Ireland’s title bid undone by the bulldozing George North
WHEN the forensic experts screen the findings of their video dissection tomorrow morning, Wales will have reason to wind George North up again for Paris next Saturday.
The clip in question, of the Redemption Man’s last stampede through the broken ranks of an Irish team scattered far and wide, barely runs to five seconds – long enough for anyone to realise that in his blinkered pursuit of a hat-trick, North missed a different trick of greater significance.
Rob Howley and his coaches claim, not always convincingly, to be their own biggest critics which will have taken some doing given the flood of flak flying their way over the second-half surrender at Murrayfield. In that case, they will seize upon that five-second video as evidence of the moment Wales lost sight of a prize almost beyond their wildest dreams, a try bonus point.
At the end of a night when team and fans reconnected as only the Welsh can, when the players put a smile back on the face of the nation, the temptation is to let North’s last act pass. Those overjoyed at the performance will no doubt shrug their shoulders on the basis that with the game won it didn’t matter.
Except it did, not least because, with more than £15m to be won in prize money, it means that one bonus point carries a potential value running into seven figures. There is another priceless reason for Wales to make North aware of what slipped away in those five seconds, a friendly jolt to ensure he stays grounded upon coming down from Clouds Nine, Ten and Eleven.
Defence coach Shaun Edwards’ public criticism of the gigantic wing can be seen in retrospect as a smart piece of psychology, good enough to goad the feeble flapper of Murrayfield into rediscovering his former self as a force of nature capable of terrifying a team as tough and smart as Ireland’s.
Now they have just enough of an excuse to ensure that the brooding giant stays in the mood for more mayhem in Paris, bristling at the need to prove another point. Now that they have rebooted North in all his electrifying grandeur, the last thing Wales need is for him to be perceived once more as slumped in rest on his laurels.
In the fortnight between unfurling the white flag in Edinburgh, Howley and his team had been given more rockets than Guy Fawkes on Bonfire Night. Having been on the rear end of most, North responded by giving the Six Nations something it had not witnessed before – the human equivalent of a Caterpillar designed for moving earth.
Over the course of 81 minutes he moved enough of it to change the landscape of the tournament, eliminating Ireland in the process and reducing the status of Saturday’s match against England in Dublin from two-way title decider to foregone conclusion.
What happened in the 82nd, or to be more relevant what didn’t happen, denied Wales one final bit of landscaping.
On a night of surprises, North created the fleeting chance of the ultimate surprise, a try bonus at the expense of the supposedly meanest defence in the game. His impact had gone beyond the thunderous opening try and the second made simple by Wales’ clever exploitation of Johnny Sexton’s yellow card.
With one half of their incomparable half backs steaming in the bin, the other followed him straight after North’s second. Conor Murray, as gallant as they come, finally succumbed to the pain from an arm smashed in stopping North almost half an hour earlier, a tackle that must have felt being run over by a big wheel.
At the start of that last careering run, North had only one aim in mind – to run round, over or through any green obstacle daring to stand in his vicinity. With the ball lodged imperiously in one hand, passing it was not an option.
Lodging the ball in his right hand meant keeping the other free to fend-off anyone coming from leftfield. And when a red-shirt appeared from that very direction, North either didn’t see him or did and ploughed on regardless.
A short inside pass would have given Gareth Davies every chance of a clear run between the posts. The substitute scrum-half ’s appearance in glorious isolation vanished in the second or two North needed to bullock into one Irishman too many.
The instinctive capacity for making the right move in the heat of any Test match, let alone one of such unrelenting ferocity, is a hallmark of excellence separating the great from the very good. North can be forgiven but not if he makes the same choice should the same circumstances recur in Paris this weekend.
Wales had been due a lucky break and no neutral would have begrudged them the two they got, one in each half. The cumulative damage caused by Sexton’s yellow card and Robbie Henshaw’s illegal role in the 69th minute maul amounted to 17 points.
If Sexton, protesting his innocence at being trapped after his try-saving tackle on Jonathan Davies, deserved some sympathy, Henshaw deserved none. Rory Best was in the process of being driven over from a line-out when the Leinster centre rushed into the maul in an off-side position and sabotaged the entire process.
But for that Ireland would almost certainly have gone into the final ten minutes one point ahead at 16-15. Instead they wound up with nothing and if the
scoreboard did them less than justice then there can be no denying Wales their right to a victory which will do wonders for morale.
They were worth it for the irresistible force of their back row alone. The Warburton-Tipuric-Moriarty trio brought a dynamic power that overwhelmed Test Lions like Sean O’Brien and Jamie Heaslip. CJ Stander, alone of the Irish back row, stood tall for the hour before playing himself to a standstill.
And to think Ireland had arrived reinforced by so many trappings of supposed superiority that even the locals had all but given up on a home win. The official Six Nations stats had them on top of every table imaginable – the most tries, most carries, most passes, most breaks,... everything except the one that mattered – on the scoreboard.
There had been Welsh fears all week that a third straight defeat would result in calls from an already disenchanted public for heads to roll. Sir Gareth Edwards sensed the mood and tried his level best to reduce the anxiety without sounding too hopeful: ‘’We might, just might, spring a surprise.’’
He must have been as surprised as anyone by what he saw.