All you could hope was that they didn’t have ITV on in the Italian dressing room after the game. Conor O’Shea might have been trying to lift his lads’ spirits by telling them not to worry, that was Ireland at their absolute peak, when Brian O’Driscoll’s voice would have filled the air. “Exactly what the doctor ordered,” he said of that nine-try, 63-10 triumph, “but there’s room for improvement.”
When you’ve just been pummelled in such a merciless fashion you really don’t need to hear that there were glitches in your subjugators’ performance, O’Driscoll suggesting that if Paddy Jackson hadn’t kicked the ball so much then the try count could have reached Jupiter. Higher if he’d just handed it to CJ Stander every time.
On balance, though, you’d accept a nine-try, 63-10 triumph because they don’t come along every week, and after the disappointment of that trip to Edinburgh, it was a welcome fillip.
The RTÉ panel didn’t want to dwell on that setback – although Daire O’Brien briefly wondered if it was all the fault of the tardy bus driver – so there was a razor sharp focus on Italian matters and the challenge ahead.
Traitorous guilt
Shane Horgan bumped in to, of all people, Conor in a Roman café so took the opportunity to have a chat, Conor defiantly dismissing any notion that he would crumble with a sense of traitorous guilt on hearing the first bar of Ireland's Call at the Stadio Olimpico.
If it was Amhrán na bhFiann he'd probably have felt differently, but . . . (National Anthem Disputes Dept: "Can we not do this again?").
Back in the studio, Eddie O’Sullivan – who replaced Ronan O’Gara in the starting line-up, O’Gara perhaps paying for provoking Scotland to victory seven days before – analysed what threat Italy might pose, but didn’t come up with a great deal to leave us fretful.
What about Sergio Parisse, though? “He takes on too much,” said Eddie, intimating that the Number 8 is like the star of the under-12 team who has so little faith in his colleagues he tries to do all their jobs. “Like George Michael and Wham! God rest him,” said Daire. Eddie could have chosen to stand up for Andrew Ridgeley, but opted to remain silent.
(Incidentally, speaking of pop legends: when Daire, Eddie, Shane and Brent Pope kept hopping out of their chairs and strode forward to the tactics table, did it remind anyone of those times Westlife jumped from their seats to sing the rousing bits of their hit-parade-toppers? It did? Gas.)
Fruitful day
Any way, over to Rome and you just had a sense that this was going to be a highly fruitful day for our lads when that Paddy conversion somehow managed to find its way over the bar after the first of CJ’s tries. Joe Schmidt was even moved to pay tribute to the effort when he chatted with RTÉ post-match. “It was one of the ugliest I’ve ever seen, like a wounded duck.”
“They’re filthy angry,” said Daire of Ireland at half-time, by then 28-10 up, “this is all over”.
Now, those of us who went to bed when the New England Patriots were 28-3 down to the Atlanta Falcons (and sat staring at the notification on our phone the following morning for, oh, 10 minutes) were unnerved by this class of talk, but Eddie had no worries.
“Do exactly what you did in the first half, it’s zero-zero-now, you start again and you pummel them to death for the next 40 minutes,” he said.
“Ah now Eddie, that’s intemperate talk,” Conor McGregor might have said if he were there.
But that’s what Ireland did, they were murderous, it was a try-a-rama.
One of them was scored by Garry Ringrose, the manner in which he did it – a swervy, jinky effort – hardly helping dampen the chat about him being the new you-know-who.
Reminiscent
Jonny Wilkinson, sitting alongside you-know-who on the ITV panel, apologetically admitted that the swervy, jinkiness was uncannily reminiscent of his colleague, but “Ringrose creates his own story and it has nothing to do with Brian . . . it won’t be Brian’s story, he’ll never be a better version of Brian than Brian was of Brian”.
Brian? He chuckled, and said some day soon he’d be the fella who folk would describe as the old Garry Ringrose.
Come Sunday afternoon we had an aggregate victory over Italy of 90-13, the women waking from their slumber in the second half after a first that was so brutal it should have been arrested.
“HOW CAN IRELAND BUTCHER THAT CHANCE?” asked an increasingly despairing Hugh Cahill after another opportunity went a-begging, but it was alright on the night, the swervy jinkiness of former-goalkeeper-for-the-Dublin-Gaelic-football-team Hannah Tyrrell clinching the bonus point in a 27-3 conquest.
Italy? They’ll be glad to see the back of our swervy jinkiness.
