Pouting Pumas point the finger
He accused them of “begging” with referee Tony Spreadbury to dish out a series of yellow cards and to even send off some of his players. And so it went on from Pichot, his half-back partner, Felipe Contepomi and coach Marcelo Loffreda.
Enter Eddie O’Sullivan and Brian O’Driscoll and suddenly it was a different story altogether. Now we were hearing from O’Sullivan how six Irish players had been gouged, five in the eyes and one in the mouth. One had needed a stitch to the side of his eye.
Given what had happened on the pitch, such a controversial ending to the day was somewhat inevitable and certainly distracted from a less than impressive performance by O’Sullivan’s side.
Fact is that they were played off the ground for most of the opening 40 minutes - and that had nothing whatsoever to do with dubious tactics by the Pumas. With the Irish scrum bullied around the place and the forward duel going handsomely in the visitors’ favour, the only surprise was that their half time advantage was no greater than 16-6. As expected, Pichot was his usual will-o’-the-wisp self at the base of the scrum, Felipe Contepomi gave Leinster coach Declan Kidney much food for thought with an outstanding performance.
The Leinster stand-off popped over a penalty almost from the kick-off and then centre Federico Aramburu scampered past non-existent Irish tackles to touch down between the posts. Contepomi tapped over and Ireland looked more than a little vulnerable. They did have some good moments, not least when the excellent Anthony Foley careered through the middle only to run out of support and it also took a brilliant tackle by the inspired Contepomi to drag down O’Gara when he looked sure to score at the posts.
But the Irish No 10 did drop a neat goal in the eighth minute and belted over a penalty into the wind on 33 minutes only for Contepomi to respond in kind with two penalties. It’s all history now how Ireland scraped home with O’Gara’s second dropped goal in the 79th minute. Who could blame the Argentinians for feeling so downhearted and perhaps it was this factor that provoked Pichot’s post match comments.
“It’s very hard to take and it’s very hard to see Irish players begging the match officials to give out yellow cards”, he declared. “I think that’s very unsporting. I think rugby should be played with the ethics that used to be there. It was like that for the last 35 minutes and led to the yellow card for line-out obstruction. You can draw your own conclusions. This was a friendly game. We are an amateur side. We don’t get paid, we came here to represent our country and all we ask is a fair challenge and respect. I played for seven years in England and played against Lawrence Dallaglio, Martin Johnson and never heard them ask for a yellow card. Today I heard Ireland ask five times for yellow cards and for people to be sent off. I heard that from Brian O’Driscoll on two occasions.”
Pichot also claimed that the yellow carding of Gonzalo Longo for obstruction at a line-out was harsh. He probably had a case although the push on Malcolm O’Kelly was both blatant and deliberate. The Irish claims of gouging weren’t all that apparent and now the Italian match commissioner has to peruse the video and see if any player merits citing.
“Had we lost, we could not have complained,” acknowledged O’Sullivan. “They were the better side in the first half. But we showed a lot of composure and it was a great victory in that respect. We were disappointed with the way they approached the game. Six of our players were gouged and we have reported that to the match commissioner. It’s against the spirit of the game to gouge players. We can’t pretend it didn’t happen and we’re very upset about it. They had two players suspended after the World Cup game as well.”
O’Driscoll added: “I was aware that a number of people were being gouged. There’s no place in rugby for that. Not once did I say we want a yellow card. I was just bringing to the referee’s attention that they were persistently infringing and he said he would deal with it.”
O’Sullivan was forced to concede that “we did dig a hole for ourselves. There were things we did badly in the first half. We missed a few first-up tackles. We just didn’t get out of the blocks.”
Indeed. The coach will be disappointed at how defensively poor they were for the Pumas try and on a few other occasions as well. He will look at the scrum and wonder why the visitors were never on the retreat at the set piece. Nor did the Irish make the anticipated impression in the loose, O’Sullivan admitting that the conditions were not suited to Johnny O’Connor’s type of game. On the plus side was another mighty performance by Anthony Foley with Paul O’Connell and Malcolm O’Kelly also outstanding. O’Gara’s form means that Ireland will always be a difficult side to beat and his 21 point contribution reflected that. He was helped by the quality of Peter Stringer’s swift and accurate service.
A game that will be remembered for all the wrong reasons ended with Ireland’s third victory of the autumn campaign. But O’Sullivan readily acknowledged that “we are not the finished article.”
He certainly got that one right.
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