The Irish have to sort out their own concerns rather than fire bullets at us.

Personally I feel it is really disappointing for a great friend and colleague. But professionally the job is still to be done and in the short term I am focussed on the next challenge, and that is Ireland at Lansdowne Road.

Once you lose six or seven players, it impinges on your bench. That is not to be disrespectful to the players who have come in, but you want to have your best 22 at your disposal.

There is a danger there: Gordon D'Arcy will cut you and I rate Shane Horgan as well.

As to my mouth, of all my features, I wish I could possess my mouth again, just as it had been before the fire. I had my mother’s lips, generous below and above; and what kissing I had practiced, mainly on my hand or on a lonely pig, had convinced me that my lips would be the source of my good fortune. I would kiss with them, and lie with them, I would make victims and willing slaves of anyone my eyes desired, simply by talking a little, and following the talk with kisses, and the kisses with demands. And they’d melt into compliance, everyone of them, happy to perform the most demeaning acts as long as I was there to reward them with a long, tongue-tied kiss when they were done. But the fire didn’t spare my lips; it took them too, erasing them utterly.

It was a succession of all of these pledge things from around the state that made us stop and say maybe we should try to get everybody on the same page about what the law says.