The Irish team arrived in Bordeaux on Thursday from their northern base in Tours. Their faces were unchanged but in their minds, a switch had had flipped. While the roar of the crowd was less than three days away, the six gendarme outriders waiting by the team bus at the side of the hotel reflected an urgency to the mood.
The act of changing physical environments appeared to trigger the beginning of the taper towards the oven heat of Stade de Bordeaux. The World Cup had assumed a closeness to the team that had not been apparent.
[ Matt Williams: Future of rugby at stake unless we learn from past scrum horrorsOpens in new window ]
The move from the remote into the match city and competitive mode was borne out at the team announcement, Andy Farrell’s first as coach of an Irish World Cup side, where 18 Irish players could make tournament debuts.
“It’s an advantage,” said Farrell. “The youthfulness and quality of those players is top drawer.”
Johnny Sexton was on the same page. “We’ve built to this moment for the last four years,” he said.
Time has changed the squad and a 350-kilometre journey changed the players. Even Farrell’s team selection was symbolic of moving on. As he sat beside Sexton, both facing the room, his team was delivered, not through the traditional solemn roll call of name by name, but by his able media manager Peter Breen.
“The Irish team is now up on the channel,” he said as everyone turned to their phones.
“I kind of think it’s like being down in Carton House where you are kind of away,” explained Tadhg Furlong. “It’s that little bit quieter and the hotel is outside the city and you are now coming into match venue. There is a realisation there that this weekend is different.”
Furlong was one of a variety of players nominated to talk this week, with each bringing their own energy and character into the room. Sexton was commanding, Garry Ringrose courteous and deferential. Farrell was fraternal and unpretentious, Peter O’Mahony, one arm across his chest, the other resting on it and scratching his chin, looked pensive and Furlong was, as ever, natural.
“What’s pressure?” asked Furlong. “Know what I mean. You’re at a World Cup and it’s the first game. Is that pressure? Is it your opposition that is pressure? Is the pressure we brought ourselves as a group to perform well? There is always pressure. If its different pressure . . . of course it’s different pressure with different opposition but it doesn’t change how we go out on to the pitch or how we want to play.”
Maybe a fundamental shift in gears is pressure they require. Tours was the bucolic country retreat to a more zesty Bordeaux, although around the streets there is little sign of the world tournament footprint save the Rugby Village and giant screen along the river Garonne and ET VIVEZ LA COUPE DU MONDE splashed across the side of the trams that run through the city.
Unlike the tawdry claims of professional boxers who debase opponents before their fights and predict the round in which they are going to “take them out”, the Irish team sensibility is restraint and consideration, although, with Sexton playing, they know neither can be confused with presumption.
Ireland’s pedigree compared with that of Romania screams a mismatch and that requires tightrope walking and diplomatic replies without the air of complacency or brash references to Ireland’s place at the top of the rugby hierarchy.
“Johnny Sexton is one of the most competitive guys I’ve ever played under. That’s his point of difference,” said Irish hooker Rob Herring, suggesting a casual Irish posture is an impossibility.
A few kilometres away, Sosene Anesi walks across the foyer of Romania’s Radisson Blu hotel, his frame making the space look small. He is 6ft′ 4in and wears his black hair in a bun. The Samoan-born former fullback and wing, with one cap off the bench, is All Black 1054 and Romania assistant coach.
Romania’s passage to Bordeaux was complex. The team finished the combined 2021 and 2022 Rugby Europe Championship in third place and looked set to compete in the final qualification tournament. However, second-place Spain were subsequently handed a 10-point deduction for fielding an ineligible player in two matches, a decision upheld on appeal. Romania were in.
But by December, former Scotland coach Andy Robinson folded his tent after three years in charge and just two wins from eight matches last year.
“I feel that I have taken the Romanian team as far as I can after a series of disappointing results in the last six months on and off the field,” said Robinson, who was replaced by former Romanian outhalf Eugen Apjok.
Like the Irish players, Anesi walks a fine line with encouragement for his team but a step away from claiming they have a puncher’s chance of beating Ireland. They are young. Just one player has played in a World Cup before. They lost all of their warm-up games. What All Black culture he can bring is limited by what raw materials are available.
Rather than change how they play the game or align it with what he would have experienced with New Zealand, he has elected to encourage Romania to fall back on their traditional strengths.
“We have to keep it real,” he says. “It is going to be a very tough ask about the wining. We have objectives for this game. We want to make sure we execute our set-piece, make sure we work on our catch and pass. We are here to compete. We are here to make sure we put in a performance that we are very proud of and that our people are proud of.
“We don’t want to go away from what the Romanian DNA is. It is physicality, strong up front with our set piece. And that’s what we are looking forward to seeing against Ireland. Some of our players are from the Pacific and so we also want to bring in a different style of playing, test and see if they have the skillset to play fast, catch and pass, all these things. It’s a good opportunity to see where we are at against Ireland.”
The squads had a run-out on Friday morning in Stade de Bordeaux. The Irish players were working hard not to “get ahead of themselves”, as Sexton soberly pointed out. Romania were charged by the enormity of the challenge.
Both teams have different outcomes in mind and neither are inclined to say exactly what they are. Hours out, the Irish pressures that Furlong considered are perhaps the expectations of everyone else.
