Rugby: The Irish World Cup odyssey exuberantly carries on. A 62-12 win over Russia in Rotorua yesterday, where the 25,661 capacity was almost exclusively green and was over twice the previous two turn-outs here, leaves Declan Kidney's men atop Pool C with three wins from three and a feel-good factor which you can almost reach out and bite. Well, drink anyway.
They move on to the crunch match against Italy in Dunedin next Sunday with a nine tries to two win under their belts and with 30 players having featured in the World Cup in just three matches; 29 of them in starting line-ups. Encouragingly, Jamie Heaslip and Rob Kearney had good hit-outs yesterday, as did Seán O'Brien, Keith Earls and a host of those pushing for a starting place next week, notably Ronan O'Gara and Andrew Trimble. Just as importantly, their injury profile remains relatively low.
Kearney, O'Brien and Earls picked up various "bangs" according to Kidney, to leg, arm and leg respectively, but along with the injured trio of Paul O'Connell, Gordon D'Arcy and Tommy Bowe, who were ruled out for this game, Kidney anticipated they'd be training by midweek after a couple of days off. Thus, allowing for David Wallace and the departed Jerry Flannery, they could conceivably go into their final pool game with 30 fit players to choose from and, of course, those three wins. They'd have chopped your arm off for that at the outset of the campaign.
"In a lot of respects we're in as good a place as we'd like to be," admitted defensive coach Les Kiss. "We've a couple of guys with niggling injuries but I think every team has that at this stage. There's also a good vibe in the place. The lads are very confident about the work they're doing, about the planning they're doing for each game. So things are sitting in a good place but it guarantees you nothing. That's one good thing about these players. They're big on that, that it guarantees you nothing."
Indeed, after what Kidney candidly admitted was a hot-and-cold performance, all eventualities are still possible now, with Ireland still capable of finishing first, second or third, and thus on a homeward plane next Monday.
On the safe presumption that Australia rack up a bonus-point win against these Bears from Russia next Saturday in Nelson, for the last eventuality to happen, the Italians require a bonus-point win over the USA tomorrow and then to beat Ireland while limiting them to no more than one match point in Dunedin next Sunday.
Having made 14 changes against Australia last Friday, Eddie O'Sullivan will recall Todd Clever and his strongest line-up against the Azzurri, who cannot afford such largesse given their need for a five-point haul before backing up against Ireland five days later. If Italy then beat Ireland on Sunday, even if they finished level on points with Ireland, Nick Mallett's team would go through by dint of winning the head-to-head match-up.
Two match points next Saturday in Dunedin would see Ireland top the group and most probably face Wales in the quarter-finals in Wellington on Saturday week. If the Irish pack hadn't lost control of that late scrum against the States with a bonus point abegging in the opening game, they'd only need one match point next Sunday to top the group. Still, Ireland are very much in charge of their own destiny, though effectively it's a win-or-bust shoot-out in the enclosed Otago Stadium.
As Heaslip put it: "You can do permutations and all that sort of thing but look, it would make life a whole lot easier if we go out there with the intention of winning. There's no point in thinking we can draw, or lose with a bonus point, or any of that crap; just go out there and win it. They're a tough team; they're going to stick it to us at set phase – scrums and lineouts – and all around the field, close down a lot of space as well, so we're going to have our work cut out for us."
While it could never emulate the drama of Eden Park, this was Ireland's biggest win since the 55-0 victory over Canada at Thomond Park in November 2008, and their second biggest World Cup win ever; eclipsed only by the 64-7 win over Namibia in the pool stages eight years ago in Australia.
Amid the noisy pockets of red chanting "Russ-ee-a, Russ-ee-a," the 25,661 attendance was almost exclusively clad in green. For much of Saturday and certainly all of Sunday, it was as if Rotorua had become a satellite of Ireland 12,000 miles away on the other side of the world.
By Saturday night it appears as if most of Rotorua's ATMs had, literally, run out of cash. The support in green has been one of the very few benefits of the recession, and in Rotorua it has been noticeably young, with a veritable fleet of campervans arriving the day before the game as they availed of this rare chance to celebrate their Irishness.
Their "newness" was best exemplified in the manner several thousand of them were on the banks of the stadium fully 90 minutes before kick-off. That really is a little un-Irish. Despite a steady downpour returning at kick-off and thereafter intermingling with sunshine – is there a crock of gold at the end of that rainbow? – the Mexican Waves had begun by the end of the first quarter and, all in all, the atmosphere was more akin to the Oxegen music festival than a rugby match.
There remain some selection issues though, perhaps most notably at half-back. In the greater scheme of things, a tricky conversion about 15 metres to the right hand side of the posts in the 80th minute with the score 62-12 wouldn't amount to a can of beans, but it would have given Jonathan Sexton two from two and a psychological little fillip after his place-kicking difficulties thus far (four from 11 over the first two games).
But you could tell from his reaction after the ball left his foot that he'd pushed it wide. By contrast, O'Gara landed seven from eight, and is now 10 from 12 in the tournament. Significantly too, with its open corners or "drafts", the Otago Stadium, which has replaced the old House of Pain and has thus been nicknamed the Greenhouse of Pain, has been particularly painful for kickers, even Jonny Wilkinson, with an accuracy ratio of 13 from 31, or 42 per cent, to date.
Ireland have few "issues" right now, but this is one of them.
