Compiled by GERRY THORNLEY
Deans a man of few words
AS journalists who have come across him know only too well, Wallabies’ coach Robbie Deans takes taciturn to a new level. After the selection of rugby league convert Sonny Bill Williams in the All Blacks squad for the clash in Hong Kong, Deans was asked for his assessment of the ex-Toulon centre.
“I wouldn’t have any, you’re talking to the wrong bloke,” said Deans. As to whether he felt Williams would make his debut against Australia, Kiwi Deans replied: “Everyone they pick they intend to use at some point. I’ve got no idea mate, it doesn’t concern me.” Vintage Deans.
Deafening roar over at Lansdowne
The hoopla, lest we forget, reached a deafening, head-splitting level at the palindrome recently (when radio commentators, like everyone else, couldn’t hear the person next to them) prior to and during the Leinster-Munster game.
Also, supporters seeking to descend the relatively narrow staircases were plunged into darkness.
Leinster officials maintain that due to local residents’ objections they were denied access to the Aviva, and its pa system, the evening before, but that the volume levels will be reduced when they host Clermont on December 18th.
Last Friday, Leinster sold 1,000 tickets in eight minutes at €10 apiece online for the sale launch, and have now sold over 24,000 tickets for the match which is billed as Fever in the Aviva.
Tickets start at €20 for adults, €10 for children and €60 for a family of four, though each category is limited.
IRFU admit ticket climbdown - not
FOR the first time, the IRFU are selling tickets for the November Tests online to the public.
Given their original policy was to sell tickets to all four matches only in one block at exorbitant prices and through the clubs, this is as near as we’ll come to the union climbing down and tacitly admitting they were wrong.
Not of course, that they would ever do so.
All of which is also proof that the IRFU, be it their management committee or whomever, either live in a bubble or didn’t brainstorm this issue enough.
As it is, the clubs are still blamed for not being able to push through sales of tickets which the union set so high, while Philip Browne argued in last Friday’s business section of this paper that it’s “140 quid to see Michael Buble”.
Yes, true, and the All Blacks at €190 (with the Argentina game) is a snip at the price.
But there’s no accounting for taste. After all, Daire O’Briain was only €28.
Wembley whopper
FURTHER to recent observations about the hoopla at Wembley, some Leinster fans made the mistake of heading there over a couple of hours before their Heineken Cup rendezvous with Saracens to watch the preceding Munster-Toulon game. That, in these stupidly strained times between the rival fans, is to be encouraged.
Needless to say, there was no chance of a TV anywhere in the vicinity of Wembley or inside the ground showing events from Thomond Park.
For their pre-match meal, they opted for chicken strips and chips.
Four chicken strips, to be precise. Cost? £8.50. That’s 8.50 sterling. Ouch. Must have been organic chicken
McGeechan to coach the Lions? Not again
SO Andy Irvine is pushing for Ian McGeechan to coach the Lions yet again. Aw c’mon, can the Northern Hemisphere not come up with anyone else to do this job, ever? Sir Ian gets a remarkably fawning and easy ride from the British media, and the selectorial mistakes for the first Test in South Africa (three of the tight five wrong, anybody?) were scarcely examined.
Strictly speaking, Warren Gatland does not, we understand, have an escape clause in his new four-year deal with the Welsh RFU to coach the Lions in three years. That would indeed look a bit premature, though with Gatland rumoured to be on €600,000 per annum, one wonders what a certain coach of the USA Eagles thought of it all.
The Connacht buzz grows louder, Corinthians run riot, history hits the telly
THERE’S a buzz about Connacht rugby at the moment of which Saturday’s sell-out crowd for the first of the evening’s double header at the Sportsground – the greyhounds followed – was further evidence. By all accounts, many others would have attended if they could have acquired tickets. Time, like never before, to heed Eric Elwood’s call to expand the ground.
Elwood was bestowed with the Paul Harris Fellowship at the Salthill Rotary awards ceremony on Monday evening at the Ardilaun Hotel, only the second non-member of the Galway Salthill Rotary club to be so honoured since it was founded in 1905. That Elwood was chosen, and over 200 people turned up, also underlines how Connacht rugby is penetrating the Galway community.
AS is their custom, Corinthians invited all their living ex-presidents along for Saturday’s first home league game of the season against DSLP. All but six, who are abroad, turned up, and they along with a crowd of 400 were rewarded with half a dozen tries by the break in a 55-15 win, making them the AIL’s highest scorers of the weekend.
This they did with 11 under-21 players in the 22-man squad coached by last season’s under-21 coaches Seán Duignan and Paul Flanagan, so perhaps understandably their under-21s lost to their Garryowen counterparts.
ADDING to it’s recently acquired Magners League portfolio, TG4 will soon be unveiling a four-part history of Irish rugby, produced by Fastnet Films, called Gualainn le Gualainn (shoulder to shoulder).
The publicists have confirmed that at next week’s launch in the Pavilion in Trinity, to be hosted by Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh, “members of the 1948 Triple Crown” team will be in attendance to see previously unfinished footage of games in that campaign for the first time.
It was, of course, also a Grand Slam campaign.
