Can we agree that whatshisname is the King and get back to real topics. Otherwise I might have to read him .. just saying. ..

Gavin Cummiskey is cringy to listen to on Off The Ball. He sounds like a lad who desparately wants to be friends with the Leinster rugby squad. He talks of the "immense Seanie O'Brien" etc. He doesn't sound like a credible journalist to me. He gets an awful lot of straight forward info wrong. For example, the season before last he was going on about Munster being in danger of ending up in a champions cup playoff qualifier (there were none that season).

As regards his articles, I have never read one.

Agree actually with tlocke that Marmion should be down in NZ instead of Greig Laidlaw.

You would also think that McGrath is only 19 or something ... He's only a year younger than Kieran.

Marmion is criminally underrated. To be honest I always had the feeling a lot of people were just waiting for Luke McGrath or AN other to come along to call to discard him. You'd swear he suddenly had an enormous improvement in his play when we were forced to use him in the last year, instead of him being consistently excellent for a few years but not being given even a sniff of a chance.

Cummiskey is shocking. I can't listen to offtheball when he's on it. Outside of his Leinster bias. The guy simply doesn't know anything about rugby. You can tell he doesn't watch or love the sport. Marmion is miles ahead of McGrath in everywhere possible. IMO McGrath hasn't really proven himself at club level yet. I feel some of the Leinster players aren't as good as they're made out to be. I think we saw that when "push came to shove" at the critical stage of the season.

Also this tour is only a curtain raiser for the Autumn internationals and an opportunity to blood unproven players at test level. After the six nations this year, Marmion is no longer an unproven international class player (Granted Joe Schmidt was forced into it due to Murray's injury, which shouldn't of been the case). To be honest the Lions could do with Marmion instead of Laidlaw right now.

Marmion is top class, we know that. If he was wearing blue the Dublin media would be all over him.

I see Cummiskey is at it again in today's Indo championing Luke McGrath's taking over the No21 jersey from Kieran Marmion in time, and this being attributed to McGrath getting selected for the first test in Japan. This clown has plenty of form on this particular topic and has mouthpieced similar statements from Saint Brian of O'Driscoll before. Clearly Cummiskey won't be happy until Irish squads are again Connacht player-free zones.