Blood in the ring - and in the RFU committee room

TV View: 'Robbo: I'm going nowhere", read the headline on Sky Sports' website on Saturday afternoon, and after witnessing that…

TV View: 'Robbo: I'm going nowhere", read the headline on Sky Sports' website on Saturday afternoon, and after witnessing that little setback against Argentina - Argentina?! - at Twickenham you had to assume "nowhere" is indeed the direction England are heading under Andy Robinson.

True, those in the know say Argentina are more than a little decent this weather, so the result wasn't that much of a surprise. But for casual observers of rugby an English defeat at the hands of the folk they call The Argies is, well, astounding. And not a Godly hand in sight, unless you count the right paw of Federico Todeschini that intercepted that Toby Flood pass and led to a try.

"Obviously we're very disappointed with the result," said Robbo to the Sky Sports man after the game. This, we sensed, was quite possibly Robbo underestimating the depth of even his own feelings about the result, never mind that of the 74,000 who expressed a little more than disappointment at full time. "Boo," they said, loudly.

But the Sky Sports man wasn't letting Robbo off lightly, going so far as to suggest that if he had anything about him he'd walk away. From the job, that is, not the interview with Sky Sports.

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"I'm not here to answer those questions," said Robbo, showing a touch more fight than a sizeable chunk of his team out on the pitch. "It's not for me to discuss and I'm not making that decision. If you want to discuss the game we'll discuss the game. If not, we'll finish (the interview) now. It's your choice."

In other words, Robbo is a man under severe pressure.

Research (ie, sitting in front of the telly for 20 odd years) tells us that when a coach, be the sport netball, rugby, baton twirling, whatever, threatens to end an interview early if the man with the mic continues asking awkward questions, it usually proves to be the coach's final interview.

All of which was no concern to man of the match Agustin Pichot. "It was the most special moment of my life," he told Sky, "after the game I said let's take 10 seconds to appreciate what we have done - we've just beaten the world champions at Twickenham."

Ten seconds? The Irish take 10 decades to savour successes at the home of English rugby.

Over on RTÉ, Tom McGurk informed his panel, needless to say sombrely, of the news from Twickenham.

Credit to George Hook, he stifled the giggles, which, alas, we can't say of Brent Pope, who chuckled with great mirth as Conor O'Shea (who, as Hook regularly reminds him, takes the Sasanach's shilling), tried to explain it all.

Of course, a defeat at the hands of South Africa might have reduced the level of mirth in the studio, but all three pundits promised this was as unlikely as Robbo remaining an employee of the English Rugby Union much longer.

Hook, in fact, sent out a big Céad Míle Fáilte to our visitors by describing them as "the worst South African side ever to visit these shores", which was nice, but at least he spread the love around when he noted that the "six front rows out there are very average . . . you'd get a bigger collision in a creche in a fight over cornflakes".

It was, as our panel (for once) correctly anticipated, all proving quite comfortable by half-time. Before the game Hook had put up a fight when McGurk, complaining about political interference in the selection of the South African team, asked, a touch unfortunately, "Why would the South Africans arrive here with Dolly Mixtures?"

Hook suggested that he didn't care about this interference, it was just rather pleasant to see black men pull on the post-Apartheid Springbok shirt; but by half-time he wasn't quite sure. Equality, he concluded, was fine in "airlines or hotels or accountancy, but not in international rugby".

He might have been moved, then, by the Rainbow nation, but not by their Rainbow team - at the end of which, he suggested, they were unlikely to find of pot of silver, never mind gold.

Any way, it proved to be a successful afternoon's work, and it proved to a be a victorious night for Bernard Dunne at the Point in Dublin, where he beat Esham Pickering to become European superbantamweight champion, the weight category, judging by the looks of the pair of them, for people who haven't eaten since 1992.

We'd like to give a little more detail on the fight, but when the blood started spraying in all directions, including all down the referee's smart white shirt, we switched channels: it brought back too many painful memories of that Australia v Ireland match in Croke Park.

Congratulations Bernard, but cripes, there must be easier ways of making a living?

Mary Hannigan

Mary Hannigan

Mary Hannigan is a sports writer with The Irish Times