Jack copes well but the Sexton void is terrifying
ON A NIGHT ill-suited to sweet stories, Jack Crowley was asked to magic away the loss of a legend. He coped well in a dreadful contest, but his presence only sharpened an absence. Filling a Johnny Sexton-shaped hole is too much to demand of a 22 year old making his first Test start. Minding that gap is too much for any player available to Andy Farrell. Ireland’s Sexton dependency is acute, and whether you believe that reliance on a 37-year-old is misguided or dictated by a rare, blazing talent, it is now the overwhelming feature of this invigorating Irish side.
Crowley will have other chances and deserves them given this effort, but he can only hope they come in more sympathetic surrounds. He’d be entitled to wish for more inspired team-mates around him as well. Victory here was not so much seized as smuggled out of shaky Australian hands on a dank night only fit for November.
It was a longer-term alternative to Sexton, and one often too lightly regarded, who chopped over the winning penalty. Ross Byrne’s roar on converting was a moment of personal glory on a night of team malfunctions. The game was awful and for much of it so was the atmosphere. Fans are getting used to Ireland winning, and Australia are not an opponent to sharpen anticipation the way South Africa, New Zealand, England or France are.
They are a long way from their greatest days, and a way back to the top is not obvious on the evidence of this.
Their discipline was just a bit more awful than Ireland’s, and match referee Ben O’Keeffe finally cracked before half time and showed a yellow card to replacement hooker Folau Fainga’a, for his team’s fourth neck roll of the half.
James Slipper, their captain, complained that Irish players lying on the ball were forcing his men into illegality. It was a dumb argument, but in keeping with a whiny soundtrack that had players from both sides cribbing to O’Keeffe.
Maybe they were soured by how awful the rugby was, because it didn’t seem to be doing much for the other 50,000 in the ground.
The occasion raised again the stubborn issue of Ireland without Johnny Sexton. The team were flat and uninspired, and there is an argument that through his contrariness alone, Sexton helps guard against sloppiness; his refusal to tolerate sets a standards his teammates dare not ignore.
How fit Sexton was at all in the days preceding this match is unclear, but the praise Mike Catt offered for Crowley on Friday became more relevant once his start was revealed.
Catt talked about receiving a call from Crowley with questions about how Ireland played, and this from a man whose provincial career has been one mostly confined to promise. The staid Van Graan years were not conducive to a talent like his, but Catt talked about his development ‘with Munster sort of moving to the way we have played’.
Opportunities to make an irresistible case did not arise in a somnolent first half. Ireland’s play was too slow and chances to set loose his outside backs were virtually nil. If it matters at all, he looked composed and showed no signs of being cowed, but the fast starts that were a devastating feature of Ireland’s summer tour were again elusive.
Opponents are now wise to this ambition and so Ireland are slowed by whatever means necessary.
That worked from the first whistle here, but the Irish played a busy role in undermining their own plans. That the half ended with a messy square-up involving Andrew Porter and a handful of Aussies unconvincing in their outrage felt about right. The row ended quickly and the players rushed to heat of the dressing room.
And just as the South African determination to withstand Ireland’s fast start was only a halfformed thing, so the Wallabies forgot about the re-start, too.
Ireland were sharper on the resumption, and were the width of Mack Hansen’s right boot from scoring through Jamison GibsonPark. Seeing that try disallowed shunted Ireland off track again, and the game was subsiding back into mess of trials and errors.
The technical detail of what Ireland did poorly and why will be discussed, but the difficulty of finding a way to live without Johnny Sexton is the problem most deserving of time and thinking.
Jack Crowley’s start was a lovely story for the player and his province, and as an audition it was competent enough to warrant a call back. But the gap between Ireland with their captain and Ireland without is forbidding. There is no way of bridging it now.
So it’s official: keeping Sexton fit is now as important as any other aspect of World Cup planning.
Sexton helps guard against sloppiness... the team were flat without him