Lions heartache just a memory as Irish switch focus
As is their wont, Irish and Welsh fans mingled freely. Smiles, laughter and a few beers were the order of the day. The only hangover from last summer — aside from the last-minute scuffle that saw Mike Phillips sent to the line — was a white sheet draped from the window of one of the houses that encircle the Aviva Stadium.
‘Brian O’Driscoll stars in The Lions King’, it proclaimed. Warren Gatland was credited in the role of Scar. Naturally.
Gatland must not have seen it. He spoke afterwards about the famed Irish hospitality and how his hosts for the latter half of the week had wished him nothing but well in Ballsbridge.
Which isn’t to say that there weren’t Irish players playing last weekend for whom the sight of Gatland and red jerseys will have helped focus minds and pull an extra 1% from their inner core when it mattered most.
Rory Best, who endured a torment on tour with the Lions last summer that was due to his own form at the time was candid enough to admit that.
“It was obviously a disappointing tour from an Ireland point of view, probably right across the board. But the big thing was that this was about team performance.
“We didn’t speak about individual battles, we spoke about making sure that everyone plays their part in a team performance.
“There’s probably no greater example than the way Brian O’Driscoll played. He didn’t go out of his way to make a point, he just did what he always does and that’s play unbelievably well in the team environment to make sure that we get a performance and ultimately get the result. That’s what we’re about — performances and results.”
The shame of it is that the whole ‘BOD v Gattie’ storyline so overshadowed one of a far more interesting bent: namely the meeting of Europe’s two most successful coaches of recent times.
Between them, Joe Schmidt and Gatland have claimed three ‘domestic’ leagues, two Challenge/Parker Pen Cups, three Heineken Cups, three Six Nations championships and a Lions tour series win.
Trace a finger over their respective CVs and the common link, apart from the accumulation of silverware, is one of men who have invariably improved teams whatever their strengths or weaknesses at the time of their arrival.
They are both winners but they breast the finishing line in very different ways and so it was ironic to hear Gatland talk about the simplistic means by which his opposite number’s side had claimed victory on this their first meeting as head coaches.
Unlike Gatland, who has long had to contend with unabashed condescension for his ‘Warrenball’ approach to rugby, Schmidt made his reputation as a back-line guru who could make his players weave beautiful and penetrating patterns.
And then you think back to Saturday.
This game was won by a team that kicked almost twice as much from the hands, whose number of offloads was less than 50% that of Wales and who launched a man with Brian O’Driscoll’s deft skills down the middle as a battering ram.
This was won by a team that scurried like sewer rats at the breakdown and used the maul like a bludgeon. Wales should have been flattered by such imitation and yet Gatland faced the charge afterwards that his side had become predictable.
No-one can say that of Schmidt’s, not yet, and it is unlikely that what we saw two days ago and against Scotland six days earlier will not be accompanied by considerably more variety and trickery as the weeks and months pass and the Kiwi has the time to work his magic on the training paddock.
Rory Best suggested as much when he discussed those mauls.
“We are going to see how good it is now because people are going to see that Ireland are a mauling team again now and that in its own right brings its own problems,” said the Ulster hooker. “They will try to work us out.”
Best added an addendum to that about how the players had complete trust in their forwards coach John Plumtree and the wider management team and those feelings work both ways, with Schmidt’s talk of a player-centred approach.
Halfway into his first campaign as head coach and Schmidt is well in credit. He has his first significant scalp swinging from his belt although we should ration the plaudits. He still has some way to go yet to match Gatland’s longevity and success with Wales.
