WIBBLY, WOBBLY WONDERS...
Ireland deserve credit for landing another title but Boks will be relishing crack at ‘world’s best’
SPORT is a fickle game. A few weeks ago, this Irish team were being hailed as the best in the world and, in some quarters, the greatest team to ever compete in the Six Nations.
The narrative is going to change very quickly now.
Andy Farrell’s squad certainly haven’t looked like world beaters in recent weeks despite landing a second successive Six Nations title.
Have Ireland gone from market leaders to a team in decline in the space of a fortnight? Let’s all take a breath and relax.
The truth can be found somewhere in the middle. Ireland remain an excellent outfit. They have endured a bit of a wobble of late, however. Backing up a Grand Slam with a championship is no mean feat. But plenty of fault-lines have been unearthed in recent weeks.
No doubt, Rassie Erasmus was watching on from his home in Cape Town with interest. The Springboks supremo will have been furiously taking notes ahead of the summer series in July.
It’s no accident that the opening Test will take place at Loftus Versfield in Pretoria. It’s a bearpit. It will be heaving by the time Ireland arrive onto the pitch. The visitors will have to contend with a fired-up home side, a ferocious crowd and South Africa’s secret weapon: altitude. The rarefied air above sea level can be a lung burner.
And Ireland are going to feel the heat across those two weekends in July. Because the back-to-back world champions have been listening to all all this guff about Ireland being the best team in the world for quite some time.
One major positive of the Twickenham defeat is that it has dialled down a lot of the recent hysteria around this team.
Yesterday’s performance won’t exactly be whipping the hype machine back into overdrive either.
Ireland are a top-class Test side, unquestionably the best and most consistent team in our history. But the best in the world? South Africa have all the receipts.
For a bit of context, Ireland – in the 36-year history of the global showpiece – have never won a World Cup knockout game. The current Springboks have won six back-to-back on route to successive world titles. One team revels in the pressure. The other wilts. Those are the cold, hard facts.
Ignore the world rankings. Pay no heed to ‘glorious’ autumn international triumphs. Same goes for summer tour victories. Six Nations titles are most welcome but let’s not cod ourselves about such an achievement in the grand scheme of things. The World Cup remains the real acid test. It may be an inconvenient truth for the fanbase and certain elements of the media, but you can’t ignore it.
Scotland’s recent record against Ireland has been positively grim. A nine-game losing streak stretching back to Busgate in 2017. That barren run included a brace of hammerings in World Cup pool meetings, in 2019 and four years later.
They arrived in the capital on the back of an implosion in Rome. A week after they had demolished England at Murrayfield.
Calling the Scots inconsistent would be a compliment. Under Gregor Townsend, they have been infuriatingly flaky. They can be brilliant one week and utterly abject the next.
We all wondered how Ireland would pitch up after that damaging day in London. We wondered which Scotland team would turn up in Dublin, too.
Suffice to say, there were up for this one. The first half was cagey, error strewn and sloppy. And the visitors would have been delighted with such an outcome. Scotland didn’t fire too many shots in the opening 40 minutes but, crucially, they had blunted the Irish attack.
Expectations of a post-Twickenham backlash proved wide of the mark. If this was to be Peter O’Mahony’s last home game in an Ireland shirt – and his emotional reaction during the anthems suggested a lot on that front – it didn’t feel like a rousing send-off was in the offing.
Quite the opposite actually. The Twickenham gremlins weren’t out of the system, clearly. And Hugo Keenan’s late withdrawal wouldn’t have done much to calm some jitteriness in the Irish ranks. In came Jordan Larmour from the international wilderness. His first international start at full-back since a Six Nations clash at Twickenham in February 2020.
There has been no shortage of
chat about the atmosphere – or lack thereof – around the Aviva Stadium for quite some time. But even by this stadium’s standards, it was eerily quiet for long swathes of a cagey first half.
It was telling that the biggest roars accompanied – save for Dan Sheehan’s opportunistic try – moments of Irish defiance, be it a rip from Joe McCarthy or a poach from Josh van der Flier.
On a few occasions, Jack Crowley looked up and, almost devoid of fresh options, opted to probe in behind a staunch Scottish defensive line. The sight of two of those grubbers rolling over the dead ball line would have got a big tick up in the Scotland coaches’ box.
Ireland just couldn’t get into their customary rhythm. Everything just felt a bit off.
Did Farrell give them a bit of the hairdryer at the break? Ireland certainly went up the gears in the second half. They were still lacking that trademark fluency and cohesion but there was far more intent.
The scrum was a big weapon. It will need to hold up its end of the bargain on the highveld in a few months’ time.
There was a sense that Ireland were beginning to turn the screw. The killer blow continued to evade them, however. Tadhg Furlong’s close-range effort got a shake of the head from the TMO. Calvin Nash was cut down and swarmed with the line at his mercy. Garry Ringrose, one of the cavalry sent into the fray from the bench, couldn’t hold a pass with the Scottish defence at breaking point.
Crowley’s penalty and a fourpoint lead didn’t feel like much of a buffer in a contest like this.
Surely this navy-clad dam was about to break. The Scots had racked up 202 tackles by the time Robbie Henshaw was held up over the line in the 65th minute. You could sense the relief around the stadium when Andrew Porter burst through a pile of weary Scotland defenders for what felt like the match winner. That late try from Huw Jones made for a nervy endgame, which seemed fitting in the circumstances.
Another title secured but plenty to ponder in the months ahead. Ireland had to dig this out and they will get nothing easy against the Boks this summer.
That series will reveal a lot about an Ireland team which has stuttered of late. How good is this team? We’ll find out in July.