WITH THE SIX Nations in full swing, rugby fever is gripping the country and even Eamon Dunphy has jumped on the bandwagon.
The RTE soccer pundit says he’s fed up of football and has started to watch rugby instead. The standard of referees in football is what’s driving Eamon away, it seems.
He told RTE Sport: “I would rather watch, and did watch last weekend, a rugby international than a Premier League match. And one of the reasons is, although it is a difficult game to referee, the referees have real authority.
“Look at the difference between those rugby union referees and the soccer referees; they’re a different calibre of human being in my opinion. And the rugby league referees, if you so much as look at them funny, you’re gone. That’s the way it should be.”
Uefa president Michel Platini — who Dunphy labelled ‘an idiot’ — is largely responsible for the current state of the game due to not embracing technology, according to the former Millwall and Reading midfielder.
“What all the other sports have demonstrated is that you can have this technology, it can deliver justice instantaneously and the longer cheating becomes embedded in the culture of soccer and it is embedded now, then the worse it will get,” said Dunphy.
“Then it filters down to schoolboy football and the kids are doing this now. They watch their idols at the weekend and they see it happening and see people getting away with it, so they are going to do it. It’s a cancer in the culture of soccer.
“The people who run soccer across the world range from crooks to muppets. That sounds funny, but it’s actually true. The game is a mess.”
Eamon to join RTE’s rugby panel when George Hook retires after the World Cup?
“This fella Dan Carter is a cod!”
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