Silenced as English hit high notes

ENGLAND lived up to their ranking as the No 1 side in the world and left hapless Ireland wondering just what had hit them.

A packed and colourful Lansdowne Road sang like never before prior to the commencement of hostilities, but long before the finish they had been well and truly silenced by an English team that dominated in every sector and never released the grip they took on the proceedings with a soft try by Lawrence Dallaglio after eight minutes.

That score inspired Dallaglio to arguably his best-ever performance for England and he subsequently came in for considerable praise from coach Clive Woodward. One suspected, too, that the English team as a whole derived new confidence from the seven-pointer.

They went on to lead 13-6 at half-time, having played against the meaningful wind and with their defence absolutely water-tight, there was never any likelihood of Ireland saving the day in the second period. Instead, England clicked into cruise mode and left sad Ireland to accept a 42-6 drubbing.

The Irish forwards couldn’t get enough of the ball and so the side as a whole spent much of the afternoon defending. Accordingly, they were sure to tire entering the final quarter, and when they did, England pounced in decisive fashion and made Ireland look very moderate indeed. England have improved from match to match in this championship and will now head off to the World Cup in the autumn with the confidence sky-high.

“Today was all about winning and not about level of performance,” claimed Woodward who, in any event, certainly got both. “We are very pleased and it was a great result for us. For that group not to have won a Grand Slam would have been sad. The ramifications of not winning were huge for us. But we have now proved that we have a big-match team. We have blown away the myth that we cannot play big matches or that we cannot win playing away from home.”

Woodward accepted that the scoreline did not reflect the trend of the game and congratulated Eddie O’Sullivan on a fine campaign, noting: “Ireland were well beaten today by a good team, but they have nothing to be ashamed of and I expect that they and other Northern Hemisphere countries can do well in the World Cup.”

Woodward is so impressed with Ireland’s progress that he suggested: “They are where we were two years ago.” He meant it as a compliment and it was accepted as such by Eddie O’Sullivan, who in my view has done superbly well to win four of their five championship matches. Let’s face it, this is not a team composed of superstars; in fact there are very few of that stature in the squad, so they can be proud of much of what they have achieved over the past couple of months.

“It’s a nice compliment to be told we are creeping up on England,” said O’Sullivan. “But they’ll take heart that we didn’t score any tries against them and that’s disappointing for us. I think we’re coming. I think it’s fair to say we’ve come a fair road this year. I know we feel very down this afternoon, it’s a very disappointed changing room. It was an eleven-game season and we’ve won ten of them and when the dust settles, we’ll look back on what was a good season for us.”

The first half yesterday was a veritable cracker, and even though England constantly looked dangerous, especially when the sublime Jonny Wilkinson gained possession, Ireland also had their moments. One recalls a moment when they produced a delightful sweeping right to left attack and Geordan Murphy appeared to be left with an overlap. However, he veered infield when a pass to Denis Hickie just might have opened the English defence. After that, though, they closed up shop and their defensive coach Phil Larder was the recipient of many compliments last night.

“This was the number-one team in the world on top of their game,” admitted O’Sullivan. “To be fair, we stayed with them for a good period and we had a very good second quarter in the opening half. We needed to score at that point, but they defended very well. We were inches away on occasions. Then they tagged on a drop goal almost against the run of play just before half-time and that was a real kick in the guts for us.”

However, England really ruled the roost in the second half and their first Grand Slam since 1995 was assured long before the excellent South African referee Jonathan Kaplan sounded his final whistle.

O’Sullivan commented: “They strangled us up front and struck at the crucial times and Tindall’s try was probably the stake in our hearts.”

Ironically, Man-of-the-Match Jonny Wilkinson was off the field at that time, one of four Englishmen to require stitching through the 80 minutes, but Paul Grayson was on hand to pop over the conversion and at 20-6 on the hour, the game was up for the Irish.

The rival coaches agreed that the scoreline was unfair on Ireland and O’Sullivan made a fair point when insisting that “we were running out of defence trying to make something happen and we paid a price for that. I suppose we could have kicked it into the stand and run the clock down and kept the score down. So all credit to the side as a whole, but on the day the better team won and we have no complaints.”

England had so many aces. The forwards were awesome with Dallaglio at his storming best at No 8 and Richard Hill, with Martin Johnson not far behind. Hooker Steve Thompson is developing into a modern-day Keith Wood and his open-field running was so powerful that one longed to have the likes of Woody out there to put a stop to his gallop.

And with the pack so much in control, it was inevitable that Wilkinson would run the show from out-half. He well deserved his Man-of-the-Match tag for his was another performance for Englishmen to drool over and for all of Ireland to curse. He even dropped his two goals with the “wrong” leg but in actual fact, he is now as near two-footed as it is possible to be.

Nobody should dance on the grave of Irish rugby in spite of this rather humiliating scoreline. For one thing, Keith Wood wasn’t the only notable injury absentee, and if some of the walking wounded are restored to full fitness and effectiveness, then the future can still be bright.

Each and every one needed to be at his very best yesterday and that just wasn’t the case. Even Brian O’Driscoll knocked on a couple of passes early in the game and generally he was well policed by the English tacklers.

Kevin Maggs gave it his best shot and Geordan Murphy did many good things and Peter Stringer, too, played up to his customary high standard. The David Humphreys-Ronan O’Gara controversy continues unabated after this latest episode. I felt Humphreys didn’t kick as well as he has done in recent matches and there was probably a case for introducing O’Gara before the 64th minute not long after Tindall’s game-breaking try.