Ireland must ask more questions in attack

THE DULL pain of rejection experienced by a number of quality Irish players on Monday was replicated throughout the rugby world yesterday when the cut-off point for announcing the respective World Cup squads arrived.

For Tomás O’Leary and Luke Fitzgerald in Ireland read Martyn Williams and Jonathan Thomas in Wales, Jonny Beattie in Scotland, Riki Flutey in England, Thomas Domingo and Sylvain Marconnet in France. In addition read Hosea Gear and Sitiveni Sivivatu in New Zealand and, incredibly, Matt Giteau in Australia. The list goes on.

The difference between the many of those high profile casualties and the Irish duo is that they have already had a World Cup experience on at least one occasion. Both O’Leary and Fitzgerald were within touching distance of Eddie O’Sullivan’s squad four years ago but lost out in the final cull. That is why I feel so much for two players who played such integral parts in Ireland’s first Grand Slam in 61 years only two seasons ago.