Take Saturday for instance. I think what most fans wanted to know was
just what Pascal Papé was thinking when he ran full pelt into Jamie Heaslip’s
back with his knee raised – his argument that he was simply entering the maul
at a height didn’t fool Wayne Barnes and didn’t fool anybody watching either. A
yellow card for the Frenchman and a citing has followed – it is likely Papé
won’t play any more part in France’s Six Nations campaign this year.
You’d quite like to ask Rory Best why he stuck out his leg to trip up
Morgan Parra as well. A man to the good and with nothing significant on towards
the right, Best’s decision to hinder the Clermont scrum-half could easily have
cost Ireland more than it did, and instead of a comfortable lead to close out
in the final few minutes, Ireland saw themselves desperately clinging onto a
7-point advantage, with the Grand Slam possibly slipping through their fingers.
In the end, it wasn’t a great performance again. Not helped by Barnes’
ineptitude at officiating the set-piece, Ireland set about their business with
an efficiency they were missing last week in Rome, but without the cutting edge
that saw them put away the Italians last week, and it nearly cost them. That
Joe Schmidt’s side didn’t cross the whitewash against a side that conceded
twice against Scotland isn’t something to be proud of, and although the win
keeps us top of the Championship, I genuinely fear that the England game will
be the one where Ireland’s luck may run out.
It also painfully highlights how dependent Ireland are upon Jonny
Sexton.
Yes, any side with a fly-half as good as Sexton is would struggle to
replace him, but the gulf in class between Sexton and his understudies Madigan
and Keatley is about as wide as the Pacific Ocean. Madigan’s problems at 10
stem back to the fact that Matt O’Connor utilises him mainly as an inside
centre at Leinster – how is a player expected to control an international Test
when he isn’t being given a chance at provincial level? Meanwhile, Keatley is
an honest grafter I’ll give him that, but there is such a thing as being good
for your province and not performing in the green jersey.
Harsh? No. This is international rugby, the standards go up and so
must the performances. Players like Sean O’Brien, Cian Healy and Tommy Bowe
aren’t known as the world’s best simply because they perform week in week out
for their clubs – it’s because they’re able to raise their game for the big
stage as well. If a player isn’t up to it, then they shouldn’t be on the field.
Schmidt has questions to answer, I called him out on some of the
tactics last week and while it’s another win chalked up, the performance of the
Irish doesn’t seem to have improved any. Credit to France for putting up
something of a fight in the final few minutes, but by no means should Ireland
have even let them get close to where they did. The French are well renowned
for throwing in the towel away from home should they be performing poorly, and
the fact that they didn’t on Saturday proves how poorly Ireland succeeded in
putting them away.
Again, credit where credit is due, France did indeed battle away for
the full 80 and they will win away from home against other teams, but with the
clueless Philippe Saint-André at the helm and their inability to travel well
they are not a team to be feared and should have simply been a speedbump on the
road to a Grand Slam. Wales away should have been the trickiest game for
Ireland, but so far they’re making all of them look like potential banana
skins.
Quite possibly I’m just a perfectionist. I’m not saying Ireland should
run 60 points past every team, but certainly at home I’m expecting comfortable
victories, especially against teams like France. In a World Cup year, if things
aren’t gelling and mistakes are still being made then you have to become
concerned. Sides like the All Blacks and Springboks will provide much sterner
tests than France and Italy will, and if we have true aspirations to actually
put forward a legitimate challenge to be the World Champions then things have
to start going well right now, otherwise there is a real possibility that we
will be undercooked heading over to England in September.
And that is not a nice thought.
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