Maybe it's a dastardly attempt to sabotage's TV3's ratings or maybe George Hook has undergone some Damasene conversion on the way to the Anglesey Road, but he made the galling admission on Independent.ie today that soccer is still the game of the people in Ireland.
George has long affected ignorance of the beautiful game, consciously eschewing interest in the football World Cup last summer and only looking to the Rugby World Cup of 2015.
When him and Vincent Browne got tired of debating the economy a few years ago, Vincent decided to tweak Hook on his Friday night show, asserting that 'soccer is such a fantastic game when compared with rugby'.
For George has long painted himself (or he himself has been painted as such) as an archetypal alickadoo, gleefully indifferent to soccer.
However, it appears this is all caricature. Hook admits he has been a fan of the Irish football team for many years, and attended many big games back in Dalyer in decades past.
Football is the game of the people. No matter how much we think about it, more rugby is played on the southside of Dublin than is played on the northside of Dublin.
Hook says that seeing that rugby is primarily the game of the fee paying schools, it can't claim to be the game of the people. However, he did assert that the 'French game has more to offer' because Ireland has a better chance of winning the Rugby World Cup.
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