It's safe to say that no other rugby writer attracts the ire of Irish rugby fans quite like Stephen Jones of the Sunday Times. Jones has made a career out of forming iron-clad opinions that inevitably provoke outraged responses from fans of whatever player he's had a pop at (that and he's a good journalist, lets be fair).
Those of us born inside the Munster provincial lines were particularly irked by Jones' almost manic campaign back in 2009 to get Paul O'Connell off of the Lions test team against South Africa. Jones consistently fawned over anything Simon Shaw did while at the same time dismissing O'Connell as just another lock and one who would struggle on the hard grounds of South Africa.
Fast forward to today and there's O'Connell, still ruling the skies and still motoring through eighty test minutes and Jones has come full circle on the man affectionately known as Superman.
Today on ST Online, IPad and ST Ireland. How wrong could I be about Ireland's Paul O'Connell?
— Stephen Jones (@stephenjones9) November 16, 2014
Jones uses a column in today's Times (€) to describe O'Connell among other things as "A towering presence" "One of the greatest players in history" and says that he's the Irish equivalent of Martin Johnson and suggests that O'Connell not Brian O'Driscoll is Ireland's greatest ever player.
Thus starting another argument.....
The full column is here.
