O’Sullivan expects Georgia to come out of the blocks ‘on fire’
This could well be the last-chance saloon for several of the side which flopped against Namibia, and unless the team shows drastic improvement, the reaction will be one of national outrage.
Coach Eddie O’Sullivan will be the main target for the vitriol because of the vote of confidence given to last week’s flops, but the highly paid players won’t escape should they fail to deliver.
O’Sullivan prefers not to nominate a satisfactory total of points — except to underline the need for a bonus point by scoring four tries — but should they fail to at least match the 63-14 and 70-0 score lines of 2002 and 1998, the only previous meetings of the countries, then there will be hell to pay.
And rightly so.
It will have been noted how plucky and aggressive the Georgians were in Tuesday’s clash with Argentina but coach Malkhaz Tcheishvili has made 11 changes from that side, thereby clearly demonstrating that their game against Namibia in Lens on Sept 26 is the one that means most to them.
Reckoning they have no chance of beating Ireland, they are targeting Namibia as their best chance of winning their first World Cup game. It is inconceivable that a country like Georgia could produce two teams of similar quality so you have to believe that Ireland’s task has clearly been made all the easier by so many alterations.
O’Sullivan, of course, doesn’t quite see it that way, and issued a familiar warning.
“I suppose you could see it as their weaker side but we’ve seen them in the Nations Cup and there’s not a whole lot of difference between their first and second choice players.
“They’re all playing in France and will be pretty fresh so I expect them to come out of the blocks on fire and I’m not expecting an easy ride.
“They were very much in the hunt against Argentina, who kept their composure and wore them down. When Georgia slipped off the pace in the last quarter, they were punished — but it was a ding-dong battle which was very much what you’d expect from Georgia. They are very aggressive, play hand to hand rugby, are strong at the set piece and when they had the ball, it was very hard to get it back.”
The atmosphere I detect in the Irish camp is one of hope and aspiration rather than confidence. They may very well be nervous in the opening stages because so many places are on the line and should things not go right, then the mistakes witnessed against Namibia may well be repeated.
O’Sullivan surmised: “I’d like to think we will be much better this time. It’s another game under our belts. We need to improve considerably and we need to take control of that ourselves and manage our own performance. We must be patient on the ball and not force the game like we did last week. The landscape isn’t a lot different from Namibia. There is extra pressure having played so badly. That’s the challenge that goes with the territory.”
It seems ridiculous that a team which nearly captured the Grand Slam in the Six Nations a few months ago should now be apprehensive at the prospect of taking on a Georgian team ranked 17th in the world.
Quite frankly, if the Irish forwards don’t quickly get to grips with the opposition pack (all of whom ply their trade in France, but almost entirely in the second division) and release the back line to run in the tries and keep the scoreboard active, then there is something radically wrong with Irish rugby. Any repeat of the form displayed in the last two games against Italy and Namibia simply isn’t acceptable.
The Georgians themselves would have no trouble in accepting that point. According to coach Tcheishvili, the team’s priority ahead of the match is to “work on defence first and foremost,” while prop Mamuka Magrakvelidze commented that “if we fix our mistakes we can start to attack.”
Not a sign in those comments that Georgia believe they can extend the Irish, let alone come close to beating them. And yet Brian O’Driscoll and his team are visibly apprehensive concerning the outcome.
There is fear — and it can only be alleviated by a performance that will restore belief in a group of players who have been insisting all week that they haven’t suddenly become a bad team.
However, another feeble display and those words will be ruthlessly pushed down their throats.
The referee for the game is Englishman Wayne Barnes, who handled the recent game between Ireland and Bayonne in which Brian O’Driscoll sustained a fractured sinus following a punch to the face, unnoticed by any of the officials.
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