RUGBY’S LAWS ARE so often impenetrable but Ireland’s Six Nations trip to Murrayfield in 2023 came down to just two: Murphy’s and Sod’s.
For Andy Farrell’s side, anything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong.
Hooker Rónan Kelleher remembers his teammates being reduced to laughter in the dressing room at half-time as the bodies began to stack up. An early injury to Dan Sheehan’s and a further knock to Kelleher’s right shoulder, left Josh van der Flier as the thrower into the Irish lineout. A 35-year-old Cian Healy wound up scrummaging as an emergency hooker from the 49th minute as Ireland were bereaved of four forwards in total throughout a brutal contest.
Ireland’s scrum coach John Fogarty recalls thinking at half-time, “We’re fucked.” He equally recalls Andy Farrell saying, “This is brilliant. Who’s throwing the ball in and who’s going to scrummage?”
Everything had fallen into place for Gregor Townsend’s Scots and yet by full-time, it had still gone arseways, as it always does against Ireland. Beaten for the eighth time in a row by championship rivals even on a day when fate had conspired to reduce the visitors to a ramshackle state for much of the contest.
You can’t just walk off a defeat like that and, sure enough, Grand Slam champions Ireland dog-walked Scotland in the pool stage of the World Cup later that year. The Scots looked a beaten docket within seconds in Paris.
Ireland, though, found their facile victory — a 16th win in a row on that run — almost as gratifying as the balls-to-the-wall job in Edinburgh six months earlier.
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Centurion Peter O’Mahony was in classically snarling form during his post-match interview, telling Virgin Media’s Tommy Martin: “We’ll have bigger fish to fry”.
Asked about some handbags between the sides after half-time, O’Mahony said of the Scots: “They were in the press beforehand saying they were going to knock us off our winning streak and how they had figured us out and worked us out, and I don’t think they did tonight.”
Blair Kinghorn had been the biggest offender from Ireland’s point of view, his exact press-conference quote being: “They (Ireland) have been on a good run of form recently but we’ll end that on Saturday.”
On Second Captains earlier this week, BBC Scotland’s chief sportswriter, Limerick man Tom English, expressed a smidgen of guilt at having coaxed the quote out of Kinghorn, whom he said practically winced after acquiescing.
But that context was non-existent at the time: there was no video footage of that portion of the presser and the quote was fair game to be carried verbatim by news outlets. The likes of O’Mahony saw only Kinghorn’s words, and words are all Scotland have ever had against this Irish team.
So much so that this week, former Scotland scrum-half Greig Laidlaw has been among those to call for Townsend’s side to basically shut the hell up ahead of today’s visit with Ireland.
Laidlaw told Off The Ball: “I think there should be a different approach. When I saw the sort of messaging come out the last time, before the World Cup, I’m not going to lie, it was kind of a head-in-hands moment for me. I was a little bit shocked that sort of messaging was allowed to come out, as blasé as it was.”
Scotland’s head coach Townsend took things to the other extreme on Saturday, the former Lion attempting to pour cold water on the fiery dynamic between the two sides.
“Teams want to build up something to provide extra motivation”, Townsend said, “so maybe it’s more on the Irish side or the Irish media side that there’s this rivalry or needle to give them extra motivation on why they want to win again.”
Oh aye?
“Obviously they’ve won this fixture a number of times”, Townsend added, “but we say this every game: we respect Ireland a lot, admire what they’ve done over the last few years, but it doesn’t stand out as a needle game for us.”
The Scottish head coach only barely stopped short of insisting that his side is focused only on raising the Centenary Quaich this Sunday, but his intention was transparent.
To be fair to Townsend, it wasn’t exactly a shift in tone for him personally. But it is the shift in power between the two sides which breeds animosity.
Ireland and Scotland, two countries with similar populations, have met 142 times in this championship and are effectively level in the head-to-head stakes.
There has often been a kinship to their misery, a relatability on either side of the chalk between two self-deprecating peoples. But the craic naturally lessens when one team has less to deprecate and can only disparage the other.
Ireland have pulled away during the professional era to a degree that is unpalatable for Scottish fans of a certain vintage. Between 1989 and 1999, the Scots went 14 games unbeaten against Ireland, winning 13. But during the Six Nations era, Ireland have won 21 of 25 encounters between the teams, and they’ve won the last 10 meetings in all competitions.
Critically, six of Ireland’s 16 titles have been won since 2009, whereas the last of Scotland’s 14 championship wins came a decade earlier in the last ever Five Nations.
This is now a rivalry in which both sides of the fence consider the other to be the noisy neighbour for very different reasons.
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'I think it just makes him feel a little bit younger than he is!'
From the Scots’ point of view, that new Irish conservatory looks pretty sweet and– wait, is that a new car? Somebody fancies themselves, eh? Ah, shit, they’re coming over to tell us about it. Pretend we’re not in.
From the Irish vantage point, it’s cute that the Scots keep insisting that they’ve actually been looking at a similar car themselves.
Less cute, of course, was that the Scots objected to planning for a World Cup in Ireland’s backyard a few years back.
And so make no mistake about it: while the street has been quieter this week, this remains a relationship of begrudgery and disdain, depending on your address.
Look no further than the schadenfreude Scottish fans took from Ireland’s World Cup quarter-final defeat to New Zealand — and the joy gleaned from Peter O’Mahony’s misery in particular — for evidence that when Scotland do finally end this modern-day hoodoo against Andy Farrell’s side, we’re going to get it in the ear.
The law of averages would suggest that today could be that day. Ireland must lay down Sod’s Law to the Scots once more.
