Gaffney: Job only half done

FAILING to reach the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals having achieved the biggest win in Ireland’s history would be “criminal”, according to the country’s assistant coach Alan Gaffney.

The Irish win over Australia at Eden Park on Saturday night has left Declan Kidney’s side in pole position at the top of Pool C with two games of the qualifying stages remaining.

Wins over Russia on Sunday in Rotorua and then Italy in Dunedin on October 2 would see Ireland sail into the more favourable side of the World Cup draw, with a probable quarter-final against Wales in Wellington the following week and familiar possible opposition in the last four in Six Nations rivals England or France.

There is a long way to go before any of that pans out though, and with confidence in the camp soaring following a 15-6 win over the Wallabies, the Australian-born backs coach sent out a reminder that the job was only half done.

“It can’t be a one-off,” Gaffney said. “You can’t leave that one on the shelf and lose one of your two next games, and then miss out on the quarter-finals. That would be criminal.

“We understand where we put ourselves now, we understand we have to go out and perform in our next two games.

“We’ll pay Russia an enormous amount of respect. We’ve put an enormous amount of work in on Russia in the Churchill Cup, and they predominantly played the same team in the first game of the World Cup as they did during the Churchill Cup, so we’re aware of their players. We understand they’re an up-and-coming team but we understand that if we go out and perform to our best we’ll put them under a fair bit of pressure.”

Ireland team manager Paul McNaughton described the win over Australia in front of a near full house at Eden Park that appeared and sounded as if it was populated exclusively by Irish fans, as “the greatest World Cup win and probably the biggest result in the modern era outside the Grand Slam win”.

It was all the more remarkable because it came on the back of a run of four Test defeats during the warm-up series in August and followed on from a disappointing performance in victory over the United States in New Plymouth on September 11.

“I’ve got to say it was some performance on Saturday but we know the job is only half done and everyone is fully behind that comment,” Gaffney said. “We know we didn’t play well in the August games but we also know that [Brian O’Driscoll] only played one or two games, [Gordon D’Arcy] doing the same, Tommy Bowe the same, etc etc, and it just didn’t happen.

“They played one each and we went into the USA game a little underdone but that’s still no excuse for dropping 11 balls. It wasn’t just that we dropped the ball wide out, we lost our alignment, we took too much out of it on the inside, we put pressure on the outside support runners, so we created pressure unnecessarily. I think, on Saturday, we didn’t push passes, we retained the ball better, we were prepared to build the phases, we knew we wanted to go through them, not around them, and we played probably the way we wanted to play.”

Ireland centre D’Arcy and second row Paul O’Connell both underwent scans yesterday morning to determine the extent of their respective hamstring injuries picked up during the Australia game.

Although neither player has been made unavailable for this weekend’s tie with Russia, it is unlikely either would feature in the Irish team to be announced on Friday, with Kidney set to give some of the so far unused players in the 30-man squad a run out against the Russians, who lost to the USA last Thursday and play Italy this morning ahead of Sunday’s game.

The cruelty of the International Rugby Board’s scheduling, however, will not reduce the level of Russian intensity expected to greet Ireland on Sunday in Rotorua.

Gaffney added: “They’ve got a bit of grunt up front. Their scrum performed against the States but our scrum has been fantastic over the previous two games. So we’ll go out there and we know we can probably take them on up front but I don’t think they’re a side we necessarily want to run around.

“The USA tried to run around them and made a lot of space out wide but I also think we need to do the hard yards back on the inside.”

It was certainly a case of hard yards against the Tri Nations champions on Saturday with one of the surprise bonuses being the successful deployment of Ronan O’Gara and Jonny Sexton in a 10-12 axis for the final 30 minutes.

When D’Arcy went down injured after 50 minutes, Kidney chose to send on another fly-half in O’Gara, who slotted in at 10 while Sexton moved onto his shoulder at inside centre.

Backs coach Gaffney liked what he saw, although he revealed Sexton may need some more convincing.

“Although ‘Sexto’ doesn’t want to hear it every time I talk to him about it, I think [he] has got all the attributes for a good 12,” Gaffney said. “He’s one of the better defenders in the team.

“He prefers to play 10 and he’s a world-class 10, but they’re both world-class players and trying to get them both into the team is a difficult challenge.”