George Hook doesn't appear to be making too many friends in the Irish camp. Just a month after Rob Kearney blasted an 'unnamed' RTE pundit (that wasn't named Conor O'Shea, Ronan O'Gara, Brent Pope or Shane Horgan), Joe Schmidt has taken umbrage with the same unnamed RTE pundit.

When asked to respond to Shane Horgan's comments that there might be a lack of leadership in the Irish backline outside Johnny Sexton, Schmidt launched into a staunch defence of Jared Payne after the "second-rate foreign player" comment, that George Hook made in the aftermath of the Ireland defeat in Cardiff.

Schmidt stated that he tries to give the players responsibility to take on leadership, even though some of the backline isn't as experienced as the pair of world class half backs at Ireland's disposal. Robbie Henshaw and Jared Payne had four caps between them before this championship started.

Jared doesn't have a lot of Test match experience but he has played a lot of Super Rugby and European rugby. That breadth of experience and his maturity help Robbie work away and then on the edges, Tommy (Bowe) is a very experienced player for us and so is Rob Kearney.

Schmidt then solely focused on Hook's comment, acknowledging that while O'Driscoll has left a gaping hole, it's unreasonable to demand an uncapped player to fill the role so soon. Schmidt claims that while he isn't a patient man, he felt the need for patience to bed the combinations in midfield. And the Ireland manager does feel that Payne has improved throughout the tournament:

I was incredibly disappointed with one of the so-called pundits slating our of our midfield last weekend when I thought he'd played a good game and I thought he actually opened them up. He made a couple of line breaks and was dead solid defensively. That sort of thing, when we're trying to build confidence in players, filters back to players through family and friends and I don't think it helps.


And then, shots were fired:

I don't think it's accurate, it's one of those unfortunate by-products of having people for entertainment value as opposed to people who are a little bit more in-depth in their analysis as the other two pundits were.

[Independent]