Green issues

So the boys in green are back in action this week.

I don't mean the managerless failures we call a football team, I mean the managerless failures we call a rugby team.

At least the FAI are saving money by not having a manager for three months now, 250K Euro by my reckoning.

The IRFU are paying Eddie and his management team God knows how much. After the unmitigated disaster that was the Rugby World Cup he picks almost the same team as the one that trudged off the field in France with Puma bite marks all over them. The changes are almost all forced, either from injuries (O Connell, Horgan), retirements (Hickie) or suspension (Flannery) with only Eoin Reddan being a new, and long overdue, addition to the starting 15.

The argument being spun by the IRFU is to give the players a chance to prove to the Irish public that the World Cup was a blip. There is some merit to this but with the next World Cup being 4 years away and with trips to Twickenham and Stade de France in this Six Nations surely now would be the time to rebuild.

I am not saying change for changes sake or advocating Stephen Ireland to be called in just to annoy Don Givens but surely this year was a perfect chance to give fringe players, or players performing well for their province, a run at international level and build the team.

We might lose some games, but we are getting used to that, and at least there could be something learned from those defeats.

We still don't know what happened at the World Cup, despite all the work Phil Collins and the lads did on that report.

Perhaps Eddie fears he will get the boot if Ireland have a poor Six Nations. If they did not bite the bullet after the World Cup, they have to stick with their man through this campaign.

He had a fair bit of credit built up before the World Cup. That is now gone.

A few good performances with a fresh hungry side would be acceptable. Another series of one-dimensional defeats by the same group of players would not be.