THE BEAUTY of our game remains. It is not a clinical environment but one that alters and changes every number of seconds. Adding to this mix is the core ingredients each team possesses. For instance, New Zealand have an excellent scrum, a very good lineout, forwards who are teak-tough and backs who are ruthless on the ball. They then possess an underlying core ability to be totally comfortable and interchangeable on the ball.
The other Autumn Series teams all possess aspects of the All Blacks, but none quite get there.
No matter, as long as we progress towards their standard, because our individual games can negate the All Blacks. Look at France, for instance: hammered 59-16 by Australia on Saturday, but they will always be able to dent the All Blacks.
The Pumas possess a serious core of players, but unfortunately they are restricted to their front eight, where the pensioners Rodrigo Roncero, Mario Ledesma and Martin Scelzo do enormous quality work aided by the wonderful secondrow and all-rounder Patricio Albacete.
Argentina’s game simply neutered their talisman Juan Fernandez Lobbe. As the game opened up the Pumas did exactly as predicted, keeping the ball within a five-metre channel. Leading up to Felipe Contepomi’s badly-missed, third-minute drop goal, the Pumas attacked without shifting beyond a short pass.
Johnny Sexton’s kick-out on the full a minute later brought the Pumas down an even narrower channel off their subsequent lineout. Surprisingly, the Irish opened the door and resorted to an illegal pull down on the maul that went unnoticed by the ever-puzzling Springbok referee Mark Lawrence.
But the Pumas did manage 22 metres go forward by moving the ball laterally at most two metres. In doing so they came dangerously close to the Irish line.
You don’t want to be on your line defending a Puma scrum, especially in the opening 10 minutes. They have spent generations preparing for such an eventuality. The scrums that followed should have netted the Pumas a seven-pointer, but again Lawrence applied his interpretation in Ireland’s favour.
The TMO was to do otherwise a tad later, ruling out Keith Earls’ perfect touchdown.
Big, inaccurate calls in a “friendly” are one thing, but come the Six Nations and RWC TMO Daniel Gillet may find himself in the boot of a car after such a miss.
It was almost embarrassing how limited the Pumas backline became. Clearly Contepomi had little confidence in them, electing to drop goal or carry himself. Outside him centres Marcelo Bosch and Gonzalo Tiesi were extremely ineffective. Bosch, in particular, resorted to his namesake activity. The Puma back three are simply devoid of any ability to run lines, offload, fix defenders or approach any form of creativity.
The Irish, too, have their core strength of players, but they are spread more evenly throughout the side. Where the Pumas tried to bludgeon their way forward, the Irish used all their key players dotted through the XV.
Stephen Ferris’ fantastic 20th-minute try illustrates this beautifully. Mick O’Driscoll found Peter Stringer off the top of lineout ball from Seán Cronin. The ball was immediately shifted to Brian O’Driscoll, who drifted into the outside channel. At this stage the ball travelled from the near touch line to the far touch line and was once again heading back when the brilliant Gordon D’Arcy was brought on to it and pulled back to Cronin. Lying in wait were our two titanic backrowers, Jamie Heaslip, who carried, fixed and offloaded in perfect timing to bamboozle the Pumas and allow Ferris in for a cracking try.
Two “new” players have had a positive effect on their team-mates. Geordan Murphy possesses the counter-attack instinct this team desperately needs. In the 13th minute he set off to get Tommy Bowe into the game, who fed Andrew Trimble running a brilliant line that resulted in our opening score for Sexton. It was far from fancy from Murphy, but this was possibly our first counter-attack involving the back three of the autumn series.
Did Bowe and Trimble expect Murphy to counter and hence become more open to the idea?
Cronin, too, has had an effect. In the 42 minute David Wallace, more noted for plundering holes, carried up to the line and gently offloaded to Cronin. Did he do this because the team has huge confidence in Cronin?
It wasn’t all our way, and the Irish failed to dictate the tempo as the match wore on. When the pace drops our outside channels between backs and forwards need improvement from slow ball. Here the All Blacks are vastly superior.
In the second half we went back to shifting gently to the outside channel with no fixing of defenders or hard lines. This is a key skill as it can inject pace back into the ball.
Regardless of their immense success, this ageing and creaking Pumas team have at times been accused of being ugly but now have become also ineffective. As they move into the high-octane world of the “Tri”-Nations, there are tough times ahead for a nation that deserves so much more.
Meanwhile, Ireland have lots to look forward to.
