IF YOU WERE scraping the barrel for positives on Saturday night, you could at least say the most sense spoken after England’s magnificent 23-22 defeat of Ireland came from an Irishman.
After watching his team storm to a statement performance which should finally ignite the Steve Borthwick era, England defence coach Felix Jones delivered a calm, measured assessment of a contest which saw an unfancied home side deliver impressively against an Ireland team who have been showered with compliments over the last month.
“You’re never as good as anyone says you are and you’re never as bad as anyone says you are,” Jones told RTÉ. “It’s usually somewhere in the middle.”
Unfortunately, sport is a fickle business, and just as Ireland were lauded for their performances across the early rounds of the championship they will now find themselves subject to all sorts of dramatic reactions from some quarters after losing the opportunity to become the first team to win back-to-back Grand Slams in the Six Nations era.
The ‘chokers’ tag will be rolled out again given Ireland failed to get the job done when the pressure was on. Yet this was a different type of defeat to last year’s World Cup quarter-final exit at the hands of New Zealand, where Ireland impressively rallied back from a slow start but ultimately came out on the wrong side of a tight contest.
In London, Ireland were hanging on for much of the first half and only played their best rugby in fits and starts – the attack snapping into life beautifully for James Lowe’s two second half tries after a long period where the visitors struggled for composure amid the noise and intensity of a stadium finally finding its voice again.
Ireland made poor decisions under that pressure.
Peter O’Mahony will rue his yellow card and it’s unfortunate for the Munster flanker that that costly action came amid one of his less effective shifts in green. At the start of this Six Nations there was widespread outrage among supporters and pundits that the new Ireland captain hadn’t be offered a central IRFU contract. Now the conversation around O’Mahony will shift towards whether Ryan Baird should take his place in the team. It’s a fair debate, but O’Mahony still has huge credit in the bank with Andy Farrell.
Conor Murray’s role will come into focus too. The scrum-half has been a reliable presence off the bench for Farrell but had a difficult experience here. His passing was below his usual standard and his late box-kick, while probably the right option in the circumstances, needed better execution.
Yet this was a collective failing as for much of the evening, Ireland looked a shadow of themselves.
Too many of their big ball-carriers were kept quiet. When Ireland rolled to victory on opening night in Marseille, Joe McCarthy and Tadhg Beirne were central to the cause with nine and 12 carries respectively. Here the two locks were limited to just nine between them.
Caelan Doris carried for 41 metres against France, 32 against Italy and 30 in the round three defeat of Wales. In Twickenham he gained just 16 metres of his eight carries, a tournament low for the Ireland backrower this year.
While Lowe pounced to finish two excellent team tries, most of his evening was spent punting the ball into the England half – carrying just four times – and on occasion his left boot wasn’t as accurate as we’ve come to expect, allowing England counter to devastating effect.
Jack Crowley also had some lovely involvements but was another player who saw his influence curtailed in the face of serious England pressure. The out-half made just 17 passes across 80 minutes, a significant drop from his outings against France (32 passes), Italy (36) and Wales (45).
The lineout struggled again, and unusually, that England pressure saw Ireland revert from their preferred tactic and kick for the posts to get some points on the board.
As much as Ireland didn’t get their game going in Twickenham, a determined England team didn’t let them.
The home side used the heavy criticism which came their way ahead of the game as fuel for the fire, those words sparking arguably the best performance by an England team since the 2019 World Cup semi-final defeat of New Zealand.
For the first time under Borthwick, England were ferocious, accurate and playing with real purpose.
And still, on their worst day in this Six Nations, Ireland could have won.
Farrell’s men led with just over five minutes to play before a chaotic end game saw Ireland make some poor plays and England snatch a fully deserved win. Manage that passage better and the Grand Slam would still be on.
Ifs, buts and maybes. Ireland were off on the day, England weren’t, and the better team took the spoils.
“We have to give credit to England,” said Josh van der Flier, perhaps the standout performer in green.
“They were very good but on the other side of it is what makes it so disappointing, we probably had it in our grasp, probably just a few errors, ill-discipline and a couple of moments we could have done better throughout the game.
“It’s sport at the end of the day as well. Over the last few years we seem to have always come out on the right side of those games with the exception of a couple. It’s the way sport can go. We’ll have to be better towards the end of the games and throughout to not get it to that stage.”
As impressive a performance it was from England, it doesn’t immediately mean Borthick’s team are back. As Jones rightly pointed out, it’s important for them to now back the Ireland win up when they head to Lyon to face France on Saturday night.
Similarly, the defeat doesn’t erase what Ireland have done in this championship. The post-match scenes showed just how much this win to meant to England. Beating Ireland, even on your own patch, is now a statement result.
Back-to-back Slams was the goal for this Ireland team and to see that shot at history slip will be gutting. Yet there’s still a championship to play for when Scotland come to Dublin this weekend, and while the overall standard has been poorer than usual in this Six Nations, winning back-to-back titles is no mean feat.
“Towards the end it felt like we were almost over-working but I think we can take incredible pride,” Van der Flier said.
“I don’t think it’s one of those games… I’ve played games before of the years where we didn’t really put the effort in, we didn’t really turn up. But I thought we did, I thought we worked really hard and it was just accuracies here and there that were the difference, and (they are) a good England team.
“There were definitely parts of it that were really good, Andy said in the changing room after, and I felt the same way, it game me so much pride just to see the way we fought back in the end, Lowey getting the try and that felt like being very much up against it to pull out with those moments was brilliant.
We just lost a couple of moments then towards the end and that was the match.”
Just as England will look to summon another big performance this weekend, Ireland will now look to shake off this disappointment and finish on a high. Scotland haven’t won in Dublin since 2010 and it’s hugely important the squad don’t lose more momentum by letting that record slip.
“One thing I find is that when you get on a run of winning it’s not easy but you just get used to winning, it becomes a habit almost, you just get on the right side of things and you’re not panicking when you’re down,” Van der Flier added.
“When you finally do lose a game, and it happens eventually, it’s so important not to lose what worked so well.”
