Supply-side economics gone askew.

Water comes out of the ground. Stick a bottling shed over the source and hey presto! Then some marketing twat comes up with a sexual label and some mystical twaddle about source, purity and vitality. Added value? Zip! What a con.

Quite apart from the paradox I have an interest in the concept of added value.

Because from a rugby perspective the player with the most added value is the least rewarded in terms of recognition and, more importantly, in terms of being rewarded financially for his services.

I'm talking about props. Sure they are all missing a chromosome or two, but you would have to be to play there.

The rugby public don't quite grasp how much has to be done before the product can be used, how much refinement is needed and, in case you didn't quite fully grasp it when Ireland's squad for Down Under was named, just how scarce they really are.

A lot of the problem stems from the notion of why you would become a prop in the first place (it ain't exactly Hollywood) but it does have compensations . . . all props live in their own little world.

Years ago I spent some time in California on the way back home from the World Cup in '87. I had met a crowd who were studying at UCLA and headed back to one of the groups apartment for a few late brewskis. The guy who owned the apartment seemed like a normal, well-adjusted guy. I crashed in one of the spare rooms, safe to say that I was transmogrified. I awoke in the early afternoon with a splitter to the strangest sound I'd ever heard. I walked into the room and there was the guy who owned the apartment playing the biggest tuba I'd ever seen, one of those body-size gold and silver affairs.

He had seemed normal a few hours ago, but I knew something was wrong.

He told me that he started playing this thing when he was 11 years of age, how many hours he practised, what fun it was, what type of breathing exercises he had to do, what sounds it could make (it all sounded like oompa-pa to me), that God had put him on this planet and given him the talent to play the tuba.

If you are a rugby player and you dream of being a tuba player, it probably means you are a prop. For the same reason I couldn't fathom why yer man played the tuba, I can't understand why fellas become props.

If you are a rugby player your skills set are natural things . . . running, passing, kicking, covering, tackling, chasing, catching . . . anyone can do them to a degree.

You, dear reader, would fancy your chances of completing most of those tasks. But could you scrummage? Could you manage to time your hit against 140odd stone coming in against you at pace?

Would you feel confident against a 19stone Neanderthal with a wire brush for a chin, whose neck size is bigger than his IQ? How would you feel if his mate with number 2 on his back moved over a tad and both of them went to work on you? Would you be comfortable about being able to cope with the hydraulic effect of two forces pushing in different directions at the same time? Would you be confident that every time you felt instability that you could safely collapse without breaking you neck? How do you know what the best thing to do is when your opposite number takes the scrum down a foot or turns his shoulder inside and gets underneath you? Would you have the skill, confidence or strength to counter it?

Why would anyone enjoy or endure such misery? The skill, strength and concentration levels are as high at line-out time and kick-off time. The drudgery too of hoisting law-de-daw second-rows into the air to claim the glory . . . while the chain gang slave on the ground below.

Oompa-pa oompa-pa. I don't know how they are drawn to the flame or how they survive to become the finished product. From school it's about a seven-year process before they come off the assembly line ready and able to compete.

Ireland's assembly line is on a two-day week. Some of the models who got through quality control are best left alone to try and get a bit of value added. If John Hayes (left) had a bit of a mercenary streak in him he should retire immediately. He would be able to come straight back in with 1 million per annum. It would be the only way he would realise his proper value. Ireland's problems would only become known by his absence. Loads of Volvic wingers floating around the place on big dough. Scarcity of good props and they are paid below their market rate.

I see a medical expert has produced a study showing the high incidence of spinal injury in rugby and specifically at scrum-time. He has made his recommendation to abolish scrummaging. His research is hard to argue with, but I think you have just as high a chance of getting hurt in the tackle or at ruck time.

Either way, parents see, observe and make their minds up. Their son is not going into the mincer and the fall-off continues.

Ireland have brought Horan and Hayes to play in the three tests. Simon Best has a long-term injury I hope he recovers well from. Of the two replacements, Peter Bracken and Bryan Young, Bracken has possibilities, although he wasn't in Eddies thoughts at all until Simon Best got injured. The Ulster prop will be doing well to get back for the World Cup, so Ireland will really have to work on Bracken.

At 27 he has a good six years in him. He is injury prone, but at Wasps his body shape has changed. He has lost the Dunlop radial that hung around his mid-riff.

Again it is no surprise like Corrigan and Hayes that he is a converted secondrow. So he can't be called a real tuba player. I look behind him and I see freefall. It is important that both Young and Bracken get at least 25 minutes of action in one of the three tests available and have a bit of value added or Ireland will be looking into an abyss.