The date was March 6, 1999. Matt Perry & Tim Rodber got tries for England as they won 27-15 over Ireland at the old Lansdowne Road.
I'm referencing that match because I believe it relates to Saturday evening for two reasons : (1) it was Ireland's last home match before Brian O'Driscoll got his first cap for Ireland and (2) it was the last time Ireland finished a Five/Six Nations campaign without a home win. Before now.
First, as much as I was in denial about it being BOD's final fling for Ireland, just in case it was, I have to mention him before examining the action. Simply put...if jersey numbers weren't so significant to individual positions in the sport of rugby union I'd be launching a campaign to have the green number 13 retired with him once he does step down. And should this have been his last home Six Nations hurrah the way he was determined to stay on the park to the end is as fine an example of his dedication as any. But be it my head or my heart talking, I just can't help thinking we haven't seen the last of him just yet.
Anyway, back to the match...you really have to believe me that I wanted to be positive about this Monday morning writeup. If you don't, check out my preview. I was all set to be defending the lads even in defeat to the French because of injuries, the need to blood new players now the championship is gone, in fact any excuse I could get my hands on.
But then our display had to go and follow the all too familiar patterns of recent times...intelligent start, lead established, lead thrown away. When it happens once, you can blame the players. When it happens consistently, you simply have to look elsewhere.
At least I'll start with the positive, which is basically the first half hour of play where we established our 13-3 lead. You certainly can never accuse a Declan Kidney matchday XV for starting a match without a cohesive plan. And this time, unlike the English visit in virtually the same conditions, the plan was being perfectly executed.
And you don't need to be a rugby genius to work out what the plan was either. Kick-chases & lineout mauls. Plain and simple. They kept the French going backwards, they put points on the scoreboard, they put us in a position to win.
The problem I have with gameplans like that, however, is that they rely on a specific set of conditions to take place for them to work, and I don't mean the weather. Last time out against Scotland for example, we wasted several attacking lineouts because we insisted on throwing long – because clearly that was technically where we felt we could best set up the maul.
This time, the options to throw to 2 & 4 were back on the table and thus we had the Jamie Heaslip try after just 10 minutes. And Paddy Jackson added the extras as well. It was all good, wasn't it.
And I’d like to be clear that there were indeed many good performances on the day in this match from Irish players, it’s just that the way I see it, to focus on them would take away from the overall themes that defined the result. For Irish rugby fans there was nothing “George Hook-esque” in having your doubts about being ahead on the scoreboard so early, was there? We had been there many's a time before. Getting the lead was one thing, bringing it home another entirely.
Luckily for us, the French were in an even greater state of overall disarray. Whatever opinion you may have had about the choice of Irish outhalf on the day I don't think anyone but Phillipe St André himself could understand why Freddie Michalak was wearing the blue number 10 jersey given how his championship had gone before.
So why they insisted on him taking the placekicks instead of Morgan Parra (best percentage in Top14 this season) we will never know, but insist they did and although it could be said Irish cracks were beginning to show towards the end of the first half, Freddie was unable to take advantage and we had a 10-point lead going into the break.
Unfortunately those cracks continued into the second period. That is something I don't expect of Irish sides...we normally come out regrouped and refocused and I fancied a score in the opening minutes. And it's not as though we didn't have our chances to increase the lead and put the French to bed.
First up was a missed place kick by Paddy Jackson. Unfair to single him out for this? Maybe. But we have to ask ourselves what we want. Are we encouraging youngsters or are we looking for a win? I'm all for the former, as I said in my preview, but in context of the match, that kick on 44m had to be made and it wasn't.
But the real damning evidence of our match preparation came on 48m. We won a free-kick from a scrum in the French half, and they played silly-beggars which led referee Steve Walsh to award us an extra ten. Man-of-the-match Conor Murray was quick to tap and go and with help from Cian Healy and Sean O'Brien all of a sudden we had the ball deep in their 22.
This wasn't a situation created by a box kick. Nor was this a situation for an intricate lineout manoeuvre. This was your bog-standard front-foot ball in the opposition 22, something every rugby team should crave before kickoff. And I'm sorry if I sound overly negative here, but when in this situation, we had nothing.
