Large media farewell for the straight shooting Irish
Normally, only a handful of writers would feel duty-bound to turn up to report on a nation already eliminated. However, it was as if Ireland, not France, had qualified for Sydney next week-end, such was the attendance. True, Keith Wood was there and most were curious about his retirement thoughts 24 hours on. But there has scarcely been a journalist in Australia over the past five weeks or so who didn't believe that the Irish were the most articulate, forthcoming and wittiest of them all.
In this respect, coach Eddie O'Sullivan has led from the front.
He has given a full, and (where possible) courteous response to every question a newsman's dream.
"It was a big ask to make the quarter-finals because of the pool we were in and we were very aware that getting there would define our World Cup," he said. "In some ways, it hasn't, which is strange. I think our performances against Argentina and Australia redefined our World Cup in a sense that it gave us an expectation that we could reach the semi-final. Having achieved your goal of the quarter-finals and raised expectations beyond that, you've got to write that down as a very good World Cup for Ireland. That doesn't take away from the sick feeling you have the morning after you lose a Test game. Then you've got to balance that against the fact that we lost the Test to a fantastic French side that was really in the zone. Put it all together and, yeah, a good World Cup for Ireland."
O'Sullivan feels New Zealand will squeeze through one semi-final against Australia and while he accepts that England have the potential to beat anybody in the world, the fact that they're not "in the zone" has O'Sullivan favouring the French.
"They believe they can do it and with the discipline and the focus and the power of their forwards, it's a very unusual French team organised, focused, consistent, very aggressive and they play rugby on top of that."
Interestingly, O'Sullivan claims that "the game is moving inexorably towards hand-to-hand combat with a ball. We're down to the four teams with the most muscle in the tournament. It's getting harder and harder for skill to overcome strength. It's a power sport, a collision sport, and might is right in that sense because it gets results. If you look back on some of the weaker nations who were knocked out before the quarter-finals ... they played some fantastic rugby. Some of the skills of the Japanese, fantastic lines of running, beautiful hands, incredibly clinical at the break down. But then they get rag-balled to death in the last twenty minutes and it's over for them.
"That's a worry for us, how far we can get with our playing base before we hit the big, big teams. For the first twenty minutes yesterday, the French just pummelled the life out of us. They were bigger, stronger and more physical and there's not much you can do about it."
On a more positive note, O'Sullivan insisted that Ireland were "now playing a brand of rugby as good anybody in the world once we set up a platform to do it. We didn't do that in the first half against France, we did it to some extent in the second so I think we're going in the right direction."
Asked about those who helped to lift Irish fortunes apart from the obvious; like Keith Wood, Brian O'Driscoll and Paul O'Connell O'Sullivan referred immediately to Marcus Horan, "a young prop who came off the bench and made an impact every time".
He also paid tribute to Simon Easterby for his contribution and Shane Horgan for overcoming injury "while the good news is that there are a few guys at home too young for this World Cup who should certainly feature in the not too distant future".
Apart from Wood, O'Sullivan expects his players to see this season out. As for the next World Cup, he commented: "It's not like you empty the cupboard next Monday. You still have to compete at Six Nations level and in summer tours and the best way to do it is to make some transitions over the next few years and try to get the 2007 squad together at the close of 2005. We still have some good guys around for the next two years who won't go to the next World Cup but it will be very important in the building of the next squad that they should be there."
O'Sullivan's admiration and respect for Keith Wood seems to grow by the day and when he was asked how he would set about replacing the great hooker, he responded: "I won't try to replace him, and I never said I could. What we'll do is work around the problem. When he was injured early in the year, we spread the leadership load. As a hooker, that's just the genetic luck of the draw. We don't have another Keith Wood. I had a fall back plan for the World Cup but fortunately I didn't have to use it. I now have to move on to that and the foundations are in place."
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