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Scotland-Ireland: a rivalry of noisy neighbours, one of whom drives a nicer car these days
RUGBY’S LAWS ARE so often impenetrable but Ireland’s Six Nations trip to Murrayfield in 2023 came down to just two: Murphy’s and Sod’s.
For Andy Farrell’s side, anything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong.
Hooker Rónan Kelleher remembers his teammates being reduced to laughter in the dressing room at half-time as the bodies began to stack up. An early injury to Dan Sheehan’s and a further knock to Kelleher’s right shoulder, left Josh van der Flier as the thrower into the Irish lineout. A 35-year-old Cian Healy wound up scrummaging as an emergency hooker from the 49th minute as Ireland were bereaved of four forwards in total throughout a brutal contest.
Ireland’s scrum coach John Fogarty recalls thinking at half-time, “We’re fucked.” He equally recalls Andy Farrell saying, “This is brilliant. Who’s throwing the ball in and who’s going to scrummage?”
Everything had fallen into place for Gregor Townsend’s Scots and yet by full-time, it had still gone arseways, as it always does against Ireland. Beaten for the eighth time in a row by championship rivals even on a day when fate had conspired to reduce the visitors to a ramshackle state for much of the contest.
You can’t just walk off a defeat like that and, sure enough, Grand Slam champions Ireland dog-walked Scotland in the pool stage of the World Cup later that year. The Scots looked a beaten docket within seconds in Paris.
Ireland, though, found their facile victory — a 16th win in a row on that run — almost as gratifying as the balls-to-the-wall job in Edinburgh six months earlier.
Centurion Peter O’Mahony was in classically snarling form during his post-match interview, telling Virgin Media’s Tommy Martin: “We’ll have bigger fish to fry”.
Asked about some handbags between the sides after half-time, O’Mahony said of the Scots: “They were in the press beforehand saying they were going to knock us off our winning streak and how they had figured us out and worked us out, and I don’t think they did tonight.”
Blair Kinghorn had been the biggest offender from Ireland’s point of view, his exact press-conference quote being: “They (Ireland) have been on a good run of form recently but we’ll end that on Saturday.”
On Second Captains earlier this week, BBC Scotland’s chief sportswriter, Limerick man Tom English, expressed a smidgen of guilt at having coaxed the quote out of Kinghorn, whom he said practically winced after acquiescing.
But that context was non-existent at the time: there was no video footage of that portion of the presser and the quote was fair game to be carried verbatim by news outlets. The likes of O’Mahony saw only Kinghorn’s words, and words are all Scotland have ever had against this Irish team.
So much so that this week, former Scotland scrum-half Greig Laidlaw has been among those to call for Townsend’s side to basically shut the hell up ahead of today’s visit with Ireland.
Laidlaw told Off The Ball: “I think there should be a different approach. When I saw the sort of messaging come out the last time, before the World Cup, I’m not going to lie, it was kind of a head-in-hands moment for me. I was a little bit shocked that sort of messaging was allowed to come out, as blasé as it was.”
Scotland’s head coach Townsend took things to the other extreme on Saturday, the former Lion attempting to pour cold water on the fiery dynamic between the two sides.
“Teams want to build up something to provide extra motivation”, Townsend said, “so maybe it’s more on the Irish side or the Irish media side that there’s this rivalry or needle to give them extra motivation on why they want to win again.”
Oh aye?
“Obviously they’ve won this fixture a number of times”, Townsend added, “but we say this every game: we respect Ireland a lot, admire what they’ve done over the last few years, but it doesn’t stand out as a needle game for us.”
The Scottish head coach only barely stopped short of insisting that his side is focused only on raising the Centenary Quaich this Sunday, but his intention was transparent.
To be fair to Townsend, it wasn’t exactly a shift in tone for him personally. But it is the shift in power between the two sides which breeds animosity.
Ireland and Scotland, two countries with similar populations, have met 142 times in this championship and are effectively level in the head-to-head stakes.
There has often been a kinship to their misery, a relatability on either side of the chalk between two self-deprecating peoples. But the craic naturally lessens when one team has less to deprecate and can only disparage the other.
Ireland have pulled away during the professional era to a degree that is unpalatable for Scottish fans of a certain vintage. Between 1989 and 1999, the Scots went 14 games unbeaten against Ireland, winning 13. But during the Six Nations era, Ireland have won 21 of 25 encounters between the teams, and they’ve won the last 10 meetings in all competitions.
Critically, six of Ireland’s 16 titles have been won since 2009, whereas the last of Scotland’s 14 championship wins came a decade earlier in the last ever Five Nations.
This is now a rivalry in which both sides of the fence consider the other to be the noisy neighbour for very different reasons.
From the Scots’ point of view, that new Irish conservatory looks pretty sweet and– wait, is that a new car? Somebody fancies themselves, eh? Ah, shit, they’re coming over to tell us about it. Pretend we’re not in.
From the Irish vantage point, it’s cute that the Scots keep insisting that they’ve actually been looking at a similar car themselves.
Less cute, of course, was that the Scots objected to planning for a World Cup in Ireland’s backyard a few years back.
And so make no mistake about it: while the street has been quieter this week, this remains a relationship of begrudgery and disdain, depending on your address.
Look no further than the schadenfreude Scottish fans took from Ireland’s World Cup quarter-final defeat to New Zealand — and the joy gleaned from Peter O’Mahony’s misery in particular — for evidence that when Scotland do finally end this modern-day hoodoo against Andy Farrell’s side, we’re going to get it in the ear.
The law of averages would suggest that today could be that day. Ireland must lay down Sod’s Law to the Scots once more.
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