Vincent Hogan: Moral high ground a shaky perch
Before England mistook the Rugby World Cup for an epic stag, I never liked Martin Johnson. Now, inexplicably, I do. Just when the entire planet seems to be crashing down upon him with such sour, malignant focus, I can't see the former England captain and manager as anything but an oversized, vaguely appealing lump who thought he could control a zoo by scowling.
If that's a crime, he's guilty. But, with Johnson, you get what it says on the tin. To the best of my knowledge, he's not a noted conversationalist. Nobody has ever gone public on him having a secret life on the Leicester stand-up circuit.
He is simply a vast, abrasive man whose captaincy of England at the 2003 World Cup was heroic and, by all accounts, uncomplicated.
Yet, he was put in charge of his national team as if that victory might, through some kind of osmosis perhaps, transmit inspiration to the current team. It didn't.
All the evidence is that Johnson did what he's always done, a kind of clunking John Wayne "the hell you will" sketch while his players slipped away to round up New Zealand's dwarves.
Fair enough, England's meltdown happened on his watch. His royal centre, regrettably, showed all the leadership of a toad. Some of the players were accused of harassing a chambermaid. A few, apparently, fell under the unhelpful spell of money.
It all became about as dignified as a pensioners' pole dance and, ever since, half of English rugby looks to be running for cover.
Johnson's inevitable resignation left him looking a weak, cuckolded figure last week, punished for mis-directed trust, ridiculed for lacking the smarts to get the team playing lucid rugby. And so the RFU have their 'Smart Boy Wanted' posters up again.
They might wisely look for a chief executive first.
Right now, English rugby is lampooned from one end of the globe to the other, opponents all but slapping their sides. Yet, it is hard not to feel a little uncomfortable with the blithe denigration of the only man in the northern hemisphere to formally lift the William Webb Ellis Cup.
True, Johnson comes across as a one-dimensional character who seems compelled to play the Roy Keane card of always maintaining a sullen relationship with cameras. But kicking Johnson is a bit like kicking the dog that's eaten the Sunday roast.
He wouldn't have messed up if nobody had given him the opportunity.
Last week's leaks from the players' submissions to a post-tournament review created an impression of abject dysfunction within the England camp. Yet, if Ireland's players were asked to adjudicate in confidence to a review of their World Cup -- and the findings selectively published -- who is to say what might be portrayed? Think about it.
There is a difference between the two groups, no question. But then there is a difference in the environments in which they play.
ARROGANT
Respect and courtesy are taken as rudimentary qualities in Irish rugby professionals. I happen to agree with Tony Ward's view that Chris Ashton's refusal to decommission that arrogant 'swallow dive' reflects something deeper in the English psyche.
Scoring could never be enough. There had to be an attention-seeking decoration.
That even a bulldog like Johnson couldn't take the exhibitionist out of Ashton maybe tells us much of what it was that turned England into a rabble. Likewise, Mike Tindall's juvenile concept of discretion. Can you imagine Brian O'Driscoll or Paul O'Connell behaving so crassly? Not a chance.
But to imagine Ireland and England as polar opposites would be foolish. There's a great deal of sanctimony doing the rounds just now, as if the men in white suddenly represent all that is sick in professional sport. Wales, for pity's sake, are held up as altar boys by comparison.
This is, I suspect, a cyclical thing, a story of under-achievement gathering great, maybe slightly phoney wings.
Four years ago, after all, we were the boys with the dunce's hats. Rumour blew around the Irish camp like tumbleweed as a team that had exhilarated the Six Nations championship suddenly found itself ponderous and low on confidence.
The media's treatment of Eddie O'Sullivan became shameful. Four times on his watch, Ireland had won four out of five matches in the Six Nations. By the spring of '07, they looked Europe's most compelling force.
But momentum slipped away as the World Cup loomed and they turned up at the tournament in a strange torpor. O'Sullivan, to this day recognised as one of the most technically astute coaches in world rugby, suddenly faced a critical onslaught. Before the team flew home from France, he found his final press conference reduced to mockery. A stand-up comedian, mimicking an RTE journalist, reduced the event to parody.
It was a moment of staggering disrespect, passed off -- by some -- as light relief.
If we learned anything from '07, it was surely that we don't necessarily handle disappointment with any more grace than the next man. Maybe England look hopelessly divided and bedraggled today. Maybe Martin Johnson looks a clown. But keep those cackles down at the back.
The high moral ground ill becomes us.
- Vincent Hogan
Irish Independent
