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.

True, all did go on tour in May but at a time of year when the perceived wisdom was that the top players had had enough at the end of a long campaign and would benefit from a rest. There were very few if any dissenting voices to sending a second string squad to Argentina so if Eddie is to be criticised on that score, it is only with the benefit of hindsight.

Trouble in the camp? Some would like to think so. Those who spread the rumour on Monday that Geordan Murphy was going home in protest at being dropped from the bench for the French game were being mischievous.

There is no doubt that Murphy was disgusted with the decision, understandably so because he hadn’t been given a chance to do anything wrong, let alone make a case for inclusion in the side.

Ronan O’Gara was dragged into controversy yesterday by the French sports newspaper L’Equipe. The timing of the piece just three days before the most important match the host nation has played smacks of an intent to undermine the key Irish playmaker and the team.

O’Sullivan also admitted that Peter Stringer expressed bitter disappointment at being dropped from the 22. This was also a rather bizarre decision, all the more so because Eoin Reddan has jumped from third to first choice scrum-half overnight and is seriously short of experience at this level.

Then you have four guys, Alan Quinlan, Stephen Ferris, Bryan Young and Brian Carney, who are relying on injuries to others to have any chance of game time. Even people with the best possible attitude are sure to get bored and disinterested as a long, tedious month of waiting drags on.

There is little to do outside of training, eating and sleeping. The Sofitel Hotel is a long way from Bordeaux centre so while they can go for a walk along a nearby lake, there options are limited. And there isn’t a coffee shop or, dare I say it, a pub within miles of the place. Players will tell their readers in sanitised newspaper columns they have plenty to occupy them but that hasn’t been apparent on my many treks out to Bordeaux-Lac. In contrast, Sud Ouest, yesterday carried a picture of a smiling All Blacks out-half Daniel Carter playing golf in Aix-en-Provence. And the New Zealanders are said to be the dark, dour men of rugby football!

It’s difficult to imagine how the players could be over trained when the northern hemisphere season is in its infancy. This could be a mental rather than a physical thing. Furthermore, and at the risk of repeating the point, this team is growing old together. There were more than 790 caps starting the game at the Stade Chaban Delmas pitch on Saturday night with an average of more than 52 per man.

They have lacked the kind of intensity that so personified the Argentine display against France and the dynamism of the Namibians and Georgians in their two games against the Irish. Where those traditional ingredients will come from against two vastly greater forces in the French and the Pumas is not readily apparent and the great fear right now is that Les Bleus will run up the kind of embarrassing score line that became almost common place when the countries clashed in Paris back in the 1990s.

If and when that happens, Eddie O’Sullivan will come under fierce pressure. I’ve lost count of hearing people demand to know “what the IRFU were doing in extending his contract by four years just before the World Cup.”

It did seem a strange decision at the time and no less so now. But can you blame Eddie O’Sullivan for that? Of course not. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Whatever one’s view on that subject, the fact remains that O’Sullivan is a dedicated, unbelievably hard working coach who has surrounded himself with some of the best brains in Irish rugby. No set of players has ever had more money spent on them and surely the onus is on them to at last repay the management’s support and trust.

As in every sport, the coach or manager can only do so much. It’s up to the players after that and so far O’Sullivan’s men have let him down badly.

We’re off on the TGV from Bordeaux to Paris today. Hopefully, a change of scenery will do the trick but right now that seems a forlorn hope.