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Gloves off

Things got heated between Kenny Cunningham and Eamon Dunphy on RTE earlier

The pair clashed over whether John Terry would’ve improved England’s World Cup campaign.

JOHN TERRY HAS always been a divisive figure. And earlier tonight, there was a stand-off involving the RTE panel when the Chelsea captain’s name cropped up.

With Didi Hamann literally caught in the crossfire, Eamon Dunphy was asked to respond to a viewer’s question about Terry’s poor performances in South Africa four years ago and how, based on that, would he have offered anything better in Brazil.

Dunphy made a passionate defence, referring to Terry as a leader and how if he had been on the pitch, England would not have conceded a late goal against Balotelli and Luis Suarez wouldn’t have been afforded the space to score the winner for Uruguay on Thursday night. He rubbished what occurred in Terry’s last World Cup as ‘irrelevant’ and ‘history’ and said Terry would’ve been a leader in the England dressing room.

Kenny Cunningham waited patiently before responding.
http://vine.co/v/MTgb0bH11jh

And thus began an intense back and forth.

Cunningham admitted Terry and Gary Cahill would’ve been a better central defensive partnership but that Roy Hodgson was correct to leave Terry frozen out of the national setup because of non-footballing reasons. He added that Hodgson had achieved World Cup qualification with Phil Jagielka in the side and it would’ve been unfair to stand down the Everton centre-back in order to offer Terry an olive branch. Cunningham felt that instead of uniting the England dressing-room, Terry could have divided it.

Dunphy asked: “Where’s the evidence for that?” Cunningham quickly responded by saying, “There is no evidence. Just like there’s no evidence that he would’ve pulled the dressing room together.”

Touché.

Through all of this, Hamann, stuck right in the middle, understandably looked a little awkward – like that person who’s stumbled into a very public domestic and can’t go anywhere.

Watch the whole discussion here.

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