Afraid to lose and too fearful to win

Ireland 12 Wales 16DEVOID OF AMBITION or ideas, Ireland tried not to lose. Wales meanwhile tried not to win.

It was as if the Ireland head coach, in his fear of losing, had transmitted this fear to the players. Long before the end, such was the conscious desire not to become embroiled in a high-tempo game with the Welsh, the Irish looked like a group of players who had been led to believe Wales were actually superior.

Ireland looked like one-trick ponies, but they must be better than this sterile, static and predictable rugby suggested, no?

Cravenly afraid to spread the ball in the face of the Welsh blitz defence, Ireland took a limited approach, helped by the muscle and work-rate of the pack and a couple of typically masterful kicks by Ronan O'Gara, and it admittedly yielded a decent reward in the first quarter.

O'Gara's brace of penalties might even have become 13-0 when Shane Horgan - who looked like Ireland's most potent if most underused runner - was stopped from grounding the ball an inch short on the line by Mike Phillips's thunderous tackle.

Once Shane Williams brilliantly and daringly chipped Horgan from the ensuing scrum and gathered from near his own line, it led to Stephen Jones opening their account when Wayne Barnes - excellent throughout - correctly pinged Jamie Heaslip for grappling Ryan Jones. Thereafter Wales ran the game.

Aside from playing much more of the rugby and being more ambitious, Wales were also cuter. They kicked to touch twice in the whole match, thereby affording Ireland only eight throws in 80 minutes and negating the improvement wrought there by the return of Paul O'Connell and Rory Best. They backed their kick-and-chase game against Ireland's counterkicking or - don't laugh - counterattacking game.

Ireland, of course, don't have a counterattacking game. Well though Rob Kearney played - a rare shaft of light in this Irish performance - they've never had one under this regime, where the diktat from above is not to run it back if the forwards are in front of the ball. A telling example was the moment in the 50th minute when Tommy Bowe and Ronan O'Gara shifted the ball infield to Kearney and in a rare moment of uncertainty, he seemed not to know what to do. Taking it into contact, he turned over possession.

That would lead to the game's most decisive moment.

There was nothing new to this Welsh tactic; France and Argentina did the same in the World Cup when Eddie O'Sullivan bemoaned the latter "hoofing the ball up the middle" as if it was against the rules. They did it because Ireland have become so predictable.

Once they injected tempo and width into the game, Wales looked vastly superior, and as virtually every Irish supporter seemed to readily concede afterwards, the men from the valleys would have won more handsomely had they not butchered several well-worked overlaps. In part this was because they became a little too flat in attack, prompting two forward passes from Stephen Jones early on and a verbal volley from the outhalf to those around him.

Reddan helped Kearney prevent Tom Shanklin and Lee Byrne finishing off one bout of quickly recycled ball. Phillips's poor pass to Stephen Jones undid a stunning pair of offloads by Adam Jones and Ian Gough to release the immense Ryan Jones. (One thought of Ireland's non-developed offloading game and the concept of an Ireland prop and lock offloading in quick succession like that!)

The most costly of all was the Lions captain-in-waiting Ryan Jones - in an otherwise awesome, error-free performance - taking the ball into contact with numbers galore outside him.

Those missed opportunities, Stephen Jones's early missed sitter along with Phillips's yellow card offence and reversed penalty for needlessly putting his knee into the back of Marcus Horan left Ireland a tad fortuitously ahead 6-3 at the break.

Upon the resumption, there was more aggression in the efforts of the Welsh forwards to run down the clock and more belief, generally, in what they were doing as Ireland lost their way. Their coaches even won the interval.

Rewind to that Kearney counterattack. Martyn Williams pick-pocketed him and a minute and five phases later, Stephen Jones ran on to quick ball for Shane Williams to hand off Andrew Trimble and score his record-equalling 40th try for Wales, though his first against Ireland.

Phillips, after his own searing break, took too much out of the ball as Tom Shanklin butchered another Welsh try and another yellow card, well spotted by Barnes, against Martyn Williams, helped to keep Ireland in touch after Jamie Heaslip exploited a rare gap but couldn't find Brian O'Driscoll.

Only then, and only once in 80 minutes, did Ireland put some width on the ball as Trimble was launched from deep to find O'Driscoll. But by then hints of panic crept into Ireland's game after that inevitable Welsh breakthrough.

Despite playing against 14 men for almost half the second period, curiously Ireland didn't play for territory and they seemed not to have any Plan B.

They have often relied on individual moments of brilliance but as the era of the golden generation passes, they've become less prominent.

Their running game, such as it was, often looked clueless, like when O'Gara switched from left to right and found only John Hayes for company. Losing shape in phased attack is nothing new, but you couldn't imagine Wales running out of options like that.

Though Ireland were back in the game with the score at 12-13, confusion reigned as Reddan waited for fully seven seconds for the troops to align themselves for another close-in rumble, culminating in Bernard Jackman gratuitