Tuesday 26 November 2013

PAPERING OVER THE CRACKS

I read an article yesterday morning and the final line read “Well done Ireland, but you well and truly blew that.”

I can’t argue with that in the slightest. You can look at that match and applaud Ireland for their valiant efforts, but the undeniable truth is that they let a seventeen point lead go in a match where their opponents were well below par and were there for the taking. For all the talk about the All Blacks and how good they were, they either underestimated Ireland or simply did not play – either way they were very poor by their standards.

On the flip side, that’s why they are the best side in the world. The All Blacks never got out of second gear and yet they were still able to come away with the win. Ireland certainly contributed to their own downfall yes, but it was down to the All Blacks to capitalise on those errors which they did. The best teams win matches even when they are the second best side on the pitch. New Zealand did.

Of course, the Irish media will now fawn over the international side and declare themselves the best side in the northern hemisphere. But the question remains to be asked: how can a team be torn apart one week, then a more-or-less similar side run the best side in the world right down to the wire? It’s this inconsistency shown by the Ireland team that annoys the fans – why can’t they show the same intensity that they did on Sunday in every match?

It still doesn’t take away from the fact that Ireland lost that match, rather than the All Blacks won it. What Jack McGrath was thinking when he flopped on that final ruck I’m not quite sure, and why Jonny Sexton, one of the world’s greatest goal kickers, took so long over that kick whenever if he landed it the game was over I don’t know either. Little things that add up to the loss.

And that final try was just coming. Even though Ireland had possession late in the 79th minute you just knew the game wasn’t over – the All Blacks always have the last say. However, even I was surprised when Ryan Crotty crossed the line with the clock in the red, I was sure that Ireland could hold them out.

It made it even worse for Ireland that Aaron Cruden got two attempts at his kick, and only landed the second one. Had the on-rushing Irish defenders held off then it would have been a 22-22 draw. Quite ironically, if anybody watched the Rugby League World Cup semi-final on Saturday then you’ll realise the similarity between the two games – both New Zealand sides won with the last kick of the game.

Joe Schmidt is too good of a coach to realise that his side weren’t great. They caught the All Blacks off-guard with the three tries, but the harsh reality is that the Irish didn’t actually score beyond the thirtieth minute. The argument was there to simply defend and try to keep the All Blacks out, but everybody realised that Ireland would need one more score to keep the visitors at arm’s length – a score that they didn’t get.

It’s now three months until the Six Nations, and Schmidt will sit down and begin to look at what needs to happen for Ireland to be competitive. He will take a lot of positives from Sunday’s match, but he will still realise that his side threw that away. They had a chance to win that game and go one step further than England had achieved last week, but ultimately they came up short as per usual.

Well done Ireland, but you well and truly blew that.

Injury issues
We thought Ulster were hit badly by injuries last season – we’re being decimated this season. With Iain Henderson, Lewis Stevenson, Nick Williams and Rory Best all being struck down by injury this weekend with long-term injuries, adding to injuries to Johann Muller, Chris Henry and Stuart Olding, Ulster are looking a little lightweight heading into the Heineken Cup back-to-backs against Treviso next month.

Next weekend against Zebre will be something similar to the side we will be putting out against Treviso so it will be a good indication of where we are as a squad. I would still expect us to take at least fourteen points from our next three games, however with us missing so many players our task has been made a whole lot harder – Treviso are not an easy side anymore, everybody knows that.


It makes us just a little vulnerable.

Tuesday 19 November 2013

WALLABY WOES

If you haven’t been to the Roe Park Resort in Limavady, you really ought to, it’s a fantastic place to stay.

That’s where I had the displeasure of watching Ireland struggle against Australia. In fact, struggle isn’t even the right word, that’s how badly Ireland played. How ironic then that the one time that we threatened their try line, Sean Cronin crossed the line, only for it to be ruled out by the TMO. It summed up our night really: we weren’t at the races and we duly paid for it. Add into the mix that Jonathan Sexton and Rob Kearney came off injured and Joe Schmidt’s worries will have only increased.

Let’s add in a little bit of perspective, shall we? Coming into this match, Australia hadn’t won two matches in a row all season. No I’m not joking – all season. They were hammered by the Lions on their own turf over the summer, they only won two of their Rugby Championship matches (against winless Argentina), and they were fairly subdued by England only two weeks ago.

In other words, they came to the Aviva Stadium on Saturday night not exactly filled with confidence. With a less-than-stellar record looming over them all season, as well as several overwhelming player issues to deal with as well, Australian rugby was not in a great place coming into this match, and the reality is that Ireland should have defeated them. As we come to the tenth anniversary of the 2003 World Cup final, it shows just how far Australia have fallen in those ten years.

They were made to look good on Saturday night. There were a few players who didn’t let themselves down in a green shirt, let’s give them that – Fergus McFadden and Devin Toner to name but two – but Ireland as a collective unit were not good. For long spells in that match the defence were wandering around the midfield aimlessly, the attack did not have any sort of intent or cutting edge, and as far as the kicking game went, well if it was poor against Samoa it was dismal against Australia. Both Jonny Sexton and his replacement Ian Madigan did nothing but stick the ball down the throat of Israel Folau all night, and the former League player wasn’t going to drop anything. Tactically, that was a very poor call.

Joe Schmidt now faces the worrying reality that the undefeated All Blacks are the next visitors to Dublin, and they have one goal in mind: to win the match to become the first ever side to go a calendar year unbeaten. In contrast, Ireland haven’t won a match against any of the top five teams in the world since March 2011, a 24-8 win over England in the Six Nations. Doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence as an Ireland fan, does it?

It will be interesting to see how Schmidt approaches the match as well. He’s talked about wanting to build a squad for him to choose from ahead of the 2015 Rugby World Cup, and rightly so, if Ireland have any dreams of winning the World Cup they need a pool of around thirty to forty top quality players to choose from. They will not come from sitting back at Carton House twiddling their thumbs while the same twenty-three players line out for every international.

In my opinion (and call me biased), Dan Tuohy has to be given a shot, even off the bench. So far Mike McCarthy has done nothing of considerable note in an Ireland shirt and Tuohy has been the in-form lock in Ireland so far this season. Declan Fitzpatrick must also be brought onto the bench, Stephen Archer was well out of his depth on Saturday night.

In fact, Sunday’s match may end up being a case of damage limitation for Schmidt and his players. The All Blacks are the best team in the world for a reason – they are by a very long way the best team in the world. Spearheaded by the experience of Richie McCaw, Kieran Read and Dan Carter, while having the skill of Ben Smith, Julian Savea and Charles Piutau in the backs, they are possibly one of the strongest rugby sides to ever grace the rugby pitch. They could lose an entire team to injury, and probably still be the strongest side on the planet.

So there we go: an easy task for Ireland this weekend. I’m not sure I’ll be able to watch, and if I do I certainly won’t be expecting anything brilliant. Maybe I’m simply pessimistic, but if Saturday’s match was anything to go by then we definitely have nothing to look forward to on Sunday afternoon. Ireland will need something close to a miracle – and in my opinion that’ll simply be to avoid being hammered at the hands of the All Blacks.


Oh, did I mention the Roe Park has a golf course?

Tuesday 12 November 2013

NOTHING GAINED, NOTHING WON

I sat down on Sunday morning, switched on the TV and went to the recorded RTE coverage of the Ireland match. Unusually, I was filled with a sense of optimism earlier in the week ahead of a new era for Irish international rugby – a new coach with new ideas promised to be a positive move for Ireland, especially when the coach was as good as Joe Schmidt, a multiple-time trophy winner with Leinster down the road at the RDS.

Sadly by Sunday morning my optimism was gone. The team announcement on Thursday afternoon proved to me what I had worried about ever since Schmidt was announced to be taking the reins at the sinking ship going down in D4: Leinster were being favoured by their former coach. Worryingly, it bore striking resemblances to the Kidney favouritism towards Munster – the exact thing which contributed to his eventual downfall.

Fifteen Leinstermen in a twenty-three man squad was the kicker. They are the best team in Ireland, don’t get me wrong for one moment, but they’re not as good as that side made them out to be. Devin Toner and Mike McCarthy ahead of Dan Tuohy at lock was what really did it for me – Tuohy has been one of the in-form locks in Europe this season, his exclusion is inexcusable, he just had to be there.

So maybe I was watching in the wrong frame of mind. Only just awake and bitter at Schmidt’s team selection, I hit play and watched as George Hook and Shane Horgan yelled at each other in the RTE studio. An entertaining start to the coverage I will admit, although eventually it had to be replaced by something more exciting – the rugby match was what I recorded it for and it’s what I fast forwarded to.

I may as well not have bothered.

For all the hype over Samoa, they offered next to nothing for the eighty minutes. Every so often they’d make a promising break and win a penalty, but that seemed to be the limit to their tactics. Losing Logovi’i Mulipola early on seemed to hit them hard and almost stop them in their tracks, and thus Jack McGrath had a field day in the scrum. For a side ranked seventh in the world rankings – one above Ireland – they played like a side that had met for the first time on Saturday morning.

Quite rightly, Ireland put them to the sword. Spearheaded by the dominant scrum led from the front by the excellent Rory Best once again (who thankfully has appeared to have solved his line-out issues), Ireland carved through the weak as water Samoan defence, and by the middle of the second half when the Samoans were looking forward to their airplane journey home, Ireland were running riot.

