It’s not all doom and gloom but...

EDDIE O’SULLIVAN’S neck — not to mention his job — is not necessarily on the line at the Stade de France tonight. But his stature as Ireland’s most successful coach will take a battering if his team fails to hugely improve on recent performances, all the more so should the gamble of pairing the untried Eoin Reddan with an out of sorts Ronan O’Gara at half-back prove a failure.

If Ireland are overrun, as has happened so often in the past in the French capital (we have won only once there since 1972) the wrath of all Irish rugby fans will descend not only on O’Sullivan but also on those in the IRFU who extended his contract by four years just before the World Cup. It’s only the 15 players he has put on the field from the kick-off and the seven on the bench who can now help Eddie to avoid that unwelcome denunciation so it will almost certainly be a very edgy Irish squad tonight.

Intriguingly, though, that will be even more so the case with Bernard Laporte and his French players given that they will be eliminated from their own World Cup should they lose tonight. At least O’Sullivan’s side could still make it to the quarter-finals should they lose although to do so they would have to score four tries against Argentina and win by more than seven points in nine days time at the Parc des Princes.