Will Paris put a spring in the Irish step?

THE TEXTS and e-mails are landing thick and fast. They demand to know why the Irish team has so under-performed. Is there trouble in the camp? Are the players over trained? Has Eddie O’Sullivan picked the wrong teams? Has he grown stale in the job and what were the IRFU thinking when they extended his contract by four years just before the World Cup?

Explaining the poor performances against Namibia and Georgia is no easy task. But O’Sullivan went along with the theory - first raised in this paper by Donal Lenihan - that the northern hemisphere teams were struggling because of the timing of the tournament.

Whereas the Tri Nations series was held in June and July, Ireland and the rest didn’t have any serious competition since the Six Nations back in March.