McCarthy having last laugh after Irish exit
Ireland have been the dominant force in clashes with Scotland since
EDDIE O’SULLIVAN wasn’t pulling his punches: ‘We have seen all this before. They always talk themselves up. They always talk a great game. They’ve some deluded notion that they’re better than they are. I’m not being harsh. These guys haven’t won here in 10 years.
‘They’ve won three times against Ireland in 20 years. It’s just deluded. They talk themselves up, they come in and then they implode. We’ve seen this time and time again, and he (Stuart Hogg) talks about them being onto something special?’
Harsh words from Eddie following Ireland’s 31-16 victory against Scotland in Dublin last December. That Autumn Nations Cup win had eased some pressure on Andy Farrell after a mixed autumn campaign.
O’Sullivan, who enjoyed a 100 per cent record against the Scots during his time as Ireland head coach, was on punditry duties for RTÉ and the Corkman set social media ablaze with his post-match tirade.
It was a ruthless summation of Ireland’s rivals, perennial underachievers at club and Test level. The thing is, O’Sullivan was dead right. Ireland’s record against Scotland in the Six Nations reads 17 wins with just four losses. Throw in the battering Joe Schmidt’s side gave them at the last World Cup and you get the picture.
There was a flashpoint in this rivalry and it arrived in February of 2000.
O’Sullivan was Warren Gatland’s right-hand man when the New Zealander sent out five new caps (John Hayes, Simon Easterby, Peter Stringer, Ronan O’Gara and Shane Horgan) against Scotland in the second round of the championship.
The youthful hosts duly eviscerated their Scottish opponents 44-22, their first triumph in that fixture since 1988.
That stat may raise some eyebrows among younger readers. The 1990s was a grim time in Irish rugby. It was the men in green who struggled back then and there were no delusions of adequacy in their ranks…
After their landmark win over the Scots in 2000, Ireland arrived in Murrayfield the following year in buoyant mood.
The Foot and Mouth crisis had wreaked havoc with the sporting calendar, meaning Ireland’s final three Six Nations game were pushed back until September and October.
No matter, the hex had been lifted. It was time to continue exorcising the ghosts of the ’90s in Edinburgh.
What unfolded was a worryingy familiar scene. Ireland were off the pace all afternoon while the likes of Gregor Townsend and John Leslie punched holes seemingly at will. Final score: Scotland 32, Ireland 10.
The following morning a newspaper ran with the headline:
‘Back to the bad old daze’. Kudos to the sub-editor who came up with it. It was painfully accurate. Thankfully, this sobering loss was merely a throwback. Ireland would win on their next seven visits to Murrayfield in the Six Nations. Scottish victories in this fixture would be few and far between: Croke Park in 2010 and hard-fought home wins in 2013 and 2017. Otherwise, it was all one-way traffic. Next Sunday, Farrell’s squad will head for the Scottish capital in expectation rather than hope.
There was no such optimism in the 1990s. It was an era long before the glory days of the Heineken Cup and the Grand Slams. Forget about historic victories over the All Blacks, Ireland were losing to the likes of Namibia, Samoa and Italy back then. And the Scots certainly had the measure of the Irish...
Kenny Murphy is the manager of Cork Constitution these days. Furthering the fortunes of the legendary Leeside club is his rugby cause these days but he was a reliable full-back with a rifle of a right boot back in his playing days.
Murphy faced Scotland on three occasions in 1990, 1991 and 1992. Ireland were not short of talent at the time, with the likes of Brendan Mullin, Simon Geoghegan and Philip Mathews on duty, But Scotland had Gavin Hastings, David Sole and Finlay Calder.
‘It was a different time. There was no going into a seven-week camp,’ recalls Murphy.
‘You’d assemble on the Saturday night, train Sunday under the old stand in Lansdowne Road. A quick meeting and then the forwards and backs would break off.
‘Then you’d come together for a bit of a team run and then you’re gone and you’d assemble again on Wednesday night for Thursday training, team run on Friday and then the match on Saturday.
‘It was pure amateur and we couldn’t buy a win in those days. I always thought the Scotland team back then, all the lads in the back three were fabulous players. Their midfield. Their half-backs. They had a very solid front-row. Finlay Calder was the captain and John Jeffrey was with him in the backrow.
‘It was frantic rugby. In fairness to the Scots back then, they ran every ball. Scots are very like the Irish. Great lads and at least we made good friends, the tables at the dinners were always great fun.’
Murphy’s teammate Nick Popplewell was arguably Ireland best player in the 90s.
A mobile and explosive loosehead prop, he won win 48 caps at the coalface for Ireland along with the distinction of starting for the British and Lions in the Test series against New Zealand in 1993.
But a familiar foe haunted him every year.
‘I never won a game against Scotland,’ Popplewell admits wryly.
In seven meetings, a drab 6-6 at the old Lansdowne Road in 1994 was the best Ireland could muster against them.
‘I think that was the inception of the slow hand clap. We were bored playing them but I think the crowd were even more bored watching it.
‘The 90s were dismal. We could never beat Wales at Lansdowne Road but we could never lose to Wales at the Cardiff Arms Park for some reason. Maybe we should have swapped venues?
‘We could never beat Scotland. Just the one draw. They were just f ****** horrible to play against.’
So, what was the difference between the two sides back then?
‘They would have been fitter than us. They would have better organised. Ian McGeechan would have been ahead of his time.
‘WE COULDN’T BEAT THEM, THEY WERE HORRIBLE TO PLAY AGAINST’
‘They had a very good backrow who dictated everything. We seemed to have a different backrow every bloody year.’
It was different times of course. The game went professional in 1995 but, truthfully, the IRFU were slow out of the blocks on that front. They eventually caught up. Now, there is so much to admire about how the game is run in this country.
The high standards expected of Ireland and the provinces are a result of the many successes which have been achieved over the past 20 years. Having lorded it over Ireland in the 90s, the Scots are now looking across the Irish Sea with envy.
Grand Slams, Six Nations titles, European Cups and Pro14 titles have been stockpiled. The trophy cabinet in Scotland HQ is caked in dust.
Think back to Ireland’s loss in Murrayfield in 2017. Schmidt was seething that the team bus had been delayed in getting to the ground before the game.
The Kiwi felt the disruption had played a part in their sluggish start to the contest. They were late to the ground and were pretty much late to everything in the first half as Hogg and Co ran riot.
At least the bus turned up. Popplewell recalls a game against Italy in Treviso back in 1995 when he and his team-mates were forced to flag down taxis to hitch a lift to the Stadio Comunale di Monigo after the team coach failed to arrive. Different times, indeed.
Since Gatland began to break fresh ground in the early 2000s, the national team has enjoyed a remarkable era of consistent coaching.
From O’Sullivan to Declan Kidney to the dizzying heights of Schmidt, each one has built on the work of his predecessor. Farrell is currently trying to keep up his end of that bargain.
He’s already overseen two wins over the Scots anyway.
The 1990s, unsurprisingly, were not quite as prolific.
The coaching nous of Jim Telfer and McGeechan, the revered good cop and bad cop combo who spearheaded a Lions series victory in South Africa in 1997 defined Scottish rugby throughout the decade, bookended with a historic Grand Slam in 1990 and a Five Nations title win in 1999 – the last time they won the title for good measure.
Ireland, meanwhile, were collecting wooden spoons.
There has been much talk about the possibility of Ireland finishing outside the top three in the final Six Nations table since 2013. For context, Ireland never finished higher than fourth in the old Five Nations in the 1990s, propping up the basement in three tournaments.
It didn’t help that the national team had a revolving door of head coaches from 1990 onwards.
Ciaran Fitzgerald and Gerry Murphy came and went. Murray Kidd, the hard-nosed Kiwi who had made his name with Garryowen on the All-Ireland League beat, was Ireland’s first head coach of the professional era when he took up the top job in November 1995.
Ireland would fall to their ninth consecutive defeat at the hands of Scotland the following year. Kidd would be heading for the exit door soon after.
‘I think Murray Kidd had a New Zealand passport and that was about the sum of it,’ says Popplewell.
‘I don’t know what proper qualifications he had for the job but as long as you had a New Zealand passport, that’s what Ireland wanted at the time.
‘The thinking was you had to be fantastic if you had a New Zealand passport and at the end of the day I think the most successful coach we had was Gerry Murphy. John Mitchell (who is now defence coach with England) was good but he didn’t have much of a say.
‘Then you had Mike Brewer. He was a very good player but he hadn’t a f ****** clue about man management or coaching. He was absolutely appalling. That would be a turning point. If they concentrated a bit more on skills and tactics, it would probably have helped us a bit more but sure what would I know, I was only a prop!’
The less said about Brian Asthon’s ill-fated reign, the better. The highly-rated English coach had been handed a six-year deal by the IRFU but he would last barely 12 months in the gig. A 38-10 mauling at Murrayfield was the low point of his tenure. It would take Gatland a few years to turn the tide when he arrived on the scene in 1998.
‘Sure every year we had a different coach,’ Popplewell recalls.
‘It was just different times. Maybe that was the issue. Listen, no one goes out to lose matches. In our day, Ulster were miles ahead of Leinster, Munster and Connacht. Why? Fundamentally, they were very fit and Jimmy Davidson was at the helm there and, in fairness, he had a vision and the drove a very good Ulster side for four or five years.
‘Physically, we could only play for 50 or 60 minutes. If they reduced the game by 20 or 30 minutes, we could have competed with anyone. It was the last 20 minutes when we’d get run ragged and holes would appear and that was it.’
If you were fond of a bet in 1999, Scotland would have been a good punt to kick on and continue their dominance. After all, they had just demolished Ireland 30-13 en route to a Five Nations title win, secured on the final day with a stunning 36-22 victory over France in Paris.
As a new millennium dawned, the long-suffering Irish fans who made their way out of Murrayfield to drown their sorrows down the Royal Mile later that evening would have seen little to suggest that things would improve in the years ahead. They had just seen Townsend – the brilliant Scotland No10 – run rings around Irish players.
Fast forward to the present day and Townsend is now trying to bring Scotland out of the doldrums. These days, they are the ones playing catch-up. Ireland are the top dogs in this fixture and there is nothing delusional about that statement.