Am I the only one seeing
a pattern in Declan Kidney's record as Ireland coach?
He won the Grand Slam at
his first attempt, then for the following 3 campaigns couldn't win
more than 3 out of 5. He won his pool at the World Cup including a
famous win over Australia then horribly failed against Wales. And
yesterday he out-schemed the French on their own turf in the first
half but then let them claw their way back to a draw.
In my writeup of Leinster's win over Aironi this weekend I had a pop at a couple of
Irish dailies for being overly negative about the performance. It
could be said I'm being hypocritical by going all glass-half-empty
myself over Kidney when his team gets a better result in Paris than
any other has done for over a decade.
Then again...Ireland
aren't exactly on a twenty-game winning streak, are we? Anything
but.
But hey, I'm happy to
start with the positive, and like I say, the bulk of it was in the
first half. All the pre-match analysis was focused on a need for
Ireland to make a statement by doing something far different to that
which they showed against the Welsh, and that's exactly what they
did.
As we all know, Paris
is the city of romance, and when you go there you're pretty much
expected do at least a bit of flirting, so luckily for us our players
chose to do it with the offside line rather than the pretty
mademoiselles.
That's not to say we were
“cheating” per se, but we imposed ourselves from the word go and
once we got away with it the first time, the referee couldn't exactly
start pinging us afterwards (at least in the first half - I'm
pretty sure someone from the French camp had a word in Pearson's ear
at halftime).
But it wasn't just a case
of playing a high line. Once a French ball-carrier was hit, he still had to
be dealt with, and we were going with our trademark choke
tackle. A risky move sure, but again, it was an occasion for taking
calculated risks. I counted four times in the first half where the French had possession going into a tackle and we had it coming out
thanks to the upper body strength of the likes of Sexton, Ferris and
D'Arcy.
While I mention our
starting out-half, I must also mention his opening place-kick which
was an absolute howler. I went on a bit of a gush-fest about him last week, deserved though it was, but I know he won't be
happy with that crucial first effort, and the fact he made his next
three together with Parra missing two himself won't be much
consolation.
One thing is for sure,
though...that Sexton miss did not cost us victory.
It wasn't so much that we
didn't have an offensive gameplan. Our problem, the way I saw it
anyway, was that our defensive gameplan WAS our offensive gameplan to
all extents and purposes.
Everyone talks about
Brian O'Driscoll's famous Parisian hat-trick in 2000. And ironically
it was two more 13s who helped Tommy Bowe come close to replicating
it. First up his intercept of a blind Rougerie pass had to be the
result of work in the DVD room, and bravo to all involved. For his
second try, though he had a lot of work to do with the space he had,
it wouldn't have been there for him at all without a super quick
offload from Keith Earls.
Neither score, however,
seemed to be the result of a pre-determined set of offensive plays
designed to create space – and such a set was never to come. Here is where I ask a question...given we had no dedicated backs coach, is there a rule against an existing player helping out with the coaching brains trust? Say, for example, someone who would have had the captain's role but for an injury?
Anyway...thanks to our
devilish tackling, all the home side could muster in reply for the
first period was a few penalties, only two of which Parra saw over
the bar. A 17-6 halftime lead was as deserved as it would have been
surprising if you somehow knew of it before kickoff.
So it's half-time, and
there Declan Kidney was again, in that Bermuda Triangle of a
time-period. When once it was a year between winning a Grand Slam
and retaining it, another time it was a week between reaching the
World Cup quarterfinals and playing in them, this time it was for
just about ten minutes in a Stade de France dressing room.
One thing was for sure,
the French weren't done scoring for the day – they were certainly
going to come back somehow. I would have thought we needed a mindset
whereby we would get our side of the scoreboard moving every chance
we had. Is that how things transpired?
Well, here's where I talk
about the ref. I HATE blaming the man in the middle for a bad
result, I think it's an extremely lazy analysis and comes with the
assumption that your team was doing everything perfectly themselves.
Still...as I suggested
earlier, it really did seem as though Dave Pearson was favouring the
home side in 50/50 calls. The most blatant example of this was two
knock-ons, one he called against us, one he didn't call for us.
The ball did indeed tip
Paul O'Connell's hand as he reached for an overthrown Rory Best dart
soon after the break, but did it go forward as it landed? I'm not so
sure, yet Pearson called it, and rather than escape their own half,
Ireland remained pegged back inside it until France got the crucial
first score of the second period.
Then came the French try,
and here is where we must metnion Rob Kearney. Yet another herculean
effort from him overall, and apologies to all Tommy Bowe fans (my
daughter included!) but our full-back should have been man of the
match. Maybe he didn't get involved in Irish scores, but were he not
so solid under the high ball there certainly would have been more
French ones.
Sure, his kick from deep
went a little further than it should've done. But did that bring
about the try? No. Though Poitrenaud brought it back into our half,
our defence was still doing all that it had done prior to then and
eventually Conor Murray tackled Parra and forced the ball out of his
hands.
Here's my question for Mr
Pearson...when the ball dropped from Parra's hands, did it go any
less forward than the one that dropped after O'Connell had tipped it
earlier on?
