STUART BARNES THINKS Ireland are the No1 side in the world. Not so long ago, when they were stumbling to a win over Georgia, they were barely even considered the best in Ireland, given the fluency Leo Cullen’s Leinster were playing with at that time.
So, have Ireland really improved that much, that soon? That depends on who you talk to. Here is Barnes’ assessment of where Ireland are now. “In November they clinically beat the All Blacks and then a week later, with quite a few different players, they went and thrashed an Argentina team who had given France a decent game. Latter part of 2021, Ireland were the best team in the world,” the former England international said on Wednesday Night Rugby.
What is interesting is that an Englishman is more comfortable writing something that most Irish people are uncomfortable to even say. Then again, he is not weighed down by our history, the failure to get beyond a World Cup quarter-final, the gaps between grand slams, 61 years between the first and second, nine years between the second and third.
That most recent one came four years ago. A country with more self-confidence would have built that trophy winning year into a lasting legacy. But when the 2019 World Cup came around, it wasn’t the 2018 grand slam winners who reached the final but the team that had finished fifth in that competition, England.
Perhaps that is why Andy Farrell only half-engaged in the issue when it was raised by a Welsh journalist in yesterday’s press briefing. “It is all irrelevant to us (Barnes’ comment). We want to get better. We expect ourselves to get better. We all know how the game of rugby works.”
We do. It’s like this. Each November, Wales underwhelm; each December and January, their regions play abysmally; then February comes and somehow Wales consistently launch a bid at the Six Nations, winning it last year, getting a grand slam in 2019.
It reminds you of that line in the 2020 documentary Chasing The Sun, when South Africa’s Rassie Erasmus warned his Springboks side of the danger the Welsh posed: “They are not softies. They’re not like Ireland. They are tough f*****s.”
Tomorrow those ‘tough f*****s land in Dublin, dismissed by everyone outside their own borders, everyone that is, except Farrell.
“As far as the Welsh are concerned, it is everything to them, this competition,” the Ireland coach said yesterday. “It is certainly their No1 sport. History has shown what has happened. They always grow an extra leg when this competition begins. We expect them to be at their best.”
If they are, Ireland will have problems. But if Ireland also hit top marks – given the names missing from Wayne Pivac’s starting XV – then there will only be one outcome. Think back to what Ireland did to the All Blacks in November. Wales are not New Zealand.
“Put simply you can analyse any game,” Farrell said, “and then you watch it back again and pull things apart all over the place. There are areas in our game that are nowhere near where they should be. We want to push the boundaries and show the players the areas and standards that we can get better at. They are an honest bunch, these players. They are open with one another.”
They get that from their coach.
There’s a story about Farrell from the tail end of his career. A legend in rugby league, he switched codes in 2005, before injuries curtailed his chance to make a similar impact with Saracens. It got to him, so much so that he approached the club’s owner and offered to take a pay-cut. “No,” Farrell was told. “We’ve seen your attitude around the place. You’re a winner.”
He is insatiable. You consider all he has achieved, the captaincy of club and country as a 21-year-old, the fact all bar the first five of his 34 caps for Great Britain’s rugby league team were won as captain, the 368 games, 3135 points for Wigan; the mid-career crossover to a new sport. You know those experiences shaped him.
But there have also been setbacks, those injuries at Saracens, the 2015 World Cup failure as an assistant coach with England, the questions being asked of him when he was Ireland’s defence coach in their grand slam campaign. “Are you concerned about the number of tries you are conceding?” Joe Schmidt was asked.
“Andy Farrell,” Schmidt replied, “is a world-class coach.”
It took time for us to see evidence of that when Farrell replaced Schmidt as the head-honcho but by last November, it was visible. Japan, New Zealand, then Argentina – those Ireland performances were exceptional.
One area they perfected was the breakdown, Paul O’Connell’s coaching imprint an obvious improvement.
“Paul has a passion for it, he is obsessed with it,” said Farrell, “and when someone has a passion for it, they tend to get their point across very well. He drives the standards; he does not let that slip. So many things have to come together to get ruck ball, it is about being in position early, about looking at the opposition, what they have got, all that comes into the mix. The icing on the cake is being accurate.”
The breakdown, remember, was also an obsession with Schmidt.
He had reviewed Ireland’s 2013 defeat to New Zealand in forensic detail, the series of phases that led to Ryan Crotty’s late try, the mistakes Ireland’s players made in the lead-up to it. “It became Joe’s thing,” Johnny Sexton once said.
Joe has gone but his legacy has not. Farrell, with O’Connell’s help, has tried to take the best bits of the Schmidt era while putting his own imprint in there. In fact this was the more interesting of the two points that Stuart Barnes made on Wednesday.
“There’s still a massive reliance on ball retention,” Barnes said of Ireland’s game-plan.
“But the massive difference is in the dying eras of the Joe Schmidt era, it was ball-retention over everything, so it got very slow. You’re not going to get five or six decoy runners if you’re not playing at any pace. Ireland have transformed the pace of their game and that is the difference for me.”
Whether it is a significant enough difference to take Ireland to the podium is a different issue. He took over the same time as Pivac and has won 17 out of 24 games compared to the Wales coach’s return of 10 wins from 22. The difference is Pivac has a Six Nations trophy on his CV, Farrell has not.
“We want to grow and take ourselves on a journey,” said Farrell. “It is a journey that looked unbelievably tough when you looked at it back in September. But we want to put ourselves under pressure and see how we deal it. The Six Nations is the ultimate test as a competition as far as rugby is concerned.
“We would all love a trophy. But at the same time, success is if our game progresses. Trophies look after themselves.”