RUGBY:THE EDINBURGH fringe festival began yesterday, in advance of the full international festival next week, and the mix of locals and tourists who have virtually packed out the city's 145,000 hotel rooms milled around Grassmarket adjacent to Edinburgh Castle and elsewhere from tea-time yesterday evening, drinking and eating al fresco amid the brilliant sunshine. And, in addition to the 21,000 performers in 2,542 shows at 258 venues over the next three weeks, today there will be a rugby match.
As a Scottish marching band began cranking up, it all added to the rather surreal prospect of Scotland and Ireland meeting incongruously this afternoon. Rugby scarcely belongs in August, much less on such a carnival-like weekend as this.
Nonetheless coaches Declan Kidney and Andy Robinson will be looking for some fringe benefits from this afternoon’s opening World Cup warm-up match. At the deserted headquarters of Scottish rugby yesterday, the ball echoing around as Jonathan Sexton and Fergus McFadden began kicking practice, Kidney made the obligatory noises about what would constitute a good opening performance for Ireland.
“If we win, isn’t that why we get into it? And then we’ll take a look at the match and go from there,” he said, patently buoyed by the prospect of an actual match and some hands-on match-day coaching. Having hinted Brian O’Driscoll was unlikely to play in Bordeaux next weekend, Kidney added: “It can seem strange but the first play into the game, you are going to have to be ready for it. Once you get closer and closer to the game you just try and concentrate on the earlier bits. This time last week we talked about getting ready for the physical side of that now we talk about getting ready for the first 10 minutes.”
But if the truth be told so much of this game is about individuals. Whether rusty (Rob Kearney, Tomás O’Leary and, when he’s introduced, Jerry Flannery), coming off mixed campaigns (Luke Fitzgerald, Tony Buckley and Denis Leamy) or regarded as a fringe contender (Fergus McFadden and the debutant Mike McCarthy) the stakes are huge. McFadden has first shot at understudying O’Driscoll and McCarthy could yet be the World Cup bolter if he has a big game, and that’s without mentioning a ferociously hungry bench, who must feel they’re fighting for the last seats on the plane to New Zealand.
By rights, even Kidney has to cut them slack: “I can only answer personally, the first thing you look for is honesty of endeavour and it’s not that difficult to find out if a fella is really trying for something and if it gets away from him and he’s trying then you cut him some slack. If a fella is moping around a bit then you wouldn’t cut him as much slack; he’s put in too much work in getting to where he is now so it’s just a question of getting the mind right. You took a look at what he might have done the four or five minutes beforehand and put it together.”
Given all this, and the unusual nature of these games, it’s impossible to know what to expect, but one perhaps shouldn’t expect too much. The bookies had Ireland as favourites until Kidney’s team announcement on Thursday, whereupon it became a scratch game and come kick-off, the Scots start as favourites, marginally.
Robinson has retained 10 of the starting side that finished off the Six Nations with a win over Italy, with only one change in the back line and an unchanged frontrow, while the other four changes may not noticeably weaken their hand, all the more so if John Beattie can rediscover his Killer B form.
With only Andrew Trimble and Sexton surviving from the team which beat England last time out, Ireland are far from recognisable, much less full-strength. There are new combinations everywhere save for half-back, where O’Leary and Sexton have started only six Tests together, and coupled with early-season rustiness and the forecast of heavy rain, all makes for a potentially slippery day.
The days when Ireland routinely piled up big scores (their five wins out of six in the first half of the noughties were by an average just shy of 30 points) have gone. The last four meetings have all been one-score affairs, Scotland winning in Croke Park two seasons ago and Ireland scraping through 21-18 last February despite scoring three tries to nil.
Having virtually been in hibernation, the heavyweight-looking Scots will be mustard keen to hit the ground running, all the more so as they only have one more warm-up match, at home to the Italians in a fortnight.
