Apparently Mikaera Tewhata has a beautiful beachfront studio to rent in the seaside village of Hossegor, about 25kms from Bayonne.

The advert for the apartment talks of surf, water sports and golf but sadly there's no mention of a slap in the mouth.

That privilege must be reserved for special guests, like our very own Brian O'Driscoll, who had the misfortune of colliding with the fist of Bayonne's New Zealand born second-row cum property mogul at the Stade Jean Dauger on Thursday night.

Condemnation of Tewhata's actions have been swift from the French Federation but it all smacks of bolting the stable door after the horse is already halfway across town.

Ireland's fixture with Bayonne always had a hint of menace about it and while hindsight is a marvellous privilege, you really do have to wonder how Eddie O'Sullivan, if the fixture was his idea, ever thought that playing his first 15 against a side of pumped-up Frenchmen in front of 15,000 locals was ever a good idea.

Perhaps he should have asked Mick McCarthy for advice. Back on 25th May 2002, the Irish football team played a pre-World Cup friendly against Sanfreece Hiroshima in Japan. During the game, a Cameroon player by the name of Tulio attempted to amputate Jason McAteer's right-foot with a sliding tackle. Seven days later Ireland were due to play Cameroon in their opening World Cup match and the conspiracy theorists had a field day. Just like they've had since Thursday's incident. On the morning of the game, Richard Dourthe, Bayonne's former French international centre stated rather coldly in L'Equipe that if "Ireland have to play without O'Driscoll, it's better for us".

Over the past few days, French rugby websites have been packed full of contributors thanking "les Bayonnais" for roughing Ireland up, with one poster in particular expressing disbelief that Ireland had actually fielded out their first team in such a hostile environment. "BOD won't be the last player to fall on that particular ground, " he or she concluded.

All of which makes the decision to squeeze in this Bayonne game rather baffling. If this Irish team needed another match to prime themselves for the World Cup, then a fixture against another international side should have been arranged for yesterday afternoon.

On the other hand, if the Irish management only realised in the past few weeks that they needed another game to get their troops perfectly oiled for the tournament, then they stand guilty of poor planning. It's a mess and you can only hope that the players who emerged from Stade Jean Dauger with only a few bumps and bruises have got enough from the game to go someway towards cancelling out the damage inflicted upon O'Driscoll's right cheek. The words of Donncha O'Callaghan afterwards, however, would suggest that the players had a few questions of their own about the worth of the fixture.

"You leave the pitch with regrets and you wonder when you get inside is anything like that worth it? , " said the Munster second-row. "What's the point in playing a fixture like this? Could we have played ourselves or played a provincial team and not had as many cheap shots? There's no comeback from it. There's no point in playing a game like this. If we throw a punch, get a red card and miss the World Cup, they throw punches and it's nothing to them. They're heroes around the place. It's just cheap and I think it kills off what makes rugby great, the way amateurs and professionals can mix, and I think it's disappointing to see what happened."

Which brings us back around to the man himself. A sigh of relief was practically audible around the country on Friday morning when xrays confirmed that rather than fracturing his cheekbone - an injury that would have needed an operation - the Irish captain had merely sustained a fracture to his sinus and a laceration below his right eye, injuries that would keep him on the sideline for between three to four weeks. A sinus fracture is still considered a fairly serious if relatively uncommon injury but the IRFU insist O'Driscoll will be back in contention for a place in Ireland's starting line-up for their second Pool D fixture against Georgia in Bordeaux, which is not quite the disaster it could have been.

That's of course if you swallow the information that the IRFU have offered us. It's always useful to cast a critical eye over statements from organisations who have something to lose from bad news and rumours emanating from France were suggesting something different entirely than what the IRFU had stated in the early hours of Friday morning. Word from Bayonne's Saint Leon Hospital on Friday appeared to suggest that the Irish captain had in fact fractured his cheekbone and that his World Cup participation was very much in doubt.

But just like we shouldn't necessarily believe what the IRFU are feeding us, we should also be a bit wary of any information coming from a vested interest, as French sources undoubtedly are in this case. Believe who you like on this one but you'll usually find in situations like this that the real truth lies somewhere in between the two stories.

So as O'Sullivan, the rest of his squad and Irish supporters around the globe offer up a few novenas for the Irish captain's recovery, the coach will also have to come up with a plan not only for Ireland's pool opener against Namibia, but also the rest of his side's games should O'Driscoll be ruled out of the tournament.

In truth, he doesn't have an awful lot of options to work with, a situation that is principally down to his own narrow-mindedness. More on that later, but for Friday's game against Italy he needs to put out what he considers his first choice replacement for O'Driscoll.

With Shane Horgan out, it's imperative that Gordon D'Arcy remains at 12, which basically leaves Andrew Trimble, Geordan Murphy and possibly Gavin Duffy as the three most likely to fill the number 13 shirt. The Ulster man starred at outside centre in the Irish side that qualified for the U21 World Cup final back in the summer of 2004 but he's been shunted onto the wing under O'Sullivan since his graduation to the senior ranks in 2005. He'd undoubtedly be rusty in the position, as proved when selected there against Argentina in the first test in Santa Fe this summer, as would Murphy, who last played there against Australia in Perth back in 2003.

O'Driscoll was rested for that particular tour and while the Murphy didn't particularly shine in that game, he undoubtedly has the talent to fill the slot in an emergency as has Duffy, who has played there for Harlequins in the past.

The problem with all three players is that none possess any real international experience at 13 and as we've mentioned, the fault for this lies completely at the door of the coach. As he's chased results over the five years, and won nothing of any real consequence, O'Sullivan has seriously neglected his back-up squad and it now appears to be coming back to haunt him.

Three years ago he spoke about finding some cover for O'Driscoll but he's never really done anything about it bar trying a couple of players . . .

the likes of Kieran Lewis and Barry Murphy - in 'A' games over the past couple of years.

Perhaps if he had selected either one of these two in competitive fixtures, and not the poorly prepared sides that took the field against Argentina, they may have put their hand up for selection but as it is, there isn't one player in Irish rugby ready to step into O'Driscoll's boots.

Perhaps O'Sullivan could learn a thing or two from Graham Henry. "Rotation is essential, " the All Blacks coach said a couple of weeks back. "If you get an injury and another guy hasn't played for three months, we would be shot by the critics if the guy coming in was off the pace and couldn't adapt. If a player hasn't played for three months and then plays in a big game like a World Cup quarter- or semifinal, his performance is going to be very questionable."

Much like O'Sullivan's rotation policy, if you can call it that, has been over the past few years. Let's just hope that O'Driscoll heals as the IRFU predict and the coach's myopic tendencies, and a Kiwi's fist, don't scupper Ireland's chances in France.