You could say the French defence was solid at that point and I don't want to be too unfair to them. But the fact was they were ready for the situation defensively...and we weren't offensively. In fact at other stages throughout the match when we tried to put the ball through the hands the end result was a grubber from Brian O'Driscoll which is nothing more than a last resort play.
The situation was atrociously handled in my view and resulted in of all things a right-footed drop-goal attempt from Rob Kearney, definitely a low-percentage play and it was just a few minutes later that Morgan Parra was slotting over a penalty to get his side within a converted try and thus their belief was restored.
The remainder of the match was scrappy. Individual things happened that you can simply never predict taking place. Some of the mistakes were ours, like our goal-line defence falling asleep to allow Picamoles his try. Some of the mistakes were the officials, like reserve French prop Dubaty being excused first for popping his head out a goal-line scrum and then for impeding Keith Earls' attempts at pinching a victory.
And of course there seems to have been as many injuries emanating from this one match for us as there had been since the season started. We had a patchwork XV on the park for the last ten minutes. There's nothing you can do to avoid losing as many players as that in a match. Or is there?
I've had more than one reader ask me if I have an issue with the strength and conditioning regime – well, I'm not privy to it, but it certainly does bear calling into question with so many players going down so regularly. One thing is for sure...it certainly calls the whole “player management” system into question.
For me, the best way to prepare a player for any given 80-minute rugby contest is to have them playing regular 80-minute rugby contests leading up to it. If they get injured, that's the nature of the sport, and it's up to others to have replacements in situ to step up should that happen.
Does that mean I think everyone should play every week? Of course not. It's just maybe the levels of cotton wool used need looking at.
But still, I don't believe it was that kind of player management that has had us under-performing in this championship. Going into the Six Nations I honestly believe we had a decent shout of winning it. Then the captaincy issue was botched. Then we started blowing leads. Then the ROG-dropping was botched. Too many things were going wrong, and too little of it was down to the players on the pitch.
Then Conor Murray gets taken off on 62 minutes. As it happened I was as confused as anyone else, but I tried to be positive...maybe we were hoping to capitalize on front-foot ball better than we did before the Kearney drop-goal attempt? Sadly that theory went out the window when Eoin Reddan kicked away his first couple of possessions.
The last time the French came to the Aviva it was last time Tomás O'Leary started for Ireland...this was in part due to his horrendous box-kicking. This time, Murray puts in a (not always but near enough) perfect exhibition of the art and gets substituted even though our plan was clearly to continue with the practise.
All of which means the only reason for the substitution was a pre-planned 60/20 gametime split between the two scrum-halves, and if so it certainly should have been abandoned. Had they done it with Jackson & Madigan maybe it could have been defended, but Murray & Reddan are both established internationals now so the form player should have been retained as he was fit. And we all saw what happened to Reddan's season as it turned out as well. Poor, poor player management in my view.
And I haven't even gotten to the main reason I'm being negative yet! I was all for finding the silver linings until I watched England v Italy on Sunday afternoon.
Italy coach Jacques Brunel won't have to lift a finger to motivate his squad to beat Ireland in Rome next Saturday. Surely Parrisse & co will be able to draw enough inspiration from our respective displays to be ready to register their first ever competitive victory over us?
This means we need to be ready. And I don't mean ready as in chock-full of intricate plans and strategies to get us through the opening exchanges. We just need to be ready to play rugby. As simple as that. The game in Italy may be improving, but even our third best player at most positions should be able to at least match them. Which means that doing the simple things well should be enough to end this campaign on something remotely resembling a high.
So not for the first time in this championship, I won't be concerned with the matchday selection. I'll want to see how the boys come together and perform on the day.
But surely, for the love of all that's holy, there's no amount of spin that can be done to justify a new contract for Declan Kidney now? I'm as unsure to the answer of that question as I am to the result in Rome.
I think I owe it to you to finish this writeup on a positive note regarding Irish rugby. And thankfully, the Irish Women's team give me a reason to do just that. Bloody well done, girls! Six Nations champions, and trip to Milan in search of a Grand Slam to come.
From what I have seen from them in this campaign, Fiona Coughlan, Niamh Briggs & co are players that are certainly being well managed. Any odds on Philip Doyle for Kidney's job? ;-) JLP
Also this weekend…
