Irish take a vow of tweet tweet silence

DECLAN KIDNEY’S squad have taken a vow of silence for a 48-hour period around tomorrow’s game against Wales.

The decision comes after some players were subjected to a stream of negative — and sometimes poisonous — comments from some of their online ‘followers’ on the back of the nervy win over Scotland two weekends ago.

Jamie Heaslip and Cian Healy were prompted to reply to the criticisms heaped on them and the team in general shortly after the victory in Murrayfield. “If u got something bad to say, go somewhere else or unfollow,” said Heaslip on his account and later the same evening, “Really don’t have time for it. results matter, always said that. Laters.”

Brian O’Driscoll and Tommy Bowe are also ranked among the team’s Twitteratti but none will be sharing their thoughts until passions have had time to cool on all sides after the Welsh game.

“The squad have agreed not to tweet around match time,” said manager Paul McNaughton yesterday.

“We wouldn’t ban tweeting generally but just around match time the squad has agreed to extend the period of no tweeting. We don’t see it as a big issue. There was some correspondence between some of the players and some of their followers, as it were, but we are developing the policy anyway because there will have to be a rigid one for the World Cup.”

As for matters on the pitch this weekend, Ireland departed for Cardiff yesterday afternoon with all 22 players reporting fit for duty after a closed training session in Dublin.

It seems that the roof of the Millennium Stadium will remain open for the occasion. Ireland face a Welsh team that, like them, has chopped and changed at number 10. James Hook gets the nod ahead of Stephen Jones for tomorrow’s encounter and Kiss believes it is something of a risk that Warren Gatland has taken.

“It is an interesting selection,” he said. “I thought they might put Jonathan Davies back in, he is a good young player. The guys have a lot of respect for him.

“I guess now that they have put a bit of a leap of faith in Hook to take control of that 10 channel for them. You can see the danger that he and Williams pose. That’s two real dangerous threats.”