Click here for my pre-match podcast “Sean-son D’Amour”
At full-time, albeit with a few pints on me, I put this result down to “knock-on gremlins”. It’s as though there’s some kind of switch that controls Ireland’s ability to produce and it can’t remain in the “on” position for more than five minutes at a time.
Now I know stats aren’t everything in sport, but they do give you a sense of how a match went once you focus on the right ones.
And I know my headline reads “three tries to one”, but to get to the heart of what happened at the Aviva Stadium yesterday, you need to go a little deeper and the following bit of info sums it up for me.
Total Irish phases in French 22 just before Heaslip try (pic) = 25. Total French phases in Irish 22 for entire match = SIX. Total points from those visits into our 22 = ZERO.
I don’t know about you but that tells me our defence was as solid as it has ever been.
So how did the French put 25 points on the board?
Poor discipline in the forwards, strict application of the “not releasing” laws by Dave Pearson, immaculate place-kicking from Morgan Parra and one, yes just the ONE missed tackle by Gordon D’Arcy.
OK – so in the most part we did well when they had the ball and whenever we gave them a sniff, they took their chance. Fine.
Now we get to the main question : Why didn’t we put more than 25 points on the board ourselves?
Well the knock-ons are what will grab the headlines and definitely had us pulling our hair out while watching, but things weren’t quite right in other areas, like situational play-calling, team selections and use of the bench.
I was watching the match in Sinnotts with some friends, and one of them, Tom Power, made a good observation regarding our lineouts when this match was done and dusted.
First one we had, Best threw to O’Connell at 2 and it was a clean take. Now of course you can’t do that ALL the time, but it was the last time we did it, and after a couple of losses at 4, towards the end of the game when we were gifted an attacking position outside the French 22, we threw long for the first time and it went nowhere and yet another chance went a-begging. Why, Tom wondered, didn’t we throw to 2 more often?
On the selection side of things, I was hoping O’Leary wouldn’t start, yet he did, and the ball was STILL shockingly too slow from the rucks, but he did manage what he does best, ie barrelling over the line for a try. Personally I’d prefer Stringer’s quicker ball usage to one try that probably would have been scored by someone else anyway, but it seems Tomás is Declan’s man.
And as for the half-back combinations, well I’ll never understand Kidney’s decisions there. O’Gara did some good things when he came on, but he also did some bad. And Sexton wasn’t exactly flawless but his missed conversion came right after he got a clatter and O’Leary’s slow ball MUST be a factor in the running game being off kilter. But after two whole matches refusing to go with an all-Leinster pairing that has been so successful in the Heineken Cup, it’s pointless trying to second guess the coach so I won’t bother.
Plus you have the likes of Leo Cullen and Sean Cronin chucked onto the pitch with the clock is in the high 70s. I would’ve thought that’s something you only do at schoolboy level with the un-talented kids you feel sorry for, not players of their calibre. Who knows…if Cronin had been on for the entire final quarter and had the speed of the game he may have held that last pass and our analysis would be a lot different.
Now it’s time for the paragraph where I talk about the opposition. And normally, when my team has lost, I say something like “I don’t want to take any credit away from them, blah, blah…” Only this time, I can’t say that. France were at best average. We had them on the back foot from the kick-off then extended a helping hand to get them back onto the front foot. And they STILL found ways to give us last minute chances to pinch the spoils.
As Irish fans we can look at this two ways…either we can assume the team is going to suffer the same wastefulness every week from now until the World Cup OR we can give them the benefit of the doubt and assume Declan & his brains trust are playing the “long game”.
Munster’s lunchtime defeat in Treviso reminded me yet again of Leinster’s thrashing out there in September and just how bad things looked for the province at the time. THEN I think of where they are now. It’s a lot of the same players, folks. And they’re trying to adapt their game to new law interpretations in time for the World Cup. If that’s what Kidney is at, we can hardly expect him to abandon everything now and start again.
So more than likely there will be very few changes to the side to play at Murrayfield in two weeks. I wouldn't be surprised to see both D’Arcy and O’Leary still there. If there were to be any casualties it would probably be in the back three, but not Luke Fitzgerald; even though I don’t think he deserved his 15 jersey in the “team of the round” (I’d have given it to Sean Lamont). Although both Earls and McFadden did well, we badly need a fit Tommy Bowe to be able to join the line.
I still think the Triple Crown is irrelevant these days, but the way our schedule works out it’s there to be won, plus we could TECHNICALLY still win the Championship although an England-spoiler role looks more likely.
To achieve any of that, those goddam passes are going to have to stick.
Also this weekend…
ENGLAND 59-13 ITALY
Martin Johnson’s men really showed Ireland how to put away the Italians at Twickers today, and in fact could have had another three or four tries with all the chances they had. Italy left their A-game back in Rome, particularly in the tackling department, and were brushed aside by England’s tight organisation and slick offloading. Ashton of course will make the headlines with his four tries, but Flood was chief orchestrator. I wouldn’t go hanging white and red ribbons on the trophy just yet, however – they’ll top the table for the next 2 weeks but have sterner tests to come.
SCOTLAND 6-24 WALES
No match at this level of rugby should be decided by the team who took more advantage of their opponents’ mistakes before half-time, yet this one was. First, the hapless Parks was so slow with an early clearance it was blocked by a prop, then Wales helped themselves to sixteen first-quarter points. In the second, after Phillips fluffed an easy catch and TWO of his team-mates saw yellow, the home side could only muster 3 in reply. It was like whenever someone did something good, they felt they had to immediately cock-up to restore balance. Painful to watch throughout.
