Sinead O'Carroll and Mick O'Keefe were the guests for The Sunday Paper Review on Off the Ball.
The fall-out from the independent review of the Rugby World Cup 2023 bids dominated the sports sections.
O'Keefe gave his perspective on the process and points out that it missed some obvious criteria when the recommendation was made.
"I think it's fair to say there was deep shock and disappointment on Tuesday," he told Joe Molloy, adding: "Nobody saw this coming - we all thought we were in a very good place going into this.
"I would have to say, there's an element of 'you don't win so you're going to complain about the process'. In saying that, if you do look at the places where we fell down, I think it's fair to say there's a very narrow interpretation of certain criteria.
"It looks like people going through a procurement process and there are elements of our bid that are quite nuanced. If you look at stadia as one example - so yes some of our stadia aren't ready but they will be ready. But, if you take South Africa, for example, and I think part of our problem is that we were focusing our guns on France and South Africa kind of came up the ropes - you look at South Africa, they do have stadia that are 40/45,000 as their smallest but they won't fill them.
"They are also an hour to ninety minutes outside (the cities), the grounds. Some of these PRO14 matches are being moved from big stadia to smaller stadia because they simply can't fill their grounds.
"And you take the Irish stadia where they talk about Killarney as one example where yes, you might have a smaller attendance, I can kind of guarantee that on a Tuesday night if it was Tonga and Japan playing - I'm pretty sure that would be full. There's aslo the fact that the grounds are smack, bang in the middle of towns.
"I don't think it was fairly evaluated in some criteria on where these stadia are actually located."
The full Sunday Paper Review can be heard here:
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