Ireland and Munster player Ronan O’Gara has today responded to an article written by Kevin Myers in the Irish Independent on February 16th, saying “I will not be scapegoated by Kevin Myers”

In the article Myers claimed what he wanted to write was by no means a sneer, but that all depends on what Myers means by a sneer. He was talking about Ireland’s heavy defeat to France in the RBS Six Nations in Paris. In the article Myers wrote; “Last Saturday’s match did not result in a victory for the stronger team. For it was, primarily, a victory of the Irish sub-conscious. Ireland did not want to win, and Declan Kidney did not choose a team that could win. His selection of Ronan O’Gara said as much.Everyone knows his defence is weak. That is the nature of the player. He is not a Brendan Mullin or a Brian O’Driscoll or a Mike Gibson. Somewhere in the opposing back line — and his number is irrelevant because he could turn up anywhere — was Bastareaud, who is less a human being than a tsunami on legs. Teams playing France must not tackle him so much as lawfully incapacitate him. Nothing less will do. Jonathan Sexton might have done that. Ronan O’Gara was as likely to do it as Kate Moss.”
Now correct me if I am wrong but I seem to recall that the majority if not all of the team Kidney picked was the same team that last year beat France in Croke Park and more importantly the Grandslam win in Cardiff. So one would have to pose a question to Myers, how wasn’t that a team that wanted to win? The answer is that France were stronger on the day, you get those types of matches all the time. In terms of whether O’Gara’s number 10 rival Jonathan Sexton would put in big tackles on players like Bastareaud, I do not recall Sexton nor anyone else on the team doing that, but this isn’t the point. The point is I want to know what makes Myers such an expert on rugby for him to be able to write such crap and for the editor iin the Irish Indo to publish that without balance.Today Ronan O’Gara who was the first man in 6 Nations history to score over 500 points and also holds a record too in the Heineken Cup, wrote to the ‘Letter to the editor’ Colum in today’s Irish Independent, saying; “Rugby is my place of work whether with Ireland, Munster or the Lions. I take my work very seriously and I do not and will not accept being castigated by a journalist who I suspect knows nothing about rugby but somehow appoints himself as an expert. This falls short of journalistic standards I would expect from one of our main national newspapers. I will not be scapegoated by Myers or any journalist who writes in that fashion, Any article needs to be well balanced and I would suggest to Mr. Editor in the indo, that is the least you should expect from your journalists whether freelance or other wise”
This is not the first time Myers has written a stinging attack on O’Gara. In May 2009 Myers called O’Gara a ‘Lout’ for not having the ‘respect’ to shake the queen’s hand. Myers wrote; “Either he kept his hands in his pockets when he met the Queen because he was unaware that no gentlemen ever keeps his hands in his pockets when he is meeting anyone — whether tinker, tart or toff — which means that he is a lout. Or that he went up to Belfast, freely and of his own accord, and very deliberately kept his hands in his pockets in her presence, in order to establish some political point. Which also means that he is a lout” My conclusion of this is simple, Myers is a troubled, ignorant opinionated fool who should keep his nose and writing away from things that he clearly thinks he knows more about than he actually does- but that maybe due to the fact that his own arrogance cowes those in authority. Myers is at times a thoughtful, insightful journalist who can sum up the national zeitgeist with a well chosen phrase- but he will never be Tom Humphries but then again the big man of Irish sport would never have the arrogance of a Myers to comment on things on which he is ill informed and ill equipped to make such quips as that on O’Gara.

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