"If we didn't know the pubs were closed, you'd swear he'd been in one," Matt Williams had said on Saturday of Billy Vunipola's non-performance for England in their first defeat to Scotland at Twickenham since, roughly, around the time of the Battle of Bannockburn. Come Sunday, though, we could all have done with an open pub – wet, dry, moist, soggy, whatever – the beginning of our boys' Six Nations campaign leaving us thirsting for a pick-me-up.
As Virgin Media’s Joe Molloy put it, “most things that could go wrong did go wrong”, starting with Peter O’Mahony’s early dismissal for a stray elbow on Tomas Francis – or, as ref Wayne Barnes described it, POM’s stray “chicken wing”. Truly, Swahili is less indecipherable than the language of rugby.
But for no little time, our Fab Four (teen) threatened to silence the crowd in the Principality Stadium, which, admittedly, wouldn’t have been hard what with there being no crowd in the place at all.
“Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town,” John Inverdale asked us over on the BBC before the game as he surveyed the empty stands, one of several specials he delivered before kick-off. This reference flew like a Boeing 747 over Jamie Heaslip’s head, him being 2½ when the tune topped the Hit Parade.
England losing, not to be tribal about it, was a hoot, a Six Nations shot in the arm like it was sponsored by Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca combined, but more often than not, when you chuckle at another’s sporting misfortunes, there’s a reasonable chance that you’re about to suffer your own.
And so it was.
Feet massaged
As time was running out, the invisible Welsh Male Voice Choir filled the stadium with the strains of Bread of Heaven, courtesy of the fake-sound-people, by then us Irish folk so fed up of the 2021 Six Nations we wanted no more. Granted, it was only match number one, but . . .
Joe: “France next week?”
Shane Jennings: “Ah Joe, give us a break.”
By Sunday, France were back home having their feet massaged after squeezing past Italy 50-10 in Rome on Saturday, and trying to stifle their giggles at the sight of both England and Ireland losing.
For a while, though, it looked like our 14 lads might pull it off, until Louis Rees-Zammit’s try, at which point Jamie conceded that “the momentum has swung back to Wales – for Ireland, that pressure cooker is on you!”
The weight of the pressure cooker proved too much, not least on poor Billy Burns.
You know when you screw up, severely, and the very worst thing is to be surrounded by people patting you on the back and telling you not to worry about it. And how that makes things 54,000 times worse? Billy was not only surrounded by an entire Irish squad intent on comforting him, even the Welsh captain Alun Wyn Jones joined in.
Matt tried to add some perspective to the occasion. “It’s a disaster,” he said, but Shane Jennings was having none of it. “There’s a huge amount of positives, let’s not throw the toys out here,” he insisted, at which point you feared Matt would dub him the Comical Ali of rugby punditry. He didn’t, though, conceding that, despite the disappointment of the result, there were aspects of the performance worth celebrating.
“It’s a box of chocolates, isn’t it,” he said. “Some really good ones – and some you don’t like.”
True. Robbie Henshaw, for example, produced the mother of all salted caramels when he went from nought to 60 in 0.1243 of a second to create Tadhg Beirne’s try, while Billy served up the abomination that is an orange-flavoured choccie with that deathly kick.
Look, no matter, there’s always another Six Nations day, and we live to fight it, although the one question that wasn’t addressed on Sunday – and far be it for us to accuse the pundits of cowardice – was: who cut Johnny Sexton’s hair?
Lockdown-breaking accusations
Inverdale had the look of a man who hadn’t seen a barber since March 2020, the top of his head resembling the Macgillycuddy’s Reeks, but Johnny’s was so evidently freshly shorn there’ll likely be an entire Liveline devoted to it, with Masie from Manorhamilton, Dot from Dunkineely and Tommy from Termonfeckin lighting up the switchboard with their lockdown-breaking accusations.
Brian O’Driscoll, incidentally, is sporting a severe hair-do too this weather, but Tommy Tiernan neglected to question him about it, perhaps assuming that he’d done it himself in light of parts of it resembling a cat with mange. Instead, he focused on BOD’s goodness.
“There’s a mildness about you, a sensitivity, you’re well spoken, there’s an awareness about you that doesn’t match with the thuggery and premeditated violence of international rugby,” said Tommy, BOD left scratching the scraps of hair left on his head.
As Hugh Cahill was when Ted Walsh declared that he’d never heard of interweb betting during RTÉ’s coverage of horsie racing at Leopardstown.
With lockdown, and what not, Ted assumed there was nowhere to have a punt.
Ted: “Where can you have a bet?”
Hugh Cahill: “Online.”
Ted: “Ring up?”
Hugh: “Eh . . .”
Sure look, the less that’s known about online gambling, the better. All power to Ted’s chicken wing.