After that non-call, it
took a lucky bounce and a quick offload from Trinh-Duc (his second
and last significant contribution on the day) to Wesley Fofana
who it has to be said took his chance well however fortunately it
came about.
Parra may have missed the
conversion, but the ref was to give him a chance to make up for it.
As on many occasions at the second half breakdown, Irish fans could
argue that it was like he was looking for reasons to penalise us.
I'm not so sure that was actually the case but he did seem quick to
award the chance in front that brought the scores level again for the
first time since kickoff.
So now the clock was
ticking towards the 60-minute mark. By fair means or foul, the lead
was gone, but the match was still there to be won. What happens
next?
Well first there was the
unfortunate injury to Conor Murray. He still wasn't quite at the top
of his game but given the defensive set-up we were adopting he was
probably the right choice to start. Hopefully he will recover
quickly as Michael Corcoran's tweet suggests but I'd bet any money that Eoin Reddan was in the frame to
come on at virtually that very moment anyway.
And around the 61-minute
mark, after Rory Best pinched a ball in a manner even the watching
Nicolas Sarkozy couldn't have deemed illegal, a spot of garryowen
tennis led to Kearney going on one of his surges from one 22 to the
other, and hey presto, we're on the front foot much like we were in
the second half against Italy.
But here's the thing -
this wasn't Italy we were playing. So why we went on to play the
same offence I'll never know.
First of all, Sexton
brilliantly drops his shoulder and charges deep into the French 22.
But the home defence is solid and a few phases develop.
Meanwhile, back in
Dublin, an Irish fan with a tendency to harp on rugby is frightening
the life out of his in-laws by shouting “DROP GOAL!!!” at the
telly. “They can't hear you,” came a reply from one of them.
Drop goals should always
be in a rugby team's playbook. And I totally get why French teams
are as willing to go for them in the first minute of the match as
they are the last. Not only does it get you on the board, but once
your players are more used to doing it, it will come more easily to
them in those “squeaky-bum” situations late in a tight game.
Now the first time I
think Sexton DID briefly drop into the pocket, but Reddan seemed to
usher him into a three-man passing line towards touch. The ball went
there, the French defence intervened, the ball went into touch,
luckily for us off a blue jumper.
Let's put a pin in the
drop-goal thing for a moment. Here Ireland has an attacking lineout
deep in the French 22 with the scores level. Whatever we plan to do
with the ball, we must first secure it. We've failed at both short
and long throws already, but with the rain teeming down, it made
absolutely no sense to throw it long. Yet we did, and thus lost
possession.
Still, Trinh-Duc
nervously hit it into touch, and this time we saw sense and won our
lineout, albeit much further out. Few more surges and phases, and
we're back into 22, and now I have finally reached the point of my
screengrab which leads off this post. Keith Earls has gotten us this
far.
I can't see it any other
way. You take the blinkin' drop goal here. OK – maybe the world's
best exponent of eleventh-hour heroics was still on the bench at this
point, but from this position under the posts, any outhalf should at
least bloody well try it. The mindset of the international team
should be geared around going into drop goal mode in those situations.
But no, we go back to the
phases. And yes, Gordon D'Arcy screwed up a pass, but given the
conditions, the more phases we went through the more it was likely
something like that was going to happen. I don't blame our inside
centre, in fact defensively I thought our 12 & 13 did extremely
well together on the day, I blame the overall offensive mindset of
the Irish squad, like when Jamie Heaslip risked Earls along the sideline when clearly it wasn't on (see 2nd screengrab above).
And look what happened
next..the French marched down the field but once more couldn't get
past our defensive barrier and whether it was excellent Irish
discipline or sudden blindness from Pearson we'll never know. The point is, had we a 3-point lead, chances are we would've held it.
At least they took a
couple of bites at the winning-drop-goal cherry, but thanks to the
efforts of the likes of Stephen Ferris, another powerhouse on the day
by the way(his defensive display plus ripped jersey reminded me of
Richard Dunne for the Irish soccer team in Moscow), we kept them
out.
I was glad to hear Paul
O'Connell, Tommy Bowe and even Kidney himself express disappointment
afterwards. I felt it too, though I was trying to convince myself,
as were many Irish fans on twitter, that I “would've taken the draw
beforehand”.
Now that the dust has
settled, however, I think we should stop wasting time arguing over
the Ireland coach's team selections and start evaluating his legacy.
He's not going to change what he does – that's the way he is.
And without hindsight, I
doubt many would go back to 2008 and not replace Eddie O'Sullivan
with Declan Kidney. But it's 2012 now, with Scotland, England and a
trio of Tests in New Zealand to come before the cycle begins again before
the next Six Nations campaign.
I think we've all seen
enough evidence that Kidney is capable of bringing this group of
players only so far, and whatever about the time left on his
contract, perhaps the time is getting near for him to step aside so
we can all see what happens next. JLP
ALSO THIS WEEKEND
IRELAND-36
WALES-0 (Women's Six Nations)
