In front of the watching Joe Schmidt, Friday night's head-to-head subplots in the Sportsground would have focussed mostly around midfield, and the young pretenders Robbie Henshaw and Brendan Macken, or perhaps some of the duels in the frontrow. Yet the withdrawal of Isaac Boss meant the second and third choice Irish scrumhalves went mano a mano, and Kieran Marmion grasped both his opportunity and the game impressively.
Marmion had been a late call-up to the bench for Conor Murray and late replacement for Eoin Reddan in the second test in Argentina last June, having made his debut a week before as a sub for Murray. After the first test, Schmidt had rather pointedly said that Marmion "will learn a bit from that", in reference to the scrumhalf making a blindside duck for the line and being held up, while also referencing the need to improve his kicking game as well as getting his kicks away, defend feverishly and continue improving his right-to-left passing.
Marmion may have been a little unlucky in how the last opportunity briefly presented itself, but he was also stepped by Lucas Amorosino for the Pumas' late consolation try in the second test. All in all, despite winning his first two caps, Marmion appeared not to have made significant strides.
In the euphoric moments after Friday's full-time whistle, when John Muldoon came through his teammates to form a reciprocal "tunnel" for the vanquished champions, the first player he warmly embraced – a la Mick Galwey bear-hugging Peter Stringer and Ronan O'Gara on their Irish debuts against Scotland in 2000 – was Marmion.
Connacht knew they were indebted to Marmion for conjuring a sensational 55th minute match-winning try out of nothing. “I don’t think enough people are watching Kieran Marmion to be honest,” said Muldoon. “To me he’s the best scrumhalf in Ireland. There’s no doubt about it. He’s got everything. He’s strong. He’s quick. How about that step? He does that step every day in training and no one can touch him even though they know it’s coming.
Unexpected debut
“It’s amazing, and the best thing about him is he’s level-headed, and he’s calm under pressure. To be honest I don’t know why he’s not playing for Ireland, although I’m sure it’s a matter of time and it will come eventually.”
Barely two seasons ago, in the seasonal opener, an injury crisis not only led to an unexpected debut, but also an extended initial run in the team. His form since ensured that last Friday’s game was his 56th start in succession.
“He’s abrasive, isn’t he? He’s a tough little bugger,” smiled Muldoon approvingly. “For obvious reasons we have to wrap him in cotton wool during the week. He doesn’t miss much game time. As I said, he’s massively abrasive and you see the way he’s able to take on big forwards, and go around the ruck. That try was something out of the Kieran Marmion handbook. He does that all the time in training. He’s come on an awful lot in the last year or two and he’s a good lad.”
"He's a class player," ventured Pat Lam who, interestingly, then echoed Muldoon in adding: "But more importantly, he's gutsy. I haven't met anyone so gutsy." Indeed, there seemed little chance of Marmion playing on after a tap tackle by Jamie Heaslip prevented the Connacht scrumhalf breaking clear again. But Marmion stretched and ran off the resulting cramp to continue playing until the last five minutes.
Lam added: “I said this when I first came here, there’s no doubt that if I was still coaching Super Rugby he’d be the star of my team, easily. He’s that good.”
“He knows he’s got areas of his game that he has to work on. He’s still working on his kicking game and so forth, but at half-time we mentioned that they were flying up and that we needed to have a look, so I told him to have a poke and see what’s on there. He certainly had a good poke and I’m pleased for him, but he’s the first always play it down and put it back to them.”
New ground
By dint of suddenly discovering the art of winning close games instead of losing them, Connacht have won their first three games for the first time in the league’s history. But having beaten the defending champions, now they face last season’s beaten finalists Glasgow, in Scotstoun next Friday.
“We’re hitting new ground, so it’s something different,” said Muldoon. “The reality is we’ve just beaten one of the top teams, and now we’ve the other top team, so we can’t really get ahead of ourselves. It’s great to have three wins in a row, but we’ve got to be humble tonight and we’ve got to realise Glasgow are a massive team, so we could get a very big crash down to earth on Friday evening.”
Connacht and Lam raised the bar for themselves with their marquee signings and openly targeting a place in the European Champions Cup by dint of a top-six finish.
“We’ve a long way to go yet to justify it. It’s a good stepping stone. Pat and Dan and all the rest of the coaches have been saying the top six doesn’t come in April, it can come in September, October, November, so we’ve got to get a good start. There’s no point getting marquee signings and losing seven or eight games, and then trying to get into the top six.
“Look, it’ll be interesting to see where Bundee Aki, Tom McCartney and Mils [Muliaina] will fit in there,” quipped Muldoon with a cheeky chuckle. “How can you drop lads after that?”
