Easterby: Focus is on French, not World Cup atonement 

Less than four months on, Ireland will travel to Marseille next week to meet their Six Nations rivals in the opening game of the 2024 championship.

FULL FOCUS: Harry Byrne, Defence Coach Simon Easterby, Ciaran Frawley, Sam Prendergast. Pic: Dan Sheridan, Inpho

Simon Easterby can see the storyline being sketched out for next Friday’s France-Ireland Guinness Six Nations showdown. 

However, he insisted the defending champions will not be thinking about the World Cup final that never was when they kickstart the championship in Marseille.

A World Cup decider between the then world number one Irish and host nation France in Paris last Halloween was the dream date for rugby supporters north of the Equator and quite possibly tournament organisers, World Rugby, given they were the two best-supported nations at their quadrennial party.

Yet the Southern Hemisphere big guns ruined the script, New Zealand avenging the previous summer’s Ireland series win in their own backyard with a 28-24 win over Andy Farrell’s men at Stade de France last October 14 and then eventual champions South Africa causing heartbreak for home fans by edging past Les Bleus in the same stadium 24 hours later.

Less than four months on and Ireland will travel to Marseille next week to meet their Six Nations rivals in the opening game of the 2024 championship at Stade Velodrome and though both sides will be fired up to atone for their premature World Cup exits, Irish defence coach Easterby said on Friday that was furthest from minds inside the Ireland camp.

“It does give you the time to reflect and find out a bit more about what went on, how we could have done things better, some of the learnings,” Easterby said from the Ireland squad’s pre-tournament training camp on Portugal’s Algarve. 

“But our focus for a good while has been building up to this massive game in Marseille.

“I know it will be highlighted in the press in the build-up next week it’s probably a game that people thought would have been fitting for a World Cup final but it wasn’t. We get the second prize of going after each other in the first game. 

"I think there will be that sort of storyline, won't there, about what happened at the World Cup, the fact that neither of us got past the quarter-finals. That's really not a concern of ours. Our concern is trying to figure out a way to beat a very, very good team. And that's all we've prepared for across the last five or six days.

"There will be stories around what went on at the Rugby World Cup and does that kick on into the Six Nations and inevitably that is a story but we have to focus on the here and the now.

"They are missing a few of players, so are we, and it's a great start to see where we're at, at the moment.” 

Ireland’s first order of business when they reconvened in Dublin last Monday for the first time since their World Cup exit was to review their performances in France, and their quarter-final loss to the All Blacks in particular.

Easterby would later retract his suggestion Ireland “probably didn’t fire enough shots” but the coaching staff’s analysis still suggested opportunities were missed against a resurgent New Zealand.

“We’ve been very good at taking opportunities and making sides pay for opportunities they have given us. We probably didn’t fire enough shots and make the most of the opportunities in that game. 

"The defence has been strong, had been strong throughout the World Cup. But we conceded three tries in a game. And New Zealand are one team who have the ability to score from anywhere. They did that.

“But they probably didn’t have to work as hard for their scores as we would have liked. There are lots of other things, individual work-ons etc. But like any game, you reflect, and sometimes you get beaten and you’ve done everything in your power.

“I think we were closer than that, we weren’t far off. We were a hair’s breadth away from scoring at the end. And fine, fine margins. The maul was really effective, we destroyed them at times in that area. We got on the wrong side of some refereeing decisions.

“But at the end of the day, it was 28-24, very little in it. We can always look back and reflect upon what we could have done better, on both sides of the ball. So there’s definitely stuff we think we could have, certainly from my area, to have prevented them getting momentum. 

"They always managed to stay ahead of us. We needed to make sure we could stop them scoring so we could get ahead of them when we got the opportunity.” 

Ireland travelled to their warm-weather training base at Quinta do Lago’s Campus complex on Wednesday for a seven-day camp with defence coach Easterby declaring himself satisfied with the work undertaken thus far.

“It’s a short turnaround from European rugby into a Six Nations Test match. One thing that these players have always done is train in good form and be ready to learn and ready to get better. We can’t fault them from the time they’ve been together since Monday, which was a fairly light day, still on recovery but they’ve built really well into the week and had a really good session today, a good hit-out. I think we’re in a really good place.

“To a man, they’ve come out and trained a put a shift in today. Lots of learning, lots of preparation done early in the week, certainly a really sharp session today and one that will give them a lot of confidence.”