Rob Kearney: Every time we lose, the pack will be a big talking point
Ben Earl of England celebrates his side winning a scrum penalty during the Six Nations match against Ireland. Picture: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
Good teams lose games. Rob Kearney was crystal clear on that as he picked over the wreckage of Ireland’s back-to-back Grand Slam ambitions. That’s not to say the defeat didn’t demand, and deliver, some cold, hard analysis.
Ireland, he said, are still a better collective than their English counterparts but theirs is not a team that can expect to win games of that ilk at 70%. “In the cold light of day we just didn’t turn up to what we are capable of,” he said.
The pack? Bullied was the word used.
There isn’t much time for an in-house inquest given Scotland will be in Dublin this week to try and add to Ireland’s pain and claim what would be an historic Triple Crown for themselves. The rest of us can theorise and ‘what if’ the week away.
The final whistle was still blowing in our ears on Saturday when Bernard Jackman raised a familiar point about the volume of beef available to Andy Farrell. It jarred at the time because this was a chapter we thought had been closed.
It’s a debate that was had in the past when England and France beasted Ireland and when Leinster had been bettered by La Rochelle. So is it a subject we have to suddenly relitigate now on the back of this one setback?
“No, it's not, and listen I'm guilty of it too, talking on TV about it,” said Kearney. “We have to move away from this narrative a little bit, we've proved so many times that we can out-play and out-wrestle bigger packs than us.
“Invariably when a team loses their pack gets bullied and the two times we have lost [last week and at the World Cup] it always comes back into question. We're a big, physical, fit pack, probably the biggest and best pack we've ever had.
“Every time we lose it's going to be a big talking point but I certainly don't think it's an issue for this team.”
Jackman mentioned Ryan Baird in this context on RTÉ. The 24-year old has been superb for Leinster since playing only a cameo role in the World Cup and he has shown his athletic ability with some standout moments in this Six Nations.
Peter O’Mahony’s nomination as new Ireland captain all but silenced the burgeoning debate as to whether Baird was ready to take over from the Munster veteran, but it’s a conversation that will pick up again now after the loss in London.
O’Mahony was part of a pack that was outplayed by their counterparts on the day and his second yellow card of the Championship, coming just before the hour, left Ireland in the tightest of spots at a time of real peril.
Kearney felt Ireland should still have closed out the game. Back rows are expected to live on the edge in terms of the breakdown and the referee but he would add too that there is even more of a need for the captain to ‘paint good pictures’.
Where does that leave him and the No.6 shirt?
“They’ve been pretty good,” Kearney said of O’Mahony’s displays. “They’ve been robust, he's been pretty strong in the contact area. He goes for a lot of steals, which is what you want, he's got the reward for a fair few of them.
“He's good in the choke tackle as well so I think he's played pretty well. Okay, the two yellow cards are going to be a blot on the copybook, so to speak. I'd say this weekend that will be one of the positions up for discussion.”
Dropping the skipper for Scotland, when there is still a Championship title on the line, would be a seismic shout. Whatever about that, Farrell has some thinking to do on the right wing and on the bench after head injuries to Calvin Nash and Ciarán Frawley last Saturday.
That wing slot was a source of debate before the tournament with Mack Hansen and Jimmy O’Brien both injured and it looks like a choice now between Garry Ringrose and his provincial teammate Jordan Larmour.
One is a centre, the other has played just 17 minutes of Test rugby in almost three years.
“Jacob [Stockdale] is an out-and-out left winger so you can't really play him on the right. I think they'll look at Garry there. We had this predicament in round one, we didn't have a huge amount of guys putting their hand up for the right wing.
"You had Calvin and Jordan. Had Jordan had a [full] game in the competition up until now you'd probably go with him. He’s been playing well this season, but for such a big game I wouldn't be surprised to see Garry on the right wing.”
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