Andy Farrell hails Ireland's ability to thrive in chaos

There are some things in rugby you just cannot plan for, even if you’re an Ireland side that has learned to roll with the punches under Andy Farrell’s guidance

Sun, 12 Mar, 2023 - 19:46

Simon Lewis, Edinburgh

Scotland 7 Ireland 22

There are some things in rugby you just cannot plan for, even if you’re an Ireland side that has learned to roll with the punches under Andy Farrell’s guidance these past three years.

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Ireland’s victory at Murrayfield Sunday did not have the blistering start that had been delivered in Cardiff and at home to France, nor the flowing attacking elan that had helped deliver three bonus-point wins in an unbeaten Guinness Six Nations campaign and there was not even a bonus point for that matter.

Yet Ireland’s head coach had every reason to be justified in his assessment that this was a victory that ranked as the best he has been involved in. That his side lost three forwards to injury inside the first 24 minutes, then lost one of their replacements early in the second half and finished the game with a loosehead prop scrummaging at hooker and a flanker throwing lineouts is the part of the piece that could never have been scripted. And still Ireland are in position to bid for a Grand Slam against England on home soil in Dublin this Saturday having overcome their toughest encounter of the competition so far.

No wonder Farrell called his side’s character “immense”.

Scotland had come into the game with ambitions of their own. Their opening-day win at Twickenham and the following week’s defeat of Wales had given them back-to-back wins in the first two rounds for the first time since the Six Nations began in 2000 and left them on the brink of a first Triple Crown since the 1990 Five Nations.

The fact that they had run France awfully close in Paris last time out before slipping to a narrow loss had not dented their confidence as a sell-out crowd headed towards their Edinburgh home and rose to their feet as one to honour full-back Stuart Hogg as he ran out to earn his 100th Scotland cap.

This had the potential to be another famous Murrayfield day for the boys in blue, a feeling further fuelled when Ireland’s perfectly legitimate opening score on five minutes was overturned on a bizarre technicality that had Farrell perplexed before Scotland scored the first try through Huw Jones on 17 minutes.

Ireland, though, have come through bigger tests than this with flying colours in recent months and have more than justified their place at the top of the World Rugby rankings to throw away all that hard-earned prestige by folding to the Scots.

They had laid down their marker with that disallowed try, Dan Sheehan powering over from close range after Scotland had made a hash of a quickly-taken throw on their five-metre line, and Caelan Doris flying spectacularly through the air to claim the errant ball.

Referee Luke Pearce awarded the try only for his assistant to intervene by telling him the Scots had used a different ball for the quick throw than the one put into touch. That Ireland was the team punished by the home side’s error seemed to matter not and the try was overturned.

Ireland skipper Johnny Sexton had kicked the first points of the game with a 12th-minute penalty before Mack Hansen’s try on 27 minutes re-established the visitors’ lead and made light of the of the losses of Doris to a back injury after his heavy fall in the lead-up to the try that wasn’t, of Sheehan to a shoulder problem, and Henderson to a wrist injury, Farrell’s side took an 8-7 lead into the break.

For all Scotland’s superior statistics in terms of possession, ruck speed and the penalty count, their failure to land another blow on Irish chins in that opening 40 would come back to bite them, even when Sheehan’s replacement at hooker Ronan Kelleher himself succumbed to a shoulder injury.

With three props on the field, Cian Healy having replaced Kelleher, and flanker Josh van der Flier taking over lineout throwing, Ireland still managed to power ahead after drawing the post-interval sting from Scotland. The introduction of Jamison Gibson-Park on 53 minutes was the spark. He had lost out on selection at scrum-half to Conor Murray having, like Healy, sustained a hamstring injury on the day of the Wales game yet Ireland had put the game to bed within eight minutes of his arrival on the field, James Lowe and then Doris’s replacement Jack Conan scoring the tries, both converted by Sexton, that put daylight between them and Scotland at 22-7.

Once again it was a well-managed endgame, despite the further loss of Garry Ringrose, whose 50th Ireland cap ended with a nasty contact between his head and the hip of Blair Kinghorn that will rule him out of this Saturday’s Grand Slam clash. That came on 72 minutes and still Ireland found the energy, resilience and composure to press for a fourth try. It did not materialise, James Ryan spilling the ball in contact with the tryline begging, but it epitomised the effort, as their head coach acknowledged post-match.

"Surprise me? Probably not,” Farrell said. "It was immense, the character. It wasn't champagne rugby, but in terms of character, fight and want for each other - that's the best game I've been involved in.

"If you'd have seen us at half-time, honestly you'd have laughed because all the lads were laughing. It was organised chaos, we didn't know what was happening until the last second about whether Ronan was coming back on.

"We made half a plan with Cian going to scrummage, because he's good at that and that paid off for us.

"Josh throwing in, well what can't he do? He took up golf three years ago and he's in single figures on his handicap. I just thought for somebody like Garry on his 50th cap, that we're able to do a special performance with all the (disruption).

"Someone like Garry deserves something like that to look back on."

There was no doubt, this win means a lot to the Ireland boss, the potential for a Grand Slam six days later, how special would that be?

SCOTLAND: S Hogg (B Kinghorn, 65); K Steyn, H Jones, S Tuipulotu, D van der Merwe; F Russell (C Harris, 80), B White (A Price, 58); P Schoeman (J Bhatti, 53), G Turner (F Brown, 58), Z Fagerson (S Berghan, 53); R Gray (S Cummings, 7), J Gray; M Fagerson (H Watson, 66), J Ritchie, J Dempsey.

IRELAND: H Keenan; M Hansen, G Ringrose (B Aki, 72 - HIA), B Aki (R Henshaw, 67), J Lowe; J Sexton (R Byrne, 70), C Murray (J Gibson-Park, 53); A Porter, D Sheehan (R Kelleher, 18; C Healy, 47), T Furlong (T O’Toole, 65); I Henderson (R Baird, 24), J Ryan; P O’Mahony, J van der Flier, C Doris (J Conan, 12).

Referee: Luke Pearce (England).