Young starlets soak up Croker roar

EVERYTHING was in place; lights on, stands packed, an expectant crowd buzzing with anticipation.

Already this was a massive occasion with the first visit of the All Blacks to Croke Park. And given Ireland’s recent results against them — three narrow losses — history beckoned for a first win against the rugby world superpower.

Down on the pitch, shoulder to shoulder with their team-mates in green as they got set to face the Haka, two youngsters soaked it up.

Tomás O’Leary (just turned 25) already had his own big day in Croke Park. Seven years ago, he captained Cork to an All-Ireland MHC title. Now he was making his first start for Ireland, and what an opportunity this was.

Down the line from Tomás, the younger but more experienced Luke Fitzgerald (just turned 21, five caps) was equally agog but ready to rock.

Even as the Haka reached its climax, the crowd decided that they too wanted part of this, and a rousing chant of ‘Ireland, Ireland’ took the sting out of the final element of the fearsome Maori challenge.

It was for moments like this Luke had been groomed, it was for occasions like this Tomás had made the choice of rugby over hurling.

“It’s fantastic playing out there,” said Fitzgerald. “The crowd is fantastic and there is always a great atmosphere here. It was almost oppressive before kickoff, you couldn’t hear anything but it really gives you a great lift. I enjoyed this occasion, though we lost.”

O’Leary concurred. He said: “The atmosphere was brilliant but we didn’t give the fans anything to cheer about, and that’s disappointing. We didn’t get going at all. They played all the rugby, we were on the back foot. I suppose that was down to our first-up defence, we didn’t play enough in their half.”

Both got a generous ovation from the crowd when they were replaced, Tomás in the 68th minute, by Eoin Reddan, Luke seven minutes later, by Paddy Wallace, and both had done many good things on a night when Ireland were very much on the back foot for most of the game. And yet, a sign of the honesty in these guys, neither was happy in their performance. Both offered unprompted self-criticism.

Tomás was the more disappointed, brushing aside a conciliatory suggestion that he could be happy enough with his performance, in the circumstances. “No,” he countered, “I think there are a few things I can improve on. I don’t think anyone could be happy with that performance. We have to learn from that, we must concentrate now on Argentina next week.

“The biggest thing was their physicality, that’s something I hadn’t come across before, but that’s something we should we’re capable of matching. We didn’t front up.”

Luke, too, wasn’t for having his head turned with any suggestion he could feel pleased with himself.

“There were two occasions where I made a half-break but the ball went to deck so I was disappointed with that. You have to execute against these guys, you get limited opportunities so when you do get them you have to take advantage.”

And the tackles, a few important ones early on? “They’re all important against these guys, and I slipped off one or two as well. You just can’t do that against these guys. I don’t think it was a case of not being physical with them — I think their footwork is very good, some of them are very hard to get a hold of. But I think we fought very hard but a few technical things didn’t go right for us. We have to look at the video, get right for next week.”