Grand Slam chance slips from Ireland’s grasp

Ireland 6 England 12

Reality bit back at the Aviva Stadium yesterday as the sweet taste of an escape to victory in Wales on the opening day of the 2013 championship gave way to a very different sensation.

This was a six-point defeat that felt much, much worse for Ireland than the scoreline suggests. The feelgood vibe created by that Millennium Stadium performance of eight days before — both the verve of its attack and the resilience of its defence — was negated by a third straight loss to England which highlighted serious shortcomings in players’ individual skill sets under wet-weather conditions and a failure to execute scores when opportunities did arise.

The loss of the game-changing abilities of both Simon Zebo and Jonny Sexton through injury in the first 30 minutes of the game merely compounded the feeling that this was not going to be a good day in Dublin for the home side.

Zebo looks unlikely to play any further part in the Six Nations campaign, or Munster’s Heineken Cup quarter-final at Harlequins on April 6, after Declan Kidney ruled him out for 10 weeks thanks to the broken bone in his foot suffered after just 11 minutes while fly-half Sexton was carried off on the half hour with a hamstring injury.

From the joy of Zebo’s back heel and Sexton’s status as Europe’s best fly-half the previous weekend to the utter dejection felt by Ireland supporters after their team had been outclassed by a slick and clinical young England side.

Thank goodness there is now two weeks for head coach Declan Kidney to not just nurse the numerous broken bodies in his squad back to fitness for the trip to Scotland on February 24 but to re-instil the belief that his players can still win a first championship since 2009.

The Triple Crown and Grand Slam may be gone with this defeat but with three games to play, a title could still be won and Kidney will strive to impress that glass half-full assessment on a squad whose belief that they have the capability to join the world’s elite must have taken a severe bashing.

“There’s a hell of a lot to play for... we have three more opportunities to get three wins. Let’s get to eight points and see what everybody has then at the end of it,” Kidney said last night.

“The Grand Slam is a wonderful thing to win but trying to put it together takes an awful lot. It’s a championship first and foremost to be played for and we’re well in that. We need to learn from today, there’s an extensive injury list and there’s challenges ahead of us. There’s also opportunities for others to come in, so you just take a little part of the glass that’s half full and that’s the bit you work on.”

There are other issues that are equally as pressing for Kidney and his coaching staff, not least the handling errors in the Dublin rain that stymied Irish hopes of building on encouraging field position over and over again. Or the puzzling nature of Ireland’s lack of intensity during a first half where the home side had to once again hit the ground running, just as they had done in Wales to catch the 2012 Grand Slam champions napping and build a lead even a stirring, three-try fightback could not totally reduce.

The conditions meant that a repeat of that glittering first half in the Cardiff sunshine were never going to be repeated in the Dublin drizzle but Ireland failed to cope with them the way England did and lacked the fight in the first half to stop the visitors imposing their preferred tempo on the game.

Scrum-half Ben Youngs, the villain two years ago when petulance earned him a yellow card as a Grand Slam went begging for Martin Johnson’s side, was an outstanding conductor this time around and outside him, fly-half Owen Farrell’s metronomic place-kicking capitalised on Irish indiscipline at the breakdown and at a maul to give England a 6-0 half-time lead.

The half-backs’ superb game management continued after the break and even when flanker James Haskell stupidly got himself yellow-carded 15 minutes into the second half for being on the wrong side of a ruck, kicking the ball away from Irish hands and then having the temerity to protest his innocence, England stayed composed.

Sexton’s replacement Ronan O’Gara had put his side’s first points on the board after 45 minutes, and levelled the match when Haskell got his temporary marching orders but Farrell was on top form and further sloppy Irish play when at a numerical advantage allowed the 21-year-old Saracens out-half to push England back in front when it should have been Kidney’s side turning the screw.

“Our attacking shape was good, our execution was the thing that let us down,” was one of Kidney’s more succinct assessments to portray his obvious disappointment.

It was frustrating, to say the least, for Ireland but the England coaches were justifiably delighted with the rapidly maturing performances of their players. This was the first win in Dublin since the most recent Grand Slam success of 2003 and for Stuart Lancaster’s young side it was the biggest statement yet that just a year into his project as Johnson’s successor, he has a seriously good side with the potential to rival the southern hemisphere giants at the next World Cup in 2015.

“I put that up there as an absolutely massive win,” said Andy Farrell, one of Lancaster’s brains trust and father of their fly-half star in the making. “A huge win simply because we came to Ireland and we’re playing against a hell of a good side.

“These days are made for players like Ronan O’Gara and Brian O’Driscoll, the experience and they know how to get through these games.

“There was a tricky point there where we had a couple of back to back errors but the way we composed ourselves and finished the game stronger, the way we were able to put the ball into the corner in the last 20 minutes was a masterclass, really, to go on and win the game. For a young side to play like that in a pressure situation against a team who have been there and done that and been successful with it was a credit to everyone.”

That Ireland were unable to give England an even bigger examination of their character will cast a long shadow over the coming down week. Kidney and his staff will now have plenty of work to do to kickstart this Six Nations campaign and get their team fizzing again ahead of a trip to Murrayfield.

IRELAND: R Kearney; C Gilroy, B O’Driscoll, G D’Arcy, S Zebo (K Earls, 11); J Sexton (R O’Gara, 32), C Murray; C Healy (D Kilcoyne, 75), R Best (S Cronin, 75), M Ross (D Fitzpatrick, 79); M McCarthy, D Ryan (D O’Callaghan, 66); P O’Mahony, S O’Brien (C Henry, 66), J Heaslip (capt).

ENGLAND: A Goode; C Ashton, B Barritt, B Twelvetrees (M Tuilagi, 48), M Brown; O Farrell, B Youngs; J Marler (M Vunipola, 59), T Youngs (D Hartley, 51), D Cole (D Wilson, 76); J Launchbury (C Lawes, 48; T Waldrom, 71), G Parling; J Haskell, C Robshaw (capt), T Wood.

Referee: Jerome Garces (France).