Irish travel fiasco - "all the French fault" say IRFU

The IRFU were hitting back yesterday at complaints about how they had treated their women's team over the weekend. Apparently the 27-hour horror story was entirely the FFR's fault, as they had put the game in the south of France, moved the game forward three hours and refused to reconsider.

The FFR had also not told the Irish how long it would take to get across Paris by bus on a Saturday afternoon, so they missed their fast TGV train and had to make do with a slow overnight service that was packed to the gunnels - you can read the details in this Irish Times report.

However, the report does fail to ask a few questions - the most interesting of which is... what the heck were the Irish doing flying to Paris and then taking a train? Its a ***** long way from Paris to the Pyrenees - anything could go wrong (as, indeed, it did).

Pau is not exactly the ends of the earth. It has its own international airport (which the French team flew into a few days before), and if that is a problem there are half-a-dozen others within easy reach. Changing planes at Charles de Gaule would have had the Irish in their hotel within about seven hours of leaving Dublin. As someone responsible for making arrangements for English club sides travelling to the area said - you take a plane to the nearest airport, then a bus. Not a train!

What is more, even if the game had been played at the prearranged time (and supposing this would have been possible - most people there said that it would have been too cold for an evening game), it would only have bought them another three hours. The IRFU's magical mystery tour would still have had the team arriving at 3am for a match that evening.

Truth be told the problem was penny-pinching madness that would never have happened with any men's team.