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I have to say I was really impressed with Ireland's memorable 43-13 victory over England at Croke Park. The result, the performance and the occasion were all fantastic.
I'm no different from anybody else. I don't think there was anybody in the ground who wasn't affected by the emotion of the occasion.
I've talked to so many people and everybody has the same sort of view, they all had lumps in their throats and emotion was high.
The most extraordinary thing was the way in which the English anthem was welcomed. Under normal circumstances in Lansdowne Road there would have been a few guys whistling and booing or whatever.
But to find that not a single person in the 81,112 at GAA HQ even dared to cough was an extraordinary demonstration of how serious everybody was about it.
I think the biggest winners, by a street, are the GAA. They have now got a lot of bucks in the bank account, they've got huge credibility around the country and all the people who would have said that the GAA was 'an organisation of backwards men' and all that kind of nonsense will have been silenced.
I think the GAA are going to look at this, and this isn't me in any way trying to put pressure on the GAA, but I think they are going to sit down and say: 'Hold on here, we've got through the worst possible day without a problem, it's all plus from here on in. It's a downhill run and we can make about €10million a year. We should do all the big games here.'
The GAA are common sense guys like everybody else. I think they've done the hard bit and I think they're going to sit back and acknowledge that there is so much money to be made out of opening Croke Park.
They know they've cracked the difficult part of it, the protest was a joke in reality and amounted to nothing so I think they'll look at the economics of it all and seriously consider keeping the stadium open beyond 2008.
Looking at the match itself, I don't think anyone thought that a score of that magnitude was possible. England were awful, or they were made look awful, and I also think Ireland played as well as they possibly could have played.
The control by Ronan O'Gara was marvellous, but we're used to that. When the match reached a point where the Irish scrummage was on top, and remember that the Irish scrummage hasn't been on top of anybody since the year dot, I think it demonstrated just how far back England have actually gone. Ireland were just so much better.
I don't think Eddie O'Sullivan or Paul O'Connell or anybody else expected England to come out and perform as badly as they did. They offered nothing.
The key to Ireland's unquestionable dominance was the back row. I thought Wallace, Leamy and Easterby were, both as a group and individually, better than maybe I've ever seen them. They dominated the match.
Rugby is a game quite different from soccer, although Johnny Giles would probably tell you if you don't control midfield you can't play soccer very well either, but in rugby the whole thing revolves around the middle five, the 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, and we were so strong in that area.
I think it was interesting that Harry Ellis was substituted, Marcus Lund was substituted at half-time, and that was a key indicator that we were winning those battles from very early on.
We were physically stronger which surprised me, our scrum was better, our lineout was secure and we were on top in every department. Ellis didn't make a worthwhile break in the whole match, and all the key areas that England had to win if they were going to win the match, they didn't.
And not only did they not do that, they were also losing in areas that they would have felt comfortable in, like the scrum. It was a clear indication that the bottle had gone out of the team and at a very early stage they started to realise that these guys are better than us.
That doesn't happen very often in international rugby and it rarely happens against the English. Remember that England are the largest rugby playing nation in the world. They have more players than any other country so you have to expect, by and large, that they are always going to produce rugby teams over a period of time.
And to think that they arrived here in that state is a clear indication of the difficulties they are experiencing. It's really obvious what the problem is, which is the club v country issue.
We don't have it. The biggest single thing that happened to Irish rugby was when the IRFU sat down at the beginning of professionalism and, more so than any other country in the world with the possible exception of New Zealand, they got the key issue right.
And that was the central contracting of the Irish players.
England, on the other hand, got it hopelessly wrong because all the power rests with the clubs. It's quite ludicrous, but 14 of the 22 played the previous weekend when the Irish players were sitting in with their feet up watching telly.
The English players, despite what people imagine, are playing more games, they have less training time and the coach has less time with them, so that's the real difference at the moment. They're not going to solve that.
England are now staring down the barrel of a gun for years to come because I think it's going to be so difficult to solve. For years to come they're going to have this conflict.
Conor O'Shea made a very interesting point on RTÉ at the weekend when he said that Arsene Wenger said that you cannot have a strong Premiership and a strong England at the same time, and that applies exactly the same to rugby.
I think our smaller population of players is always going to be used to the fullest, whereas England's larger pool of players is going to lose out.
A lot of people will be hoping England can do us a favour and beat France at Twickenham but I don't think they will.
The depths to which England descended in Croke Park isn't going to be solved in a fortnight. The problem is too huge now.
Brian Ashton has incredibly difficult problems to negotiate. Firstly, his captain is not sure of his place so Ashton is going to have to make a decision whether he stays with his captain or if he goes with the best player. I think Ashton, like most coaches, will stay with his captain even though he isn't worth his place on the team.
Then he's got monster problems in the back row, which Ireland exploited, in that he doesn't have a good No 7 or No 6. That's two out of three in the back row who failed to perform against Ireland in an area where France are particularly strong.
I think they have no chance at all of breaking down the French in midfield. The French midfield is the strongest defensive unit there is. Ireland would have and had difficulties breaking them down, England have no chance.
To use Eddie O'Sullivan's immortal phrase, England wouldn't knock the skin off a rice pudding.
George Hook was talking to Shane Murray.
