RUGBY/ SIX NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP: DUBLIN WAS heaving on Saturday night as tens of thousands took the view that a win is always worth celebrating, particularly as an antidote to these recessionary times. And it will be a sad oul' day when we don't celebrate a win over England.
Yet, rarely can one recall such contrasting views of what had unfolded. It either bordered on ugly, or was a thunderous and absorbing collision.
Admittedly, the French game a fortnight before had used the full expanse of the pitch, with the aerial ping-pong punctuated by vintage French counter-attacks and Ireland’s willingness to run and strike from deep as well.
But when the action becomes as concentrated as it did for stretches on Saturday, the exchanges can appear remote.
Perhaps too many in the 81,163 attendance were expecting something resembling the wondrous and clinical 43-13 victory of two years before.
The atmosphere crackled at the outset, but thereafter it ebbed and flowed, at times assuming all the fervour of a Leonard Cohen concert, until some English skulduggery or pressure on the English line livened up proceedings.
The relief at the end was palpable, all around the ground and on the pitch. It should never have been a one-pointer, and but for Ronan O’Gara’s radar going askew it wouldn’t have been.
On Saturday evening, one of his former team-mates likened him to a thoroughbred horse, ie, one that needs to be finely tuned, but if there’s something off-kilter it can upset him more readily than most, and prompt even him to ask himself: “What the **** is going on?”
The irony is that he landed five from five with the Mitre ball in Rome. But let’s give the lad a break: he dropped 11 potential points – not 17, as someone on RTÉ was reported to have said – and with 895 points in Test rugby it’s not as if he’s in debt to his country. O’Gara has bailed Ireland out many times.
Here, Ireland wouldn’t have won without Brian O’Driscoll, who now rivals the colossal Paul O’Connell for the Superman garments. Aside from doing his fairly peerless stuff as a number 13, at times O’Driscoll did passable imitations of a seven (those trademark turnovers from playing the ball on his feet) and a 10 (the drop goal), not to mention the perfect body positioning which any prop would have been happy with for his third try in the three games and his 35th for Ireland.
Coach Declan Kidney, always uncomfortable when asked to sing individual praises, highlighted the collective leadership of O’Driscoll, O’Connell and O’Gara, adding: “He’s playing well in a team that’s going okay. He’s playing his part, and that’s what he does. It seems with Brian it can be a little bit manic (media coverage): he’s way off target one day, and the next . . . (but) it depends on what goes on around you.
“I’d have to say an awful lot for Ronan today. You miss one or two penalties and all of a sudden you can go into your shell. He didn’t. When we needed a conversion to put us up, or a penalty, he was the man that stood up. He never shirked it. Today was one of Brian’s better days, and I’m delighted for him. But I always look on the fella who’s not having a good day, it’s how he digs in that could be the deciding factor.”
The pressure is intensified by a nation which craves the kind of success which this generation of players is good enough to achieve, led as it is by probably the best Irish player of any generation. And, as the prize nears, so the hardest part is still to come, with away trips to Scotland and Wales.
“We’re having a bit of craic, that’s an important part of it,” said Kidney. “There’s a lot of experience in the team, they’ve been down different roads before and we want to try and put that to good effect with some of the younger fellas coming in.
“But there’s nobody like Scotland to disturb a party. They have a huge pack. I don’t know if you saw what the Scottish scrum did to the Italian scrum. It looked to me in the few that I saw that they were more than comfortable. And we would struggle against that Italian scrum and their physicality. We just have to see how it goes, but it’s a bit of craic for the next two weeks.”
The negatives? “Our understanding of how to speed the game up and recycle the ball against a defence like that, we definitely need to take a look at that,” he admitted. “Getting over the gain line on the front (foot) and being able to recycle was very difficult today, and that’s certainly something we’re going to have to take a look at, because Scotland are every bit as big as England.”
Much of the post-match debate – and virtually every post-match interview by Martin Johnson or his players – focused on England’s continuing ill-discipline. Their tally of 10 yellow cards in four games must be unprecedented, and equally costly here was the penalty count of 16-8.
“It’s very annoying. I’ve just told the guys that it has cost us a Test match. All that work you put in to try to win a game is gone, wasted,” said Johnson, who said he felt “angry for the players”.
“It’s not one individual doing it all, it’s a number of individuals at key moments.”
Yet as befits a team seemingly designed primarily to stop the opposition, collectively they are serial offenders. Ireland are no shrinking violets and have flirted with the offside line, but they don’t constantly talk to the referee. England lived offside and “hands away white” could be set to music.
Phil Vickery and Delon Armitage, especially, played on the edge, each cynically slapping the ball from Tomás O’Leary’s hands. Mike Tindall and Armitage each blocked Rob Kearney and O’Driscoll off the ball, and Riki Flutey deserves to be cited for his late, high shoulder charge on the Ireland captain.
Good bloke and wonderful, on-field force of nature that he was, for all of Johnson’s table-thumping and hand-wringing, the old saying comes to mind that a team reflects the personality of its manager.
Indeed.
