OUT OF REACH
Ireland target of semi-final place denied again as the All Blacks flex their muscles
Ireland will depart Japan and head for home tomorrow, with the inquest set to begin into another World Cup quarter-final failure.
Joe Schmidt brought this squad to Japan with high hopes, but they once again crashed and burned in the last eight following a record 46-14 pummelling by the all Blacks.
In May this year, david nucifora, — the IrFU’s high-performance director — set a World Cup semi-final place as the minimum requirement at the forthcoming tournament.
‘We’ve got to get to a semi-final and obviously, we want to go further than that if we can,’ said nucifora at the time.
‘I think we’d be kidding ourselves if we thought that anything worse than a quarter-final is going to be good for us.’
Four years after Schmidt’s squad crashed out of the World Cup quarter-finals following a 43-20 hammering at the hands of argentina, Ireland once again suffered a systems failure in the knockout stage. It was the seventh time they had failed at this juncture.
Schmidt oversaw an era of unprecedented success during his six-and-a-half year stint as head coach, guiding the team to a treble of Six nations titles — including a Grand Slam in 2018 — as well as a brace of historic wins over the all Blacks. But those World Cup debacles in 2015 and 2019 will haunt the new Zealander and retiring captain rory Best.
defence coach andy Farrell — who succeeds Schmidt — now has a major rebuilding operation ahead of him, with daunting trips to Twickenham and Paris looming large in the 2020 Six nations.
Best’s calm leadership will be missed but James ryan is an early favourite to assume the captaincy under the new Farrell regime.
The Ireland management declined to face the media yesterday following Saturday’s seven-try loss, but Josh van der Flier backed this young squad to come back stronger next year.
‘I mean, if you look back to the last four years that I’ve been involved in the Irish set-up, the amount of history we’ve made and the incredible moments that we’ve had, there’s quite an experienced group now. Obviously losing rory is massive, he’s been an incredible leader and I can’t speak highly enough of him,’ said the leinster flanker. ‘But I think it’s a special group and it would be a shame if we don’t push on now.
‘That would be the plan but it’s tough just now to look past this result, I suppose.’
Van der Flier and Co will now aim to build towards the 2023 World Cup in France as the quest for a maiden World Cup semi-final continues.
‘We just have to learn from things, but it’s tough to have to wait four years to see that again,’ he added. ‘Hopefully this group, aside from Besty, will be able to learn from it, get experience from it, and then bounce on. But it’s really hard to take right now.’
new Zealand prop Joe Moody was of a far more positive frame of mind, obviously, and is aiming to turn back the clock to give england a thrashing in Saturday’s semi-final in Yokohama.
Moody, 31, was brought up on watching the all Blacks dish out beatings to the english and wants a repeat at the weekend.
The world champions warmed up for the semi-final with a performance of breath-taking efficiency and flair and Moody said: ‘I am pretty sure england copped a few hidings back in the day when I was growing up.
‘Those are always good memories. Hopefully we can repeat another one of those next week.
‘But it is one thing playing quarter-finals, it is another thing playing semi-finals. You have to expect that it is going to be tougher each week, no matter who the opponent is. We are just looking forward to the challenge.’
new Zealand were quickly out of the blocks in Tokyo and were ahead 34-0 before the Irish got their first score.
Scrum-half aaron Smith said they had more in the tank and Moody, 31, agrees with his half-back.
‘There were a few areas that we could work on. We lost a bit of pill at the line-out, so we can tidy that up,’ he said.
‘We’re pretty happy with how the scrums went and the backs seemed to be doing the trick when we got them go-forward ball.
‘We knew we had to give it to them from the start and not let them build any momentum from that first kick-off. I think we did that. We kept the pressure on for the full 80 minutes.
‘We can take some confidence out of it but, at the same time, it was still a tough game. I don’t think the scoreline reflected how tough that game was.’