We don’t normally do long and winding posts, but we have given some structure to a shared stream of conciousness that has been around for about 24 hours now. Lets see how it plays out…
Look at yourself first
Ok, so this is meant to be the piece where we castigate the management for another insipid Irish performance. And it will be. Oh yes. But first we have to castigate ourselves.
We were overconfident. We looked at the Welsh tight five and saw four first team names missing and fairly ordinary replacements. We saw Roberts and Priestland only just back from injury. We didn’t really rate Priestland anyway (turns out we were right on that one), but we saw the excellent (and huge) back 5 and figured, surely they won’t get enough good ball to figure?
But much more criminally, we dared to hope that all the talk of a new gameplan would come to fruition. What fools! Have we learned nothing!? We also got suckered in to thinking that the provincial success would somehow feed into the Irish team. And we call ourselves rugby nerds? Lordy. We weren’t taken for complete fools though – we expressed scepticism over the committee in charge of attack – but we hoped. Boy do we feel foolish now.
What’s wrong with Ireland?
Just what is the matter with Ireland? Why do they look so… average? For the last two years Ireland have been generally poor, only rising above the torpor on sporadic, often emotionally-driven occasions. Is George Hook’s theory about the natural openside (get that Gick lad away from his textbooks and straight into the team, right George?) correct? Are we picking the right halfbacks? Is our backline too small? Should Donncha have started?
Most of the above are neither here nor there. In truth our problems look more deeply rooted – the mini centres do fine for Leinster, all four halves in the squad have played well this season and all three provinces have managed fine thanks very much without a fetcher at 7. And as for Donncha … well, we’ve been there.
There just doesn’t seem to be any plan of attack. On Sunday we saw downtown kicking, Garryowens and box kicks repeatedly deployed. This was in spite of a lot of talk beforehand of ball-in-hand attacking. Sexton’s long kicking to the back three was frequently ordinary, but his Garryowens were pretty accurate, and Kearney and Bowe are highly effective chasers, but they still only give you at best a 50% chance of retaining possession. Conor Murray is a fine kicker of the ball, but didn’t have his best day on Sunday, and there are entire countries where box kicking of turnover ball would see you dropped, no questions asked.
Jamie Heaslip and Andrew Trimble managed to get themselves going forward on the end of some good ball, but the barnstorming flankers of the HEC were anonymous, and Cian Healy barely touched the ball in the loose.
The sad thing is that attack seems to be something of an afterthought for Ireland. Contrast with defence, where Les Kiss proved ahead of the rest of the world in innovating the choke tackle, as well as using line-shooters in 2009 to great effect. Ireland’s defence has looked calculated, programmed and solid for most of the last three years – but not on Sunday [Should BOD have been sharing some of Kiss's plaudits over the last 3 years?].
In attack the opposite has been the case. The majority of the backline is provided by Leinster, where the players are familiar with working with Joe Schmidt, one of the best coaches of backs in the world and by all accounts highly demanding in terms of accuracy and execution. From there they come into a system with no recognised attack coach, and where sloppiness (so much dropped ball) and comfort zones (you’re picked again anyway) are ingrained. Since Gaffney departed, the role has been taken over by a four-man committee of the defence coach, the kicking coach, the video analyst, and Deccie himself. It looks like Ireland play to choke tackle the life out of teams and hope to grind out enough points to finish just ahead on the scoreboard. They rarely go out and take the game to teams.
Interestingly, Matty Williams has been banging the drum for a while that Gaffney actually had very little influence on attack, while Kiss had Deccie’s ear. We assumed Matty was just standing up for his mate (which he was) but there appears to have been at least a grain of truth to his claims. Now that the Gaffney hook has been slung, it appears what Matt said was happening behind the scenes has been formalised.
Surely the small matter of attack requires a dedicated specialist? Either the IRFU and Deccie think the Committee is doing a good enough job that there was no need to source one, or they tried and failed to get an established name on board. The delay in hiring a team manager was apparently due to the difficulty of working with Deccie – interesting, and worrying. Was the job offered to someone who turned it down? And if so, why? Was it due to the ill-defined nature of Kiss’ role? There was surely ample time to hire someone if they wanted to.
Do Ireland have ‘The Mental’?
For all that Ireland played poorly, they still should have won. Six points up with five minutes on the clock is a position you should close out. Leinster, Ulster or Munster would not have lost the match in those circumstances. Ireland took the wrong decision to go for a penalty that was out of Sexton’s range, and were passive in the penultimate phase of play, where Wales marauded 60m up the pitch and won the match-winning penalty. Compare with the mania with which Munster went through 50,000 phases to set up ROG’s drop goal against Northampton, or the way 14-man Leinster defended the line against Glasgow. You just knew they’d hold out. The same intensity just doesn’t seem to be there in the green shirt.
Is Kidney’s management working?
‘You can’t really give them a reason why they are out. I remember telling one or two lads that. I said “If I was to tell you a reason I’d be trying to justify my decision.”’
The above is a quotation from the grand slam book where Kidney described the process of telling players they’re left out. Kidney, by his own admission, tries to give little away. Donncha’s recent autobiography described how Kidney seeks to keep players on their toes, and often in the dark as to his thinking. It works for some players, doubtless, but the modern professional surely needs more than a slippery cute-hoorish platitude – he needs goals, boundaries and targets.
Declan Kidney ponders a question before Ireland’s defeat to Wales ©INPHO/Gary Carr
It’s fine for Paulie, BOD and ROG, who probably don’t listen anyway, but how can Donnacha Ryan or Fergus McFadden expect to come in and wing it? How can they set themselves defined goals without any organisational feedback?
At Leinster, where over half the starting 15 play, Joe Schmidt is, according to various player interviews, very forthright with the players, telling them in detail why they haven’t got the nod and what they need to do to get picked. The players, we understand, hugely appreciate his honesty. You have to wonder if Deccie’s handling of the players, successful as it’s been in the past, is really getting the best out of the current group.
Where to next?
Well, Paris obviously, where Ireland have won twice since 1954. Even a performance of the calibre of those against England in the Aviva or Australia in Eden Park won’t suffice. Hell, even a performance like Leinster in last years HEC semi-final may not suffice. Changes-wise, one would expect Ryan to be rewarded for his painful cameo, and for Earls to slot back in. The thought of Wesley Fofana’s razor sharp mind and lightning feet in Earls’ channel off easy ball do not bear thinking about, but it’s going to happen.
But that’s by the by. What is really needed is a new broom, fresh thinking. The Ireland team are asleep at the wheel, firmly ensconced in the comfort zone. The kick in the behind should either come from Deccie at training, or Deccie at selection. After all, Deccie is CEO, and the buck stops with him. The players havea role to play here as well – they don’t show the type of urgency Wales do.
Granted, there is no competition for places – does Tommy Bowe really think Dave Kearney will take his shirt? How about SOB – does he think he needs to give an extra 2% to fend off Padre O’Mahoney? We aren’t advocating either of these switches by the way, but there are a few players going through the motions, playing at levels that would not be acceptable at provincial level.
On the bright side, we haven’t felt as pessimistic since after the USA match, and we all know what happened next! Noooo!!! The hope! Its the hope that kills you!
