Peter Jackson: Picking up the tab for an Irish Grand Slam
Scotland’s Finn Russell celebrates scoring their third try with Duhan van der Merwe and Stuart Hogg in Paris. Picture: INPHO/Dan Sheridan
Now that every other Grand Slam contender has fallen, Ireland stand to make the rest of the Six Nations cough up more than €1 million.
For all Finn Russell’s daredevilry in attempting to beat France in Paris as they had never been beaten before, by giving them a 19-point start, Scotland’s ultimate elimination from the big prize will cost them dearly unless they can prevent the world’s No. 1 team winning it.
The small print in the distribution of the prize money ensures a 1% bonus for those who have done the grand slamming; 1% which in the grand scheme of things runs into seven figures. The way the Six Nations cookie crumbles requires each of the five also-rans to stump up a sum of around €230,000.
Wales, England and Italy having been counted out in the first round, France in the second and now the brave Scots in the third, they are all reduced to banking on Russell coming up with a potion potent enough to make Ireland vanish in a wishful puff of magic at Murrayfield on Sunday week.
If not, and the favourites come away with a perfect 20 points out of 20, the title will surely be theirs whatever the outcome of their home finale against England. Nobody, of course, dares look that far ahead given an Edinburgh exercise fraught with more danger than usual.
Any Irish supporter still cocking a deaf ear after the Scots had dared to take France the full distance in another thriller, will have heard Ian McGeechan spell it out.
"They (Scotland) can beat anyone in a one-off,’’ the grand old Lions’ coach said on ITV. ‘’They have the ability to open the best teams up. If they get it right and do the same to Ireland, they could well have a home win in two weeks’ time.’’
In which event the also-rans will be spared having to pay through the nose for the privilege of being in the same competition. They won’t be counting on it, not from an Ireland squad with enough depth to take on the born-again Italians minus at least seven front-line players and still collect all five points.
They won’t dare turn up at Murrayfield with anything less than a fully-loaded 23.
The first 20 seasons of the Six Nations generated a grand total of four red cards, in other words one every five seasons. The Stade de France witnessed two yesterday afternoon in less than five minutes, bringing the total since 2020 to eleven.
One man can claim without undue immodesty or fear of contradiction to have done more than anyone to launch the red card on its stratospheric arc, Mohamed Haouas. His impersonation of a human missile, arrowing headlong into Scotland scrum-half Ben White, ensured the Montpellier prop a first in notoriety: sent off twice in the championship against the same country.
At Murrayfield three years ago, the same tighthead smashed a large right fist into James Ritchie’s face. Haouas’ dismissal was the biggest single factor behind a defeat which cost France that year’s Grand Slam.
Recalled to fill the vacancy caused by Uini Atonio’s three-week ban over the red card he ought to have been given for putting Rob Herring out of the Ireland match, Haouas left Nika Amashukeli no option.
The Georgian referee found himself in identical circumstances four minutes earlier in respect of Grant Gilchrist but purely by chance. The Scotland lock would have got clean away with his assault on Anthony Jelonch had one of the French medical team not approached Amashukeli at the back of a line-out.
He stopped the match, the medic explained that Jelonch had to go off at which point the incident that appeared to separate the flanker from his senses flashed across the big screens. The referee saw it and summoned the TMO, Ben Whitehouse.
Gilchrist, like Haous moments later, didn’t have a leg to stand on. Jelonch, dragged away for a Head Injury Assessment, returned only to be spared from further punishment after a heroic tackle on Duhan van der Merwe, the Six Nations’ equivalent of derailing a freight train.
Had Gilchrist escaped scot-free, so to speak, Scotland might well have been alongside Ireland with three out of three. Referees are there to enforce the law, not to keep those responsible on the pitch for fear of spoiling the match as a contest.
Amashukeli and his team ensured that justice was done as well as being seen to be done.
Last-minute substitutions have long been a blight on the game but never can anyone have made so many so late as England at Cardiff. That they had the game won without any apparent injuries made the changes all the harder to understand.
There were 24 seconds left on the game-clock when the London Irish whizzkid, Harry Arundell, replaced Max Malins on the right wing. There were 14 seconds left when Marcus Smith and Jack Walker made their entries.
One last scrum gave England the platform for a possible bonus-point try which never materialised. Forty seconds later it was all over, leaving everyone, not least the three players, asking the same question: What’s the point?
It would have evoked strange memories for Marty Berry, assuming he had been watching at home half a world away. Fate dealt him a card unlike no other in Test rugby.
Berry can be found in the official archives as All Black No. 878. The fact that he wasn’t in action long enough to touch the ball or make a tackle is irrelevant. Against Australia at Eden Park in July 1986, he replaced an injured Frano Botica in time to join the rest of the All Blacks behind the posts awaiting Michael Lynagh’s attempted conversion of a David Campese try.
The beaten Kiwis had time to re-start, the Wallabies sought the refuge of the touchline and the referee called no-side. It left Berry to measure his Test career in seconds, so few that nobody has ever been able to put a figure on how few.
Having just turned 20, Berry had reason to believe his time would come again. It never did, a fate which the English trio had avoided long before their eleventh-hour entry on Saturday night.
Dave Gallaher lost his life in the slaughter at Passchendaele during the war that was supposed to end all wars. The boy from the western shore of Lough Swilly who became the first captain of the All Blacks set standards of excellence which have endured for more than a century.
He could never have imagined that his jersey from New Zealand’s pioneering tour would sell for a punt or two short of Euros 200,000, bought by Saracens owner Nigel Wray, not for self-aggrandizement but the glory of the game at large.
"I regard Dave Gallaher as a genuine hero,’’ Wray said after outbidding a host of New Zealand businessmen. "He falsified his age to enlist so he could fight in World War One after the death of one of his brothers. Gallaher was the father of All Black rugby.’’ Wray promptly loaned his prize possession to the rugby museum at Twickenham for public display as the sport’s most expensive item of clothing, until last weekend. It took a special garment to topple Gallaher’s at the pinnacle of the precious list.
The jersey worn by Gareth Edwards when he scored the so-called Try of the Century for the Barbarians against the All Blacks at Cardiff Arms Park went under the auctioneer’s hammer for €260,000.
Players are all programmed to utter platitudes and banalities these days, often both at the same time. When one actually says what he really thinks, the kneejerk reaction is to shrug it off as a mistake. Top marks then to Owen Farrell, England’s winning captain at Cardiff, for a bluntly honest self-assessment:
‘’I was bad off the tee today.’’
Juan Ignacio Brex butchering a likely Italian try by ignoring an overlap which promised to level the score at 27-27. The centre’s wrong decision ensured Ireland the most welcome of Brex-its.
Wales’ slavish refusal to abandon their ploy of kicking it long to England’s master of the airways, Freddie Steward. For all his polite remarks about opponents who had been mired in threats of strike action until three days before kick off, head coach Steve Borthwick will want to know why England failed to win by 20 points instead of ten.
15 Freddie Steward (England) 14 Mack Hansen (Ireland) 13 Huw Jones (Scotland) 12 Gael Fickou (France) 11 Anthony Watson (England) 10 Finn Russell (Scotland) 9 Ben White (Scotland) 1 Cyril Baille (France) 2 Ken Owens (Wales) 3 Tom O’Toole (Ireland) 4 Ollie Chessum (England) 5 James Ryan (Ireland) 6 Lewis Ludlam (England) 7 Michele Lamaro (Italy) 8 Lorenzo Cannone (Italy)
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