But — the word that must be banned in Irish dressing room
When I hear ‘but’, an excuse can’t be far behind, an imploring, an explanation when everyone else has moved on. It’s done and dusted.
Jamie Heaslip hit the right note this week in dousing the raging post-mortems into last Saturday’s loss to New Zealand. It’s done. Can we move on now? We’ve got Australia on Saturday.
But shouldn’t Sam Cane have been carded, perhaps red-carded for that almighty clock on Robbie Henshaw?
But the TMO couldn’t have been sure All Black out-half Beauden Barrett grounded the ball for that try?
But Ireland lost three key players in the opening 22 minutes?
But surely Malakai Fekitoa had to be red-carded for that citable high tackle on Simon Zebo.
But why didn’t the referee Jaco Peyper go upstairs to establish if there was a forward forward for the final All Black try?
And here’s the only time I will use the word in this column: But weren’t Ireland in the green zone for 20 minutes and couldn’t convert territory and possession into a single try?
If Ireland is looking for sympathy — and I doubt the management and players are — they’ve come to the wrong place and are on the wrong track.
I’m not sure how people arrived at this notion that last Saturday’s game was brutal in terms of the physicality. This is test rugby. It wasn’t a brutal game in the context of real full-on, no-regard-for-wellbeing rugby. Search on YouTube for Clermont-Munster from 2008, when Tomás O’Leary clashed with Benoit Baby close to our tryline. Bone-shuddering this newspaper called it, if I remember. That was brutal.
Robbie Henshaw was unlucky. I don’t believe there was any intent from Sam Cane, I can fully appreciate how that collision would happen. That wasn’t a yellow card.
The referee’s performance has come in for scrutiny, as it frequently does. Joe Schmidt looked frustrated in the booth, and I am guessing what annoyed him is that Ireland’s discipline is so good, but what’s outside their control is what New Zealand do without the ball. Joe knew that other referees in the same situation might have afforded Ireland a one-man advantage.
This is professional rugby and you can’t press the pause button. Players mistime their actions, they are tired, their heart-rate is going 190 beats a minute. There’s a crowd roaring at them, they get excited, they do crazy things at times, and your name is Fekitoa.
Here’s how a player with good intentions can see red: I run into you, you put me back on my arse, but I fall in such a way that any part of my upper body hits the ground first. My team is at home. Depending on how pumped the crowd is, you’re seeing yellow or red. Players are getting cards for this and it could destroy the game.
In Racing’s Top 14 final against Toulon last summer, there was no fear of Matt Giteau getting injured in that key incident with Racing’s Maxime Machenaud, but our nine got sent off and, ever since, players are playing the referee. Henshaw got an almighty bang, but I felt it was an accident.
CJ Stander will start against Australia tomorrow and even at the time it seemed strange that he was lost to a HIA because he looked perfect charging off the pitch. Five years ago, there’s no way he was coming off the pitch, but second-guessing the doc is a dangerous and foolish game and I’d prefer protocol over regrets any day.
However, I can’t listen to the nonsense debate that rugby is a dangerous game. It’s not. That’s being sensationalist and the game is being harmed by ill-informed debate. Because there are so many more cameras and angles, it makes things look higher impact and more ferocious. Rory Best makes his 100th cap for Ireland tomorrow, Sean Cronin too has been around for a decade and more, and both are making good impacts on the modern game. Let’s keep some balance.
The ultimate difference against New Zealand was Beauden Barrett. The losses of Sexton, Henshaw and Stander were disruptive and there’s a way to go before another 10 can expect to have the same impact on a game as Johnny Sexton. It’s a dilemma for Schmidt and in terms of gameplan, it raises all sort of questions because Johnny has only played 80 minutes out of 320 in the autumn series of four games.
The cumulative effect of three proper players going off, especially the 10-12 connection was not ideal — with one hour left, Schmidt has no back on the bench bar Kieran Marmian. For the last 20, you want to be able to inject the fresh legs and ideas of a Gary Ringrose. The five remaining backs are sub-consciously ensuring they last the 80, which isn’t so easy when you have the All Blacks batin’ into you every chance they get.
Barrett’s acceleration for the second try was eye-opening. We haven’t seen Conor Murray, in his professional career, left for dead like that. He has faced some rapid centres and first receivers, and we’ve always taken the first attacker on that side of the scrum for granted. Murray’s got him. But he gave Barrett a little fraction of a window and it was good luck and goodnight.
Up to the test in Chicago, I felt Barrett could redefine out-half play. His acceleration is better than any other back, which is incredible in itself. He is a joy to watch with the ball. But no player has it all. His kicking needs to improve, as does his goal-kicking. He made uncharacteristic errors in Chicago, when Ireland got in his face, turning his kicking game flaky. Just shows what pressure does and that the complete package does not exist.
I made it my business to meet the Wallaby coaching staff in their Paris hotel last week, Michael Cheika and Nathan Grey among them. It was clear they were less concerned with the France game last Saturday than they are with the test tomorrow in Dublin. In terms of their northern hemisphere ‘grand slam’, the French game didn’t count — and they’d beaten Scotland and Wales. They treated France as a freebie game and, while they showed how good they can be with the handbrake off, they nearly lost it all the same. France again underlined the problems of Top 14 rugby: Too many penalties, making it impossible to win a test match.
Cheika really wants a victory against Ireland but they will run up against a side which should be at the peak of fitness and form. Ireland played New Zealand in Chicago, changed the team totally for Canada, before loading up again for New Zealand and Australia tomorrow — a perfect month. Three big games in four weeks, I have always said, is ideal.
You have a serious issue with the mindset if anyone is talking about being weary. Pick the most-loaded Irish player and look at the games he has played so far this season. It’ll be in single figures. They need to appreciate how well they are looked after by the IRFU.
If Ireland had another three blocks of this opposition and competition in the calendar year, they could have genuine ambitions of winning the World Cup. January, April and November tests against southern hemisphere nations would so advance their game. You can have camps, training with intensity, games against Scotland, Italy, and even Wales, but New Zealand and Australia are the games that advance development tenfold.
It’s not a pipe dream either. There is an ongoing rugby calendar review and everything is on the table. In my view, we are going to have summer rugby soon.
- Just a mention of Rory Best’s 100th cap tomorrow. Look up ‘Right Stuff’ in the dictionary. There’s a picture of Best there. Also, a hat-tip to Conor O’Shea after Italy beat South Africa. This was no smash and grab. They broke the Boks and deserved to win. But South Africa are a holy show and it underlines what I wrote here last week about Ireland leaving a test series behind them last June.
