Ireland need a miracle to survive

SINCE the Rugby World Cup began a month or so ago, Ireland have been plagued with one piece of misfortune or ill luck after another almost on a daily basis.

So it was with no little relief yesterday that they received at least two pieces of better news. First and foremost came assistant coach Niall O’Donovan’s assertion that “Simon Best was looking great and almost ready to play a game if necessary”, a reference, of course, to the sudden illness that afflicted the replacement prop forward on Wednesday and brought his World Cup to an end.

And then it was revealed from the Argentine camp that their tigerish back-row Juan Manuel Leguizamon has suffered a knock to his head sufficient to keep him on the sideline, at least for this game.

He is replaced by 33-year-old Gonzalo Longo Elia, a veteran of the ‘99 and ‘03 World Cups. It will be Longo’s first appearance in this tournament and while he is clearly a very experienced operator, he lacks the explosive power of the younger Leguizamon who has been a revelation in his outings with his club London Irish.

The fact that Simon Best appears to be on the road to a quick and full recovery was just the kind of morale booster the bruised and battered Irish squad needed yesterday as they made the three and a quarter hour TGV train journey from their base in Bordeaux into a rain lashed Paris.

Nor will they shed too many tears at the absence of Leguizamon although there is still no concealing the extent of the task awaiting them in the Parc des Princes tomorrow.

To have to run up four tries and win by more than seven points definitely sounds like mission impossible, all the more so when you consider the side’s miserably poor form so far.

The management and players keep repeating the mantra that they haven’t become a bad side in a short few months. Now is very much the time to stand up and prove it. To be brutally frank, they HAVE been a poor side not just in the World Cup but in the warm-up games as well.

There hasn’t been the slightest sign of the inspirational play of Six Nations stars like Paul O’Connell, Denis Leamy, David Wallace, Ronan O’Gara and centres Brian O’Driscoll and Gordon D’Arcy.

To go a step further, none of the illustrious sextet has stepped up to the plate at all. As for the others, they just haven’t been able to lift their game to the required level and with coach

Eddie O’Sullivan accepting, rightly or wrongly, from the very outset that the alternatives weren’t available, the team has gone from one woeful display to another.

O’Sullivan himself has often looked pale, dispirited and unsure what his next step should be. He has been roundly, often viciously, criticised for a number of perceived mistakes, poor team selection, a lack of tactical awareness, failure to use his bench to better effect, keeping too strict a rein on his players, putting them up in a hotel a long way from the scene of any interesting diversions and that essentially he is a control freak.

Much of this is justified although some has been over the top. And if Eddie himself has looked a little disillusioned, much the same has applied to his players. A World Cup should be the pinnacle of their careers, a time to love their rugby and to enjoy all that goes with an event of this magnitude. That certainly hasn’t looked the case over the past four weeks or so but now they have the opportunity to put all that behind and come up with the kind of performance that will be spoken of in similar tones to what Munster managed in the recent past against the likes of Gloucester and Sale Sharks in the Heineken Cup.

Niall O’Donovan last night fingered the line-out for the team’s failure against France. Defence coach Graham Steadman laid the blame firmly at poor discipline. There will be many other theories but for the present they wouldn’t serve any useful purpose. Just get the basics right, hold on to the ball and patiently but passionately go after the required outcome.

Not rocket science, really.

“We must believe in ourselves, otherwise we’ll be on our way home,” commented O’Driscoll, who has been a less than an inspiring captain so far.

To live up to that requirement, though, will not be easy. Argentine rugby has never been so strong. Beating France in Paris in the opening game said it all. On top of that, coach Marcelo Loffreda has pieced together a Pumas side of amazing depth in spite of the less than supportive role played over the years by the International Board to non-members of their own body.

No fewer than four of their back division ply their trade with Stade Francais in the French and European Leagues so the Parc de Prince will hold no fears for them.

Up front, Rodrigo Roncero increases that number to five while the Fernandez Lobbe brothers, Carlos Ignacio and Juan Martin, are leading members of the Sale pack in England and hooker Mario Ledesma Arocena and prop Juan Martin Scelzo are teammates at the highly successful Clermont Auvergne club.

Can you seriously see Ireland coping with that kind of forward strength while at the same coping with talented individuals like the Stade half-backs Juan Manuel Hernandez and Augustin Pichot, Leinster’s Felipe Contepomi in the centre and the immaculate Ignacio Corleto at full-back?

Can you imagine these guys choking under the pressure?

No, me neither. Ireland may well win the game but to do that they would have to play out of their skins. Perhaps New Zealand referee Paul Honiss will help the cause. Apparently the Pumas haven’t liked him since he handled their World Cup clash with Australia four years ago. But scoring four tries against the only side in the competition not to have had their line crossed in the competition so far seems out of the question.

Are Ireland without hope of staying in the World Cup? Miracles have happened in the past as we have seen but the present Irish side just doesn’t seem to have what it takes to perform them.