There is no question, nor any issue that many if not all of these Alecs & Blazers will have given of lots of time effort & perhaps money to improve, grow or sustain the game in Ireland. A Snipe says, their ascent to high office has been their choice & as you often say, their virtue should be it's own reward..........but apparently not, not by a long chalk**. All worthy men I'd assume, but in times of trouble & lousy strife, is it not reasonable that they are not on an international gravy train for life?
You introduced talk of worthy clubmen - amongst whose number I've never been counted - but this only concerns them in a highly peripheral way , this is about the lads who have made it to the top in the IRFU maintaining their jollys in perpetuity. It is utterly indefensible in these times where at the Provinces, staff are being cut & as well you know, our much vaunted line-up in the Ladies section is entirely working on a voluntary basis. Shameful stuff.
Your Grace, this last point, if no other, makes your not unexpected sop to privilege indefensible. Shame on you.
** a delightful expression that "a long chalk", I believe it goes back to the days when your landlord would record your bar bill in chalk on a board. I had expected to be faced with a "chalk", for that's how they still do it, in El Reconcillo, the oldest bar in Sevilla, this past fortnight but to my considerable irritation, the entire staff of said pub took themselves off on their August holidays leaving me to drink in modern pubs, no older than a couple of hundred years. Such is my irritation at missing out on a pub older than the scuffle at the Rio Boyne, that I plan to blacken their name on Tripadvisor. That'll teach the lazy Sevillanos.
