Ireland beat France 18-11 in round two of the 2015 Six Nations today. Not a great game on the whole, but if you’re an Irish rugby fan it’s not worth complaining too loudly.

It’s France.

And it’s far from covering a six point handicap against the French that most Irish rugby fans were reared.

Watching the day’s rugby from a sofa in Dublin’s suburbia offered the opportunity to have a look at some of the RTÉ panel discussion before and after the game. I hung on until the end, although truth be told I’d the volume turned up so I could hear Tom McGuirk, Conor O’Shea, George Hook and Ronan O’Gara have their chat while I was busying myself in the kitchen.

I’m glad I had the volume turned up, because otherwise I wouldn’t have picked up this little gem of a sequence at the end. Ronan, the panel’s Six Nations rookie, lost a little bit of patience with the elder of the gentlemen next to him. Mr. Hook, of course; he who is now not retiring.

Rugby, with ROG and George

It’s the very last bit of the broadcast. They’re talking about the England match coming up in two weeks. George is talking away. As he does. It’s what he’s there to do.

“Well everybody talks about – and Ronan was talking about how they look at videos and they analyse the opposition every day – and everybody seems to think that the only guy who can do this is Joe Schmidt. Now Lancaster’s going to be engaged in exactly the same exercise…”

Hook went on to talk about the powerful England scrum, and their centres, and how Ireland aren’t a great attacking unit with ball carriers who won’t be a great threat to England. That’s the general gist of it.

To his left, O’Gara and O’Shea sit attentively.

George talks. Ronan and Conor sit, attentively.

Then smooth Conor O’Shea talks smoothly for a short time, building up the England game nicely for the RTE viewership. He finishes, smoothly of course, and O’Gara comes back in.

“And I think, just coming back to George’s point, obviously there’s probably an overreaction about the greatness of Joe Schmidt – and obviously he’s a genius of a coach – but I think if you look at Rory Best, you look at Jamie Heaslip, you look at Johnny Sexton, you look at Paul O’Connell, you look at Rob Kearney, you can be sure that these boys are coming to the coach every Monday, before he prepares his ideas, with big ideas. So it’s hugely player driven.”

“Their own ideas” offers McGuirk. Not a question so much as a point of clarification.

“Yes.” says O’Gara, with feeling. “That’s the environment that there is. It isn’t ‘Alright lads, this is what we’re playing this week, get your notebooks out’; they will have presented their ideas and it’ll be a bit of…”

“But there is a suggestion”, drawls Hook, “that it is ‘Boys get your notebooks out this is the way you play it’”.

“Around the ruck!” says ROG, using hand gestures for emphasis. “Because he’s a genius at coaching the ruck, and I think for us that play the game nowadays I think that’s where the detail is needed because…”

ROG explains the importance of the ruck “nowadays”

“When you have leaders like that, you’ll listen to them”, said Conor O’Shea, interjecting smoothly. Possibly seeing violence before the watershed, he’d effortlessly dived in without leaving so much as a ripple on the surface allowing Tom McGuirk to cut to close. Well, cut to RTÉ Sport’s viewer competition. Because McGuirk’s a pro.

 “Because he’s a genius at coaching the ruck, and I think for us that play the game nowadays I think that’s where the detail is needed” – ROG

“Nowadays”, eh?

ROG, you cheeky scamp.

I’ll miss the days when Hook departs our screens. He’s panto, he’s often wrong, but it’s all part of the fun.