Sadly, it couldn’t mean less. Joe Schmidt will have learnt virtually nothing from a cruising victory – for the last thirty minutes of that game it was over as far as a contest went. In several positions he gave a few players a chance, such as young Dave Kearney who impressed off the bench, but against such sub-standard opposition it means nothing. Australia will pose infinitely more questions to Ireland than the islanders did on Saturday.

Therefore, my view of the Autumn Internationals has not changed. I watched the Ireland match as well as the England vs. Argentina match on Saturday afternoon too and quite frankly I still fail to grasp the reasoning behind staging them every November. In my opinion the sole reason is to satisfy the fans’ need for international rugby at more than an annual period during the season – there are very few other purposes that these games serve.

So I switched off the match on Sunday morning and sat back and reflected on a game which I wouldn’t watch again if you paid me. It makes me wonder how prepared Ireland really are for these Autumn Internationals – one win over an under strength Samoa side has simply given them game time and nothing more, it will be a hugely different match come this Saturday against Australia, and I’m worried how Schmidt’s side will cope with the expectations placed on them now.

Australia haven’t hit the heights they were at a few years ago, and with an extremely weak, faltering scrum, Ireland will now be expected to beat them. That said, Australia certainly are not a poor team. They ran England very close and had they had a more sympathetic referee than George Clancy then they may have won that match (or maybe that’s my anti-English bias shining through again).


Put it this way: Ireland should win, but they cannot let their performance levels drop for one moment. Otherwise we could be in for a long evening.

Tuesday 5 November 2013

SCARLETS SORROW

I think after the Dragons match at the start of the season I said that I hadn’t seen a worse Ulster performance ever since I started following them. Scrap that, because Saturday night was about ten times worse.

Despite the fact that we still had Pienaar, Afoa and Nick Williams to call upon, as well as Roger Wilson and Andrew Trimble back from Ireland duty, I think it’s safe to say that we never even got out of first gear on Saturday night and unfortunately we deservedly left the Parc y Scarlets with nothing.

As well as the Scarlets played (and they did play quite well, all credit to them), we made it very easy for them, and it gives Mark Anscombe a lot to think about heading into the international break. For all the accolades he received for masterminding the win in Montpellier, he will have to put his hands up and admit that he got it wrong on Saturday. Now he has a two week break to look at what needs to be done for the Edinburgh match.

But that’s in the past. This week I’m more interested in what’s coming up…

From the Scarlets to Samoa
Of course, the Autumn Internationals are back this week and over the course of the next three weeks Ireland will pit themselves against the might of Samoa, Australia and New Zealand. Not a bad way for Joe Schmidt to start his reign as Ireland coach – facing seventh, fourth and first in the world rankings.

I fully back Joe Schmidt as Ireland coach, however he may find himself with a bit of a difficult start. Understandably in his first squad he’s gone for familiarity with seventeen Leinster players in there, however he will have to get used to a few of the new players that he’s working with and with the three games coming in quick succession, it may be a little too early. Playing them in reverse order (of world ranking) may help, however at international level there are no easy games.

Samoa are up first this weekend and boasting stars such as Kahn Fotuali’i, Toulouse lock Iosefa ‘Joe’ Tekori and Leicester prop Logovi’i Mulipola, they will be more than a handful. Indeed, if both Mulipola and Fitzpatrick are elected to start this weekend’s game then they will come face-to-face in the scrum again for the second time in the space of a month for two different teams.

Home advantage may be what swings this game in Ireland’s favour. The two sides are very closely matched and the fact that Ireland don’t have to travel may be what puts them at a slight advantage. Nevertheless, they know that this will not be the walkover that Fiji were in Thomond Park last season – Samoa aren’t seventh in the world for no reason and they will pose Ireland a lot of questions.

Australia and New Zealand however will be much sterner tests. For all the strengths of Samoa, they aren’t in the same league as the Tri-Nations sides, not by a long way. We all the know the immense strength of the All Blacks, their superb victory in South Africa to secure them the Rugby Championship proved that they are still the team to beat in Test rugby while the Aussies are still a very strong outfit despite their Lions humiliation, and they could have easily beaten England at the weekend.

It will be an interesting start for Joe Schmidt and it will be interesting to see how he approaches the matches, whether he decides to prepare his team for the Six Nations or if he goes all-out for three wins. So early into the job it is likely that Schmidt will want to get a bit of momentum and go for the wins (much to the delight of the fans!) however with a first trophy since 2009 the main aim, I don’t think anyone would begrudge a bit of rotation either to give everyone a shot.

I’m predicting just the one win over Samoa this weekend. I hope for more of course, but with a new coach and with two of the world’s best teams coming to the Aviva Stadium this November, it may take a while for the new-look Ireland to gel. I’d say Joe Schmidt will ultimately be looking for three good performances to start his tenure as Ireland coach, and I don’t think many would argue with that.


That said, three wins would be acceptable too.