YOU can take as many positives as you like out of last weekend's win for Ireland over Australia, and God knows there were plenty, but the fact that it was the men in green and gold was a highlight for this writer.
Two years ago we sat in Croke Park and saw a graceless exhibition of bad manners by Australia rugby coach Robbie Deans after Brian O'Driscoll's late try snatched a dramatic draw for Ireland.
Deans' monosyllabic sourness then made last Saturday morning even more special, particularly the growing glumness spreading slowly across his pus as the game pushed towards the end game, but it's not the first time the Wallabies have shown themselves up following the final whistle.
If you go back almost twenty years another Irish team put Australia nicely on their backsides against all the odds.
That was Munster, who overturned the then-world champion Wallabies in Musgrave Park in 1992.
The game itself was rather overshadowed afterwards when Australia coach Bob Dwyer chose to rail about Munster prop Peter Clohessy, however, describing the Limerick native as a “disgrace”.
That kind of grumbling isn't done without a reason by the Aussies, of course.
A world champion coach who gets turned over by a provincial side is inclined to look around for someone to hang the blame on, and Dwyer duly obliged.
(We've looked in vain for his condemnation of other disgraces, such as the time Wallabies David Wilson and Jeremy Paul pinned Ireland's Trevor Brennan's arms so that Toutai Kefu could punch him without being punched back - the 1999 World Cup in Lansdowne Road - but so far we've come up with nothing.)
Two years after the Musgrave Park game, Ireland toured Australia, and in his outstanding book 'From There To Here: Irish Rugby In The Professional Era', Brendan Fanning outlines how the Australian mindset worked.
With Ireland going down early in the tour 55-18 to the Waratahs, Fanning and co headed to the dressing-room for quotes, finding hooker Phil Kearns in fine form, outlining his expectation of a “bit of a stink on in the Test” from Ireland and getting his message out to Test referee Joel Dume on how to handle the upcoming game.
“An instructive piece of media manipulation”, as Fanning puts it.
Not that the press Down Under need much manipulating.
Even as one paper kicked the Wallabies for losing, they couldn't help themselves and threw in the fact that Australia had lost to one of the 'also-rans' of international rugby.
Eh?
You could make the argument that those kinds of comments – from Dwyer and Kearns, for instance - are only to be expected from people raised in and continuing a culture of winning.
Kearns was much in evidence in the build-up to last Saturday's game, breezily expecting a facile Australian win.
If you can track down his post-game thoughts, do share them.
We're not expecting sour grapes, but we're not counting on humble pie either.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/3CG-YlYP5Qw/post.aspx
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