Every stepping stone now a schoolday for Ireland
DOTTING DOWN: Hugo Keenan of Ireland dives over to score his side's second try during the victory over Scotland at the Stade de France. Pic: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
As rugby nation goes into overdrive with excitement, as yet another scramble for tickets and empty airline seats ensues, the people in the eye of the storm will go quietly about their business on Monday morning, plotting how to make an Ireland side even better than it was here on Saturday night.
What is more, they will love every minute of it.
“This is proper living now,” Andy Farrell said after witnessing his side’s first-half demolition of Scotland’s World Cup hopes and hubris and swiftly turning his focus towards this Saturday’s quarter-final rematch with New Zealand.
“This is exactly where you want to be and these boys have been waiting for opportunities, big games to show what they've learnt for a while now. It doesn't get any bigger than next week so we'll relish that.”
So they should. Ireland, their number one in the world status enhanced by an exemplary performance of clinical execution, not only to score four first-half tries but to withstand everything Scotland could throw at them without breaching their tryline, really did look world beaters as they stormed into 26-0 half-time lead at Stade de France.
The victory that would mean a 17th consecutive Test win, complete a clean sweep of their Pool B rivals and set up Ireland’s best chance of breaking the glass ceiling that has to this point limited their World Cup achievements to the last eight, was by then already assured. Scotland were broken, their pre-match declaration that the Irish winning streak would be ended cruelly and emphatically dismissed by their opponents’ superiority in all facets of the contest.
All that was left was to see out the 80 minutes, the Irish management’s confidence in that objective underscored by their confidence in emptying their replacements’ bench by the 49th minute, a fifth try already added since the interval. Dan Sheehan had supplied the finish five minutes earlier, adding to the tries that flowed with consummate ease in the first 40, James Lowe scoring after just 63 seconds, two more coming from Hugo Keenan either side of a score from close range by Iain Henderson.
It will have been particularly pleasing to get Sheehan’s try, given he had been unceremoniously bundled over an advertising hoarding by Scotland prop Pierre Schoeman moments earlier. Even the melee that had accompanied that incident had been borne of Scotland’s frustrations, Ollie Smith flicking out a boot to try and trip Ireland’s Johnny Sexton, an act that led to a yellow card for the replacement back. When Sheridan grabbed his try, Scottish misery was almost complete, Ireland’s dominance hammered home with a simple but devastating wink from Peter O’Mahony to former Lions colleague Finn Russell, Scotland’s fly-half and auxillary captain, whose apparent continuous verbals towards the men in green made his team’s inadequacies look even more embarrassing.
Let that not take away from Ireland’s triumph, however. This was as good as they have played at any point in Farrell’s four-year tenure as head coach, up there with the third Test victory over the All Blacks in Wellington 15 months ago and the Six Nations home defeat of France last February. Yet the belief within the coaching group and players that will take them into this Saturday night’s renewal of rivalries with New Zealand, and a reunion with former boss Joe Schmidt and scrum coach Greg Feek, is that there is so much more to come from Ireland.
Farrell himself said it on Saturday night and assistant coach John Fogarty echoed the feeling, explaining why victories were sometimes as instructive as defeats. That belief in their potential for improvement has been a constant of the Farrell era and has been reinforced by the refusal of head coach and captain Sexton to treat either last summer’s series win in New Zealand or this year’s Grand Slam as high points.
To the Ireland brains trust, so insistent that the journey’s principal objective was lifting the Webb Ellis Cup, those successes were merely stepping stones, further opportunities for growth and development. This week’s match-up is another examination of their team’s credentials, the education has not stopped yet.
“The lads know there’s gears in them, in what they’re doing,” Fogarty said, “but look, we’re not going to look too far into the future. We took learnings from Scotland, from South Africa, from a win.
“There’s times when you brush over stuff, you know, in the past you might have a good win and then go ‘well done, move onto the next game’. We took that South Africa match and we looked at what we needed to improve on and we’ll do the same with Scotland.
“There’s things that went well. There’s things we can improve on and that will be our mindset. So the group knows there’s gears but they’ll take a really close look at what we do well and we need to do better.
“We’ll get on our feet on Monday, make a plan, hone it on Tuesday and fire on Wednesday and rest up for what’s going to be a huge, huge game.”
H Keenan; M Hansen (S McCloskey, 21-31 – HIA, 34), G Ringrose, B Aki, J Lowe (C Murray, h-t); J Sexton – captain (J Crowley, 45), J Gibson-Park; A Porter (D Kilcoyne, 48), D Sheehan (R Kelleher, 48), T Furlong (F Bealham, 49); T Beirne (J Ryan, 48), I Henderson; P O'Mahony (J Conan, 49), J van der Flier, C Doris.
B Kinghorn (O Smith, 8 - HIA); D Graham (G Horne, 50), H Jones, S Tuipulotu, D van der Merwe; F Russell, A Price; P Schoeman (R Sutherland, 53), G Turner (E Ashman, 59), Z Fagerson (WP Nel, 60); R Gray, G Gilchrist (S Cummings, 45); J Ritchie – captain (M Fagerson, 18), R Darge (L Crosbie, 65), J Dempsey.
Nic Berry (Australia).
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