Pooper Laporte to be ejected from party

DAVID GRAY has a lot to answer for. The Welsh warbler’s huge popularity in the late 1990s led to his White Ladder album becoming de rigeur at middle-class dinner parties.

As a result, we are now suffering a singer/songwriter epidemic on a scale not seen since the heyday of Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens.

The knock-on effects have been catastrophic. Guitar guys, hitherto confined to their bedrooms, are now roaming free, persecuting the public and ruining parties. It is one thing if Carlos Santana, BB King or Christy Moore show up and take over your party (as long as Christy agrees not to play Black is the Colour), but having it ruined by some muppet murdering Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah is just rude.

There will be a man in Lansdowne Road tomorrow who carries all the party-pooping qualities of the dreaded guitar guy ... step forward Monsieur Bernard Laporte.

When it comes to rugby, the French have long been recognised as party animals, but Laporte has done his utmost to quell their party spirit.

The French inclination is to run with the ball, yet this season Laporte has selected honest toilers like Liebenberg, Mignon and Delaigue and ignored the mercurial abilities of last year’s stars Poitrenaud, Elissalde and Freddy Michalak (who remains on the subs bench checking his fingernails).

Likewise in the forwards, he began with big back row lumberers Tabacco and Chabal, before belatedly seeing the light and opting for Nyanga.

Additionally, after reintroducing the previously injured Imanol Harinordoquy against Wales, Laporte decided to drop him from the squad altogether for tomorrow’s game just when he was getting some game-time - a decision for which the Irish are profoundly grateful.

Laporte has also preached a conservative brand of rugby, a forward-oriented approach that has doused the flames of Gallic adventure.

However, no matter how out of tune their coach remains, this French team undoubtedly has the ability to scupper Ireland’s grand slam ambitions. For those first 20 minutes against Wales, they were mesmerising, playing sublime rugby. Inexplicably, they then reverted back to Laporte’s route one approach, which played into the hands of the Welsh and led directly to defeat.

This Six Nations has been awash with media clichés.

You don’t beat Italy, you do an ‘Italian job’. Three wins on the trot has seen the ‘Welsh Dragon breathe fire again’ while a similar run of results for Eddie O’Sullivan’s men means ‘Irish eyes are smiling’.

Over in Blighty, the ‘wheels have come off the English chariot’ and in Scotland, Matt Williams’ ‘Bravehearts’ aren’t up to scratch. France? With these guys, it always depends on ‘which French team turns up’.

It is a frustrating truism. The visiting front five will achieve parity up front and there is enough potential in the three-quarters to profit against an Irish backline carrying the honest-but-limited Kevin Maggs and Girvan Dempsey. But it’s ‘upstairs’ where the French remain the great imponderables. If they’re in the mood to party, El Kabong wouldn’t be able to stop them ... never mind Laporte.

But, with the grand slam incentive gone, if they turn up disinterested and petulant, it’s giggle-time for our Irish peepers. And this, I suspect, is what will happen. France have been far from convincing thus far, and Lansdowne Road is a tough place to turn things around while, in contrast to the brittle Gallic mentality, there is a tremendous self-belief about Ireland this season.

The depth of experience in the team, allied to an easy familiarity bred out of long association, has created a confidence that sees them refuse to panic even when under sustained attack - as they were against England in the second-half two weeks ago.

There is also the comfort of knowing O’Sullivan’s men have yet to hit their best form and are just two games away from immortality.

So, Ireland to win by 12, Laporte to be ejected from the French party and 2005 to be a special year for Irish rugby. Or, as David Gray might put it, “This year’s love is here to last ...”