Brave and plucky is no longer enough
No more ifs, buts, or excuses. We are told day in, day out, that rugby in this country is keeping pace with the Celtic Tiger. In other words, we have never been better off and the rest had better look out.
The clash with a half-strength South African side at Lansdowne Road should be a reliable indicator of whether this is pie in the sky or the dawn of a golden era for Eddie O’Sullivan and his squad. Paul O’Connell has been saying that England had consistently fronted up to and frequently defeated the leading southern hemisphere countries in the lead-up to their World Cup triumph in 2003. The great second-row believes you just don’t turn up on the day and beat the Springboks, All Blacks and Wallabies unless you have discovered the winning habit against them in earlier games.
Honestly, if Ireland are unable to beat a Springboks team shorn of six or seven of their very best players in our own backyard, then we will have to accept that our expectation levels have soared out of control. True, we have a miserable record against South Africa and the win two years ago was born of a piece of cheeky if rather dubious opportunism by Ronan O’Gara. But that was then and this is now. As Triple Crown champions in two of the last three years and with Munster and Ulster holders of the Heineken Cup and Celtic League, Ireland’s rugby’s stock could hardly be higher.
“There are so many positives that Irish rugby have got right now”, says the Springbok coach Jake White. And even if the Springboks did win their last two games in the Tri-Nations in the early summer, much of the edge had gone off the competition by then. Prior to that, they had been at the receiving end of at least one embarrassing hammering. White followed up by picking a squad for the European tour that had at least one eye on the World Cup. No Victor Matfield, no Percy Montgomery, no Jaqe Fourie, no AJ Venter, no Os Du Randt.
Today a new back three of Bevin Fortuin, Jaco Pretorious and Francois Steyn will be unveiled. Rest assured that Ronan O’Gara’s earliest remit will be to test the three “novices” with a demonstration of his tactical kicking prowess. The flyer Bryan Habana has pulled on the Springbok jersey on 22 occasions — now he is asked to display his talents for the first time in the centre and to go head to head with two of the game’s finest, Brian O’Driscoll and Gordon D’Arcy, in the process.
South Africa seems to grow big, nasty forwards on trees, a point well made by the fact that each of their back five today stands 6ft 4ins or more in their stocking feet. While that could make them formidable opposition in the line-out — where O’Connell and Donncha O’Callaghan will be operating very much on their own — they could lack mobility around the park.
Jake White made an ass of himself on his last visit to our shores when he claimed that he believed only three Irishmen would have made a combined selection. He insists now that his clumsily spoken words were misinterpreted and further attempted to “love bomb” the opposition by pointing out that “they’ve made only one change in their team and that’s probably what most countries are envious about.”
The truth, of course, is that White could have done very much the same had he not decided to rest key men and blood others to determine if they measured up to the demands of Test and World Cup rugby. Because of South Africa’s strength in depth, he could afford to do that. But Eddie O’Sullivan’s hands are more or less tied in that regard and so it’s a case of a full Irish side taking on what the Boks manager Zola Yeye describes as “a very mixed and dynamic team.”
O’Sullivan and assistant coach Niall O’Donovan are at pains to stress that South Africa will always be serious opposition no matter the side they put on the pitch. This is true, and provided they have got that message across there should be no reason for complacency. Still, it’s a full-strength Irish side blessed with in-form players like Ronan O’Gara and Brian O’Driscoll in the back line and O’Connell and O’Callaghan up front.
This is one occasion when nothing other than a merited win, by no matter how small a margin, is essential if the momentum built up over the last couple of years, is to be maintained.
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