France-26 (Eddie’s 2008) Ireland-21

Time to turn the clock back yet again to Eddie O'Sullivan's last Six Nations campaign which in terms of fixtures anyway mirrors the 2010 version. The scoreline doesn't even begin to reflect the way I felt watching this one, particularly when Clerc did such an extravagant touchdown for his 3rd try. Good to see he's playing this Saturday…the quest for revenge could make for an interesting sub-plot...

 

 

 IT WAS THERE FOR THE TAKING

Turned out to be quite a match, didn’t it?

I’m sorry to take the role of the nay-sayer, but although it was a good thing that we came from virtual oblivion to within a whisker of winning, I still took a lot more negatives from the performance than I did positives.

First of all, why were we down by four tries midway through the second half? Because we couldn’t hold onto possession, that’s why. And what’s more, when we did have it in attacking situations, we couldn’t make it count.
This began in the opening minutes in my opinion. We had a good backline move which nearly saw us break through for a try, but the French defence recovered and we had a few phases under the posts which seemed to be going nowhere.

I was thinking – definitely drop goal is the way to go. You’re in Paris, and you take the easy score to go ahead early and ease the pressure. But no – they went for the try and it gained nothing. Still, not the end of the world.
Then we started losing crucial lineouts in their 22. Each time, Jackman’s throw seemed to be on the mark; it’s almost as if the home forwards were reading the calls each time and their jumper was able to get into the air in advance of the throw.

Then before you could say “sacre bleu”, three turnovers left Kearney hopelessly out of position and in the blink of an eye they exploited the space and got Clerc in for his hat-trick. Didn’t you just want to give him a thump for the extravagant way he put the ball down for his third five-pointer???

So according to the commentators, Heymans’ fourth in the second half meant it was “curtains” for Ireland. I was almost afraid to watch the rest of the game, but fair play to the lads, they found some backbone, albeit against pretty much the entire French subs bench.

We scored two tries in quick succession. How? By exploiting their weakened pack in both the lineout and the loose.
So when we get to within five points and we’re deep in their 22 once more in the dying moments, what do we do? Instead of continuing to pummel their pack, we play long risky passes through the backs, and in the end we hand them victory by literally throwing the ball out of play to stop the clock. Had we kept the phases going there was every chance of being awarded yet another penalty try because it seemed they had no answers.

Yes, I know Donncha squeezed out a few tears with his interview and yes, they did play better in the second half. But I’m sick of this “nearly is good enough” attitude that has been cultivated in Irish sport over the years.

By doing the basics right we would not have been chasing this game. We could have actually won it comfortably.

I said before this Six Nations campaign that only winning the Championship could vindicate O’Sullivan’s decision to go with virtually the same team he brought to the World Cup. He scraped a win against Italy, THEN made changes, and still lost in Paris, and realistically all we have to hope for is yet another Triple Crown.

And how easy is THAT going to be, with Warren Gatland motivating his Welsh squad to get revenge for him in a few weeks???

One last complaint - with the French TV director doing stupid tricks like super-imposing people's faces onto the screen when you're trying to watch the actual play, coupled with RTE's inability to keep the elapsed time in the top left hand corner, I think I'm going to have to make sure I get to Paris myself in two year's time to enjoy the next game properly!