Sir, - No sour grapes: New Zealand were very much the better team; in the end, their superiority was devastating.
But compare last Saturday's game with the free-flowing Ireland versus Australia classic of 1991. This was another game won by the markedly superior visiting side, albeit narrowly. There have, in the intervening period, been two critical changes to the laws of rugby Union: (1) changes to the ruck and maul laws that promote multiphase play; and (2) legitimised lifting in the line-out, virtually guaranteeing the throwing side possession. Result: the new game has become a continuous-possession clone of Rugby League, except that in the League game the attacking side must give up the ball after six possessions. No such limitations in the new rugby Union: the attacking side can keep the ball indefinitely, as we saw last Saturday.
Let me congratulate New Zealand. But let me also record my disgust and despair at what our beautiful, lateral-movement, flash-it-to-the-wing game has become: an endlessly-recycled, punch-another-hole, return-to-the-scene-of-the-midfield-collision bore.
I am within an inch of abandoning all interest in the "new" Union - and not because of Ireland's woes. The game has simply become monumentally tedious. Is this just a player of the 1970s and 1980s showing his age, or do I have any support out there for my view? - Yours, etc., Conor Sexton,
Castleside Drive,
Dublin 14.