Sorry Ireland going from bad to worse
A dejected Ronan O'Gara after Ireland's hard-earned four-point victory over rugby minnows Georgia in Bordeaux last night.
Sunday September 16 2007
NO winners in the Stade Chaban-Dalmas in Bordeaux last night. Hapless Ireland limped to a 14-10 victory against Georgia and were blessed to do so, but the only winners were those looking on in the France and Argentina team hotels. As the Georgian pack charged over the line in the 78th minute and came within a whisker of the try that would have virtually ended Ireland's World Cup interest, you could nearly imagine the hoots of laughter coming from Paris drowning out the boos that were ringing around Bordeaux.
What is there left now but to pine for the good old days of Irish rugby when minnows were dispatched with far too much sweat for comfort and the tag of plucky underdog fitted us like a well-worn shawl. Ireland face France in Paris on Friday, their World Cup hopes hanging by a thread, and after this diabolical showing last night they will make the journey north with no expectation and, it is hard to believe, much by way of confidence either.
In summing up a putrid display, it is difficult to know where to begin. Ronan O'Gara has rarely had less influence in an Irish jersey, Brian O'Driscoll was merely competent for 40 minutes and Peter Stringer was awful. There was no platform from the forwards and the backs rarely got moving. None of them performed. To a man Ireland were simply awful and played like amateurs.
In practical terms Ireland failed to pick up a bonus point and ceded whatever chance they had of accumulating a decent points total. To survive to the knock-out stages they will have to beat both France and Argentina and that, in fairness, seems a laughable prospect. As the game ended with Georgia planted on Ireland's 22 and jeers ringing out from the crowd, talk of reaching a quarter-final could only be construed as inane rambling.
If Namibia was shocking, you had to dig for words to describe the magnitude of this horror. It was simply deplorable, sheer ineptitude of quite staggering proportions from a team that is supposed to be the sixth best in the world and, currently, the standard bearer of the game in these islands. Before the tournament began, Eddie O'Sullivan was gifted another four years in his job and that now looks a curious piece of business from the IRFU. O'Sullivan may be the most successful coach in Irish rugby history but, for whatever reason, this much vaunted Irish team now appears to have stalled under his leadership. Unless miracles are produced, questions will be asked whether O'Sullivan can take this side any further.
Georgia's bulk and physical presence was always going to cause Ireland problems. But that was beside the point. What mattered more was that the promised reaction from Ireland following last week took so long to come and, when it did, it was barely a ripple. That was what made it so shocking.
As bad as things were last week, who could have foreseen that O'Sullivan's team would have looked so inept against a side that was showing 11 changes from the one beaten by Argentina in midweek? Just as against Namibia, Ireland's play was error-strewn and even more rudderless and lacking in conviction. The anticipated improvement never materialised and there were no mitigating factors. None.
That was the bald and shocking truth. The excuses wheeled out after Namibia -- that the team was rusty and hadn't played together in so long -- could not feasibly be applied last night. O'Sullivan and his leading players tried vainly to present a brave face but their words rang hollow. What on earth is going on? The problems that were evident in a curiously sloppy World Cup build-up were obviously more deep-rooted than we imagined.
Consider the situation five minutes from half-time. Ireland were attacking close to the Georgian line and pushing for the second try that would, at least, send them to the dressing-room in fine fettle. But an Irish forward spilled it -- another mistake in another long litany -- and Georgia charged forward at the other end. In trying to halt their momentum, David Wallace earned himself 10 minutes in the sin-bin and instead of increasing their lead, Ireland had to watch Merab Kvirikashvili reduce it to 7-3. Another nightmare was unfolding before our eyes.
If O'Sullivan tried to iron out the wrinkles at half-time, his efforts failed to have any worthwhile effect. The second-half descended into slap-stick and invoked memories of Steve Staunton's soccer team in San Marino earlier this year. They were four minutes back when Stringer, catastrophically, released Giorgi Elizbarashvili to run over half the length of the pitch for a gift of a try.
Incredibly, Georgia lead. Even more incredibly they were value for it. The grim prospect of an upset hung menacingly in the southern French air.
What alarmed most was that the response from Ireland was never more than muted. Girvan Dempsey restored the lead 10 minutes later after great work from Wallace and Gordon D'Arcy but they never established any dominance. There was no semblance of a ruthless streak. For the last 15 minutes Georgia kept Ireland pinned inside their own half.
That was the horror of it. A full-strength Ireland struggling to hold out a virtual B side, rated beforehand as 80-1 no-hopers. In the end the Georgians claimed the moral victory that once seemed to be the preserve of teams in green. We say these days that moral victories are a thing of our less bounteous past. But what Ireland achieved in Bordeaux last night seemed like the worst victory of all.
