Peter Jackson: Slugfest worth the money
A duel of unrelenting ferocity ended with France in disarray and Ireland the last team standing. Staggering would have been a more accurate word given the sledgehammer blows they took in the course of settling a punishing score from South Africa 20 years ago.
No sooner had the box-office record at the Millennium Stadium been shattered than some of the hardest nuts in the game were in danger of suffering the same fate — and the opening shot of the slug-fest threatens to have serious repercussions.
O’Brien escaped a red card for the punch to the ribs which floored Pascal Pape in the first minute for a very long count.
It set the tone for the mayhem that followed — a distressed Johnny Sexton helped off within half-an-hour, the hitherto indestructible Paul O’Connell was carted off flat on his back at half-time.
Nobody ought to have been the least bit surprised that Ireland could take all that in their stride without dropping the fury of their intensity and still stop France inside the distance, not at the Millennium. It is a strange fact that Irish teams have won four times as many Grand Slams and European Cups by the banks of the Taff as they have at home.
And all that for the right to avoid the All Blacks at the next stage of the best World Cup of all, a jolting reminder that the Irish are the team most likely to break the Southern Hemisphere’s monopoly of the pot of gold.
Ireland are rubbing shoulders with New Zealand and Australia as the only unbeaten survivors of the pool stage and nobody will be more pleased than their middle-aged compatriots from a generation ago.
When France knocked Terry Kingston’s team out of the quarter-finals in Durban in 1995, they did so with an immovable object at No 8 — Marc Cecillon. Nine years later, the same Marc Cecillon took a revolver to a house party and murdered his wife, Chantal, in a drunken rage before 60 guests.
He was given 20 years, reduced to 14 on appeal. And that would have been about as irrelevant to this match as England are to the knock-out stages but for the belated appearance of Cecillon’s son — Alexandre Dumoulin.
The 25-year-old Racing centre, raised by his mother Carole and step-father, confirmed an open secret earlier in the year, that Cecillon was the biological father he had never met. Dumoulin’s arrival for the final quarter coincided with a cause every bit as lost the Irish one beside the Indian ocean in 1995.
Far from reviving the floundering French, he spent most of his time going backwards, fighting fires all over the place as Ireland went for the kill.
Now that they have evened up the Cecillon score, Ireland will settle for nothing less than going all the way, starting against Argentina back at their favourite Welsh abode at lunchtime on Sunday.
And this time the fans will break the Cardiff box-office record again by forking out more than €20m.
Retrospective justice falls short of mark
At close of business last night, the citing commissioners had seen 12 players banged to rights on charges of foul play. In other words, the best referees in the game had missed 12 red-card offences.
While referees cannot be expected to see everything, they go into action these days with more safety nets than ever before.
Two assistants on the touchlines and the TMO in the gantry with his all-seeing technological gadgetry ought to make him feel that he runs a detective agency as well as the game.
During the course of England’s embarrassing expulsion by Australia, French referee Romain Poite took no action over the no-arms foul which led to Wallaby flanker Michael Hooper being banned from the Wales game. As his English victim, Mike Brown, said: “It should have been dealt with by the referee and his assistants at the time. Both stood two metres away.”
Retrospective justice is better than no justice but in the perfect world envisaged by the sport’s governing body, teams would be punished instantly for their lawlessness. The call from the game’s governing body for zero-tolerance on certain offences is hardly being enforced with unfailing regularity.
World Rugby’s policy leaves no room for ambiguity: “RWC 2015 is rugby’s showcase global event and the integrity and consistency of the tournament’s disciplinary process is central to the image and reputation of the sport.”
Consistency? Well, referees have been strangely consistent over their unwillingness to use red cards for dangerous high tackles, of the type for which Ireland’s Alain Rolland sent Wales captain Sam Warburton off in the 2011 semi-final against France.
Pumas centre Marcelo Bosch was guilty of an identical offence against Namibia yesterday and escaped without a warning. Another case for the citing commissioner, inevitably, along with Sean O’Brien’s punch.
Nearly all of those caught by the citing commissioner and subsequently suspended were allowed to carry on playing without any on-the-spot action — not even a yellow, let alone a red.
Donegal misses out on All-Black shirt
The Donegal village of Ramelton has good reason this morning to bask in the reflected glory of its enduring contribution to the All Black cause. The jersey Dave Gallaher wore against Wales during New Zealand’s pioneering tour in 1905 has gone under the hammer in Cardiff for £180,000.
In a perfect world it would have ended up in Letterkenny at the local rugby club’s Dave Gallaher Memorial Park. Instead it was bought for a world record sum by an English multi-millionaire Nigel Wray who owns, among other things, Saracens.
Gallagher, contrary to popular belief, is not Ramelton’s only famous footballing son and the mind boggles how much someone like Wray would pay if Patsy Gallagher’s old jersey ever went up for auction. Just as Gallagher set off on a three-month voyage to New Zealand at the age of five in 1878, so Gallagher left on a shorter one to Glasgow as a three-year-old in 1894. One of Celtic’s greatest players, he is still revered as ‘The Mighty Atom,’ in deference to his flyweight frame. When George Best hit the Manchester scene in the mid-Sixties, old-timers in Glasgow rarely missed a trick to put the Belfast boy’s ability in an historical perspective. He was, they said with pride, ‘the second Patsy Gallagher.’
Bruised Welsh face another battle
Given the ‘brutal’ nature of their pre-tournament training camps on an Alpine slope and in the Qatari desert, is it any wonder that Wales are still picking up the pieces?
They have been falling to bits with the passing of every match since the start of last month. In the last five weeks they have lost Leigh Halfpenny, Rhys Webb, Scott Williams, Cory Allen, Hallam Amos, Liam Williams, and Eli Walker to long-term injury.
Now Williams has rejoined the list with the recurrence of a metatarsal problem. At a time when full backs, wings, and centres are in desperately short supply, who should be looming on the horizon at Twickenham on Saturday? Only South Africa, the most physical of the lot.
Ton-up greats
For the first time, a current World Cup XV of Test centurions can be picked with the exception of Matt Giteau as the scrum-half. He’s only got 99.
Sean Lamont (Scotland – 100); Adam Ashley-Cooper (Australia – 111), Ma’a Nonu (New Zealand – 100), Jean de Villiers (South Africa – 109), Bryan Habana (South Africa – 114); Dan Carter (New Zealand – 109), Matt Giteau (Australia – 99); Tony Woodcock (New Zeland – 118), Keven Mealamu (New Zealand – 129), Martin Castrogiovanni (Italy – 115); Paul O’Connell (Ireland – 115), Victor Matfield (South Africa – 125); Mauro Bergamasco (Italy – 106), Richie McCaw (New Zealand – 145), Sergio Parisse (Italy – 114).
Free-scoring Pumas
Ireland’s quarter-final opponents have been there before but never as the highest-scoring team in the tournament. Argentina’s ninth try against Namibia yesterday took them out on their own with a pool points tally of 177, beyond the Springboks (176) and the All Blacks (174).
What’s more, the Pumas have beaten Ireland twice in three attempts at previous World Cups, at Lens in 199 and Paris eight years later.
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