Out of our misery

IRELAND were yesterday finally put out of their World Cup misery in the concrete cauldron that is the Parc des Prince on big match day. Just as they could never beat France here between 1972 and 1996, they crashed this time to the Pumas from South America who have now eliminated them from two of the last three competitions.

The recriminations and post mortems are already underway with the country as a whole seemingly screaming for Eddie O’Sullivan’s head. Will it roll? The coach himself insists he is here for the long haul: “I am totally committed to this job. I still have a contract to run and I have every intention of running it through. I have the appetite for the job and I want to see it out. This has been a tough World Cup, I admit that, and things haven’t gone according to plan but that’s no reason to walk away. I never walked away from a challenge in my life and I’m not going to start now.”

Fighting words indeed and having been granted a four year extension to his contract just prior to the World Cup, it is hardly likely that his employers at Lansdowne Road will have a change of heart. At the very least, it would cost them a fortune and, of course, they’re not the kind of people to admit that they got it wrong.

However, I find it impossible to agree with O’Sullivan when he claims that: “Ireland haven’t become a bad team in the space of five months”. The evidence of the four World Cup games and the two against Scotland and Italy beforehand scream that, in fact, they are now only a pale shadow of the side that so nearly won the Six Nations Championship last season.

However, laying the blame for the fiasco that has been France 2007 at the door of the coach and ignoring the poor nature of much of what the players produced on the pitch is extremely harsh and divorced from the stark truth that individually and collectively, they just weren’t good enough.

And to his credit, the captain, Brian O’Driscoll, accepted that point.

“It’s tough to take but in sport if you don’t perform, you don’t get the rewards”, he said. “The onus has to be on the players. There’s only so much coaching that can be done. The responsibility rests with the players on the pitch and we didn’t front up enough in the four games. We’ll all go back bitterly disappointed at our own individual performances.”

O’Driscoll was spot on in his assessment. He took his own try beautifully and it’s to the team’s credit that they did breach the Pumas line twice, something that hadn’t previously happened in the competition. However, yesterday’s double scores victory for the vastly superior Argentinians says it all. They might well have won by more but were content with what they had and coasted into a quarter-final against Scotland at Stade de France next Sunday and the likelihood of a place in the semi-finals. At that stage, greater demands will be imposed on their game but for now they are entitled to celebrate this very significant occasion in their rugby history.

There has been bad blood between the two countries for a long time now and the verbals between Felipe Contepomi and co with the Munster element of the Irish side also seemed to go very definitely their way as well!

On and off the pitch, they were vastly superior in every other respect and to nobody’s surprise, they also had a much stronger bench and used it effectively.

One of the Irish left to kick his heels on the sidelines was Paddy Wallace who must have wondered what he’s been doing in France for the past month or so. Apart from a couple of minutes in the first game against Namibia, he never got a chance even though first choice Ronan O’Gara was clearly out of sorts and had a particularly difficult day yesterday.

But O’Gara wasn’t the only one, not by a long shot. Gordon D’Arcy had a dismal series, the scrum-half situation went from bad to worse, Donncha O’Callaghan, David Wallace and Denis Leamy, all outstanding performers in the recent past, haven’t been at the races, Paul O’Connell not a whole lot better. The quality of O’Driscoll’s try redeemed the captain’s reputation to an extent and Geordan Murphy made a successfully return at full-back but the overall performance only replicated the rubbish we had seen all too often over the past few weeks.

The dye was cast by half time at which point Ireland trailed by 18-10. Pumas right winger Lucas Borges slipped out of a weak Denis Hickie tackle after a period of fierce pressure and went over the first try on 16 minutes. O’Gara immediately responded with a close range penalty but missed touch badly from the next play and Hernandez knocked over a sweet drop goal.

On the half hour, Irish spirits were raised when sublime pass from O’Gara to O’Driscoll saw the captain shrug off a tackle before diving over beside the posts. O’Gara added the points and at 10-8 to Ireland, it looked like game on. Instead, another Hernandez drop goal followed by a fine try in the left corner by left winger Horacio Agulla restored the Pumas supremacy.

Felipe Contepomi converted via the upright and Ireland’s World Cup goose was well and truly cooked. The Leinster star struck again shortly after the restart as Argentina drove home their supremacy, forcing Ireland to collapse a maul that drove them back a good ten metres. At last, the team showed it could still play a bit as Murphy finished off a magnificent attack in which O’Gara, Wallace and O’Driscoll played key roles.

At that stage, two converted tries would have sent Ireland into the semi-finals but the Pumas weren’t having any of that. Contepomi tapped over a couple of penalties, Hernandez brought up his hat-trick of drop goals and Ireland’s humiliation was complete.

IRELAND: G. Murphy; S. Horgan, B. O’Driscoll capt, G. D’Arcy, D. Hickie; R. O’Gara, E. Reddan; M. Horan, J. Flannery, J. Hayes, D. O’Callaghan, P. O’Connell, S. Easterby, D. Wallace, D. Leamy.

Replacements: N. Best for Wallace, temporary (25-29 mins); R. Best, N. Best and M. O’Kelly for Flannery, Wallace and O’Callaghan (65); I. Boss for Reddan (66); G. Duffy for Hickie (71).

ARGENTINA: I. Corleto; L. Borges, M. Contepomi, F. Contepomi, H. Agulla; J.M. Hernandez, A. Pichot capt; R. Roncero, M. Ledesma Arocena, J.M. Scelzo, C.I. Fernandez Lobbe, P. Albacete, L. Ostiglia, J. Fernandez Lobbe, G. Longo Elia.

Replacements: R. Alvarez Kairelis for C.I. Fernandez Lobbe (54); M. Durand for Ostiglia (61); H. Senillosa for M. Contepomi (71); O. Hassan for Scelzo (77); A. Basualdo for Ledesma (79).

Referee: P. Honiss (New Zealand).