Farewell to an old friend, you’ll miss him now he’s gone

Last week there was something of a ripple about Michael Bent, a rugby player lately qualified to play for Ireland.

Signed by Leinster, Bent has been fast-tracked into the Irish squad, and a little controversy stirred itself about whether or not it was appropriate that a man could step off a plane from New Zealand and straight into the Irish national team set-up, which was Bent’s schedule a few days ago.

Declan Kidney tried to point out that this is common enough even for the countries with hundreds of thousands of players to draw from — it would certainly be an interesting exercise to pick an England 15 of foreigners — but it seems some people insisted on being offended anyway.