World awards no great thing for Ireland
Green is officially the new black. In fully deserved fashion, Ireland cleaned up at World Rugby’s awards ceremony in Monte Carlo yesterday as rugby’s new world order began to take some sort of formal shape.
The green machine can end the men in black’s nine-year stranglehold on top spot during next year’s Six Nations, but for now they may as well be considered top dogs already, with an awards clean sweep endorsing what was a quite brilliant 2018.
It featured 11 test wins of 12, including a Six Nations grand slam, a series victory in Australia and a historic win over New Zealand on home soil.
Team of the Year. Tick.
Player of the Year (Johnny Sexton). Tick.
Coach of the Year (Joe Schmidt). Tick. The timing couldn’t be much better for Schmidt to open his CV and put an addition in his list of ‘coaching achievements’ should he be planning to send it to New Zealand Rugby chief executive Steve Tew in the coming future.
But as for the here and now, or more specifically 2019, it’s hard to see these awards actually being anything but a burden for Ireland’s World Cup campaign.
Welcome to the All Blacks’ world, Ireland, and the pressure of expectation.
As much as everyone may have seen them as ‘a really good’ team and perhaps ‘the best’ going around, it’s now there in black and white for no argument. Even if Ireland try and take no notice of it, suddenly there’s a bit of living up to do.
And all this for a country which has never actually won a World Cup knockout game. Six quarterfinals defeats, one quarterfinal playoff loss, and one pool play exit. The Irish and expectation don’t exactly go shoulder to shoulder.
And if any shoulders in particular just got that bit heavier, they could be those of Sexton.
Winning an award probably won’t make the classy first five-eighth a better player, and conversely it shouldn’t send him in decline either. But it’s the intangible aspects that it brings.
Every move of the 33-year-old’s will now carry a bit of extra expectation for being on-point, clinical, even dazzling, because he’s shown what he’s capable of this year.
And as the key playmaker for a team not used to flying this high, that could have a fair few implications going into the pressure-cooker environment of World Cup play. Small margins are at play, and all it takes is an unconscious feel for the need to overplay a hand.
Beauden Barrett – who took the gong the past two years (last year’s win remains very dubious) – was already well used to a burden-feel that being the All Blacks No 10 brings, and was able to keep producing magic moments, though all the invariable extra analysis on him has now brought challenges, notably in the form of linespeed defence.
Sexton’s been around a while, but you can bet any parts of his game that may have been glossed over in times gone by are now no hope of hiding in the eyes of opposition coaches.
As for the All Blacks, an empty-handed awards night (even Karl Tu’inukuafe missed out on Breakthrough Player of the Year) was only offset by Brodie Retallick winning Try of the Year honours.
It represented the first year since 2007 that they hadn’t claimed team, player or coach honours.