Surprise capital gains for Louth and England
ALTHOUGH I attended neither, two football matches took place in the capital on Saturday afternoon that grabbed my attention.
In Division 3 of the National League Louth took on Laois in Dublin 3 while across the city in Dublin 4 Ireland opened their Six Nations campaign with a clash against England.
Taking into account the season just passed and considering recent form, there were two clear favourites to take the spoils. On the face of it Louth and England appeared out of their depth.
Laois built steadily in 2018 under Kerryman John Sugrue. The O’Moore county won Division 4 at a canter without losing a game, progressed to a Leinster final against Dublin and gave a good account of themselves against Monaghan in the Qualifiers.
The current season opened brightly for them last weekend with a six-point thumping of Down in Newry. Despite losing home advantage for a training ban misdemeanour, surely there could only be one result in the opening game of Saturday’s triple header in Croke Park?
On the other side of the Liffey less than two hours later in the oval ball game, Ireland were overwhelming favourites to put the old enemy to the sword amidst ambitions for a second Grand Slam in a row.
Eddie Jones, as is his wont, stirred the pot in the build-up but most observers viewed the diminutive Australian’s ramblings as mere deflection of England’s lack of quality.
Ireland enjoyed a perfect 2018 with a magnificent Grand Slam followed by the scalps of Australia and New Zealand.
Coming into the 2019 season, Ireland were in pole position to challenge for another Six Nations clean sweep and the World Cup which takes place in November in Japan.
Joe Schmidt had worked wonders with this talented group of players and expectations were high of a positive start for the visit of the ‘Auld Enemy’.
Following last weekend’s less than impressive performance against Longford Wayne Kieran made several changes to personnel with Newtown Blues trio Fergal Donohue, Emmet Carolan and Conor Brannigan coming in along with Naomh Martin’s Sam Mulroy.
I must admit I didn’t fancy our chances in Headquarters, therefore it was a big surprise when I heard we were 3-1 to 0-2 up inside 15 minutes.
We also opened brightly against Longford but several missed chances and a numerical disadvantage dented our confidence and we failed to recover for the remainder of the game.
Laois were obviously shellshocked by this blistering start and while they closed the gap to four at the half way mark, we remained in control of the contest throughout and saw them off by a comfortable five-point margin.
Ryan Burns finished with a personal tally of 2-3 but it was also good to see young midfielder Conor Early put his name on the other three pointer after his own individual performance six days ago.
Manager Kierans will be delighted with this immediate response from his players and will be looking forward to next week’s encounter with Offaly in Tullamore with renewed confidence.
The Midlanders lost out narrowly to Westmeath in the opening round and followed that up with a share of the spoils today against Longford.
Like Louth in Croke Park, England raced out of the blocks at Aviva Stadium and crossed the Irish line within the opening 90 seconds. The bruising and burly visitors arrived in Dublin with a point to prove and ready for a battle.
Straight from the kick-off they bullied and battered a strangely subdued Ireland and we found it very difficult to match their power and aggression particularly in the early stages.
This English side are an ugly nasty bunch, in the same mould as their abrasive coach, but allied to their obvious strength and belligerence, they had the stamina and energy to see the game out.
All the home fans were waiting for and expecting these huge ‘units’ to eventually run out of steam but that failed to materialise. Like New Zealand’s visit here in 2016, England played on the edge especially in the opening half.
Keith Earls was clobbered late and illegally on several occasions as was Johnny Sexton but the English coped comfortably when reduced to 14 men following flanker Tom Curry’s yellow card.
We simply didn’t have the strength to wrestle the match back from them and in truth England deserved their victory.
Coach Joe Schmidt admitted afterwards we were ‘beaten-up and man handled’ in similar fashion to the All Blacks defeat.
That world number two ranking was almost like a target on our backs for those marauding English brutes. This defeat has brought Irish fans back down to earth with an unmerciful thump and was a sobering experience for players and coaches alike.