Campbell confident Ireland will recover from Scotland blip

TWO former Irish rugby stars believe there will be no serious fall-out from Saturday’s Croke Park loss to Scotland.

Ollie Campbell, who was at the coal-face of Ireland’s famous 1982 season, cautioned fans to be patient after the disappointing loss to Scotland.

Of more recent vintage, Peter Clohessy is convinced this particular result will be buried quickly and Ireland will rise again to produce some more great moments in the next few seasons.

“I really think this was just a blip,” said Campbell, “It’s difficult to win any international match against any opposition, in any venue in the world, if you make as many handling errors as Ireland did at the weekend. If your platform of lineouts and scrums malfunction to that extent and you don’t kick goals it is hard to win any match. Things just didn’t work for Ireland on Saturday.”

But the former Irish and Lions out-half and centre wasn’t totally surprised at Ireland’s loss either. “All last week I cautioned people not to be so confident because I had seen what Scotland were capable of; they’re a very proud rugby nation for starters, they could actually have been coming to Ireland for a Triple Crown themselves and they had huge motivation for winning that game.

“People might not have realised or accepted that they were playing with a good set play, that their defence was particularly strong and the only thing against them was that they didn’t quite appear to have the cutting edge that we had displayed in games up to then. A lot of people might have disregarded the fact they beat Australia in the autumn,” he said.

Yet, Campbell was still surprised at Ireland’s inefficiencies on the day. He said: “I did think about the danger signs but thought we would have enough in reserve to beat them. The motivation was there, a Triple Crown was at stake and it was to be the last match at Croke Park. I suppose everything was in Ireland’s favour really.

“Ireland have been in as pressurised situations before but I think we got things tactically wrong on the day; it was almost like Barbarian rugby in the first 15 minutes and you always need to look at balance in terms of how you play.

“Even with all the possession we got in the first half we kicked only four balls, so maybe we possibly got the tactics wrong and thought we could run Scotland off their feet.”

Campbell still feels Ireland can recover, however, and that all is not lost in the light of what they have to face this summer – a warm-up match with the Barbarians, Tests against New Zealand and Australia on either side of a hugely-difficult clash with the New Zealand Maori.

“Yes, I think they can get back on track. This team of all teams can rebound, as they have in the past; they keep coming back for more and the best example of that is the way they went to Twickenham and won after such a disappointing performance against France in Paris.

“My view is not so much how many times you get knocked down; it’s more about how many times you get back up and this team is so experienced that they will be bitterly disappointed with the way the season has panned out.

“There is so much experience there, so much will to win, so much pride in that squad, they probably cannot wait for that tour to allow them put right things that went wrong on Saturday.”

Meanwhile, Clohessy is firmly of the view that the Heineken Cup can play a huge role in Ireland’s ability to bounce back for the summer tour. With the bulk of Ireland’s squad coming from Munster and Leinster, he is convinced players like Brian O’Driscoll and Paul O’Connell will use the European club competition to build confidence at national level again.

“There is no doubt that the Heineken Cup offers the players an opportunity to regain confidence; Munster are at home to Northampton and Leinster will feel confident of winning their way through to the last four by beating Clermont Auvergne at the RDS.

“The thing is for the boys to forget about what happened at the weekend. When I was playing it was the one match we expected to win but the one match we always seemed to struggle to win, so I wasn’t totally surprised what happened.

“No matter how much you talk to yourself you cannot actually get these (negative) things out of your head.

“What is important now is that they get on with the other things they have to face. The Heineken Cup is an issue particularly for Munster and Leinster and the players can get a lot of confidence from performances there.

“Either way, a tour to the southern hemisphere is always going to be a major challenge so being beaten by Scotland in the last match of the Six Nations probably doesn’t become an issue in terms of how you would motivate yourself for playing in New Zealand or Australia,” he said.