The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Sport Saturday
Taunts whip up Ireland v Scotland feud
Snide digs in the media will ensure another epsiode of a bad-tempered soap opera plays out in Dublin today
The more spicy rivalries we have in rugby union, the better. Give us all the barbs and digs and overspilling scraps in matches you have in stock. The Six Nations is the perfect environment for it, with everybody taking great satisfaction from defeating England in particular.
When considering today’s three matches and picking the one that seems most likely to boil over, you would normally lean towards “Le Crunch” between England and France, given that fixture’s fierce history. Yet the long-running spat between Ireland and Scotland is great fun.
Pinpointing when this feud started is not easy but it peaked at last year’s World Cup with the pool game between the sides.
Given the presence of South Africa in the group, the pressure on Ireland and Scotland to win and ensure a place in the quarter-finals was enormous. Ireland had won 16 matches on the bounce. When asked about Ireland’s winning streak, Blair Kinghorn, the Scotland full-back, responded: “They have been on a good run of form, but we’ll end that.”
There are players it seems wise not to rile. Peter James O’Mahony is one of them. Ireland hammered the Scots 36-14 at the Stade de France, having raced into a 36- 0 lead. A half- time melee sparked by Ollie Smith’s trip of Johnny Sexton ended spectacularly with Pierre Schoeman shoving Dan Sheehan over an advertising hoarding.
O’Mahony said afterwards: “They were in the press beforehand saying they were going to knock us off and end our streak, how they figured us out and worked us out.”
Pause. “I don’t think they did, to be honest with you.”
In summary, Scotland are adamant they can beat Ireland and publicly say so, which the Irish scoff at, given they have won the past nine meetings, 13 of the past 14.
In the first series of Full Contact on Netflix, the episode previewing the Scotland-Ireland game in last year’s Six Nations dives into the edge around the fixture. Gregor Townsend, the Scotland head coach, says: “The last few years, I’ve heard a lot of things come out of Ireland. The Irish players, the Irish media, believe we’re soft. Believe we’re the team that’s going to go for 60 minutes, and then fade. That is not happening. We win.”
Comments in the Irish media about Scotland over recent years show where Townsend is coming from. There was Eddie O’Sullivan in 2020 – “They always talk themselves up. They have some deluded notion that they are better than they are” – followed by former Scotland coach and Irish TV pundit Matt Williams in 2022. “I think that talk about it being their year was coming from the Scotland camp, again. They have just got to shut up. Until they actually action out and live their talk, they have got to shut up because they are making fools of themselves. Each time they come out and say, ‘ We’re going to win, we’re a great side’. They’re not doing themselves any favours.”
Finally, with the coup de grace, there was former Ireland fly-half Andy Dunne last year before that meeting at Murrayfield. “I think we’re going to do a job on them. A solid back- in- your- box performance... against a particular Scottish group that have talked a lot.”
Tadhg Beirne, the Ireland lock, was asked this week about Townsend’s comments a year ago: “The Scots are the Scots. We have our perception of them and I’m not going to verbalise it here because they’ve given us ammo in the past from what they’ve said in the media, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was any different this week.”
A bit of pre-match chatter does not feel like a sufficient reason for Ireland, in their dominant form, to be this bothered by Scotland, who have not won in Dublin since 2010.
Dig deep enough and maybe you can point to Scotland not backing Ireland’s 2023 World Cup bid as a
cause for gripes, voting instead for France. “Scotland went for the money,” said Philip Browne, the Irish Rugby Football Union chief executive at the time. “It was particularly disappointing that Scotland and Wales didn’t support their nearest neighbours,” Browne added, Wales having voted for South Africa. Frustrating, certainly, but surely not the motivating factor getting Ireland’s players out of bed in the morning in Scotland week.
Perhaps we should accept that the two camps just do not get along, and ask that they keep the soap opera going. It seems best to leave the last word to Beirne. “It’s a rivalry, isn’t it? That’s part of the sport. We both love beating each other. That would be the way I’d put it.”