularly after the Welsh fumble which led to Brian O'Driscoll's try, the classic bulldog who had just licked urine off a nettle.
The Hookster, switched to a vivid, literary mode and had his reservations before Ireland went on to win with a record score. Ireland was, he declared:
"A team conceived in panic and with such a short gestation period could be stillborn this afternoon."
That one was thought up on the golf course. Either that or the Hookster's powers of spontaneity are more alive that an O'Driscoll break. Pope preferred to concentrate on the Welsh team. "That's not a great Welsh side at all," he observed looking at the team sheet. Tony Ward, in the commentary box noted that, "Ireland are playing with a raw simplicity."
If only it could always be so.
On the BBC at Wentworth Peter Alliss suggested Lee Westwood's bio-rhythms were all wrong at the World Matchplay event. Alliss is quite an expert on a range of things from local histories to natural science. But the way Westwood's opponent Ian Woosnam was playing left heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson, who was growling up his fight in "KO-Penhagen" on Sky Sports, looking like a lap dog. Westwood was seven holes down after 15 and the match ended on the 27th. That would be the equivalent of a technical KO in the first round.
Not unlike Tyson fights these days there were also a number of police officers adopting a high profile at Wentworth. It is not usual to have two uniformed cops marching down the fairway beside the players. At Tyson fights this is normal given the fighter's history of hitting after the bell, biting, and trying to break an opponent's arm. Even Sam Torrance hasn't been accused of that.
"Oh Bollix." That's the phrase that came out of a greenside bunker. It was, of course, Ryder Cup captain and opponent of Padraig Harrington, Torrance. Torrance, whose father coaches Harrington, was slipped in because another player, Canadian Mike Weir, pulled out.
Irish Times columnist and professional caddy Colin Byrne put his thoughts on paper this week about the tournament, following a mass American withdrawal, including Seve Ballesteros and Nick Faldo. Byrne called it an insult to put a "defunct player" like Seve in a field like this. Seve can no longer drive straight or hit greens, while Faldo went out 9 and 8 to Harrington. Torrance went down a more respectable 4 and 3 to the Irishman but he shouldn't have been there either. Byrne's point was reasonably put and when a miner at the coal face tells you there is something wrong with the anthracite you believe him.
Still, we all know had Harrington beaten Woosnam in the final for the £250,000 winner's prize, we wouldn't have given a tinker's curse about the three forty somethings he beat in the slimmed down field.
