Whatever you do, don’t try and enjoy any success when George Hook is around.
The facts – Ireland passed the ball around, scored loads of tries and comfortably put away far inferior opposition.
The Hook verdict? We were as bad as we were under Eddie O’Sullivan. I’m starting to think the man isn’t only blind when it comes to distinguishing colours.
Sure, things weren’t perfect. But surely a brand new coach is allowed to have things in his first game in charge go less than perfect? And surely a final scoreline of 55-0 isn’t to be sneezed at whatever way the players arrived at it?
One thing I will agree with George on was that if the ticket prices were high as reports suggest, that is an absolute disgrace. Considering the fact that Canada were so much further down the rankings, the loyal Munster fans deserved a lower entrance fee, and the unusual sight of several empty seats at Thomond Park could have been avoided.
And of course the horrendous conditions didn’t help matters much. It looked like one of those nights you wanted to forget about the game and go home to a cup of hot cocoa and the telly.
As for the two controversial tries, I think Kearney’s definitely was, while Heaslip’s (see pic) definitely wasn’t.
Maybe another criticism of Kidney was leaving on O’Gara for so long, but I suppose watching Wallace’s performance it’s understandable and we’ll just all have to hope and pray that ROG avoids injury, at least until the end of the 6 Nations!!!
So when you consider that Scotland we soundly defeated at the same time, if think the days results were the best possible for Ireland all things being considered.
Sure, there was precious little you could take from this game to bring into the clash with the All Blacks next week, but maybe a baptism of fire will do Kidney’s men good.
Unlike Mr Hook however, I’d like to retain a measure of belief that the man may just cometh when the hour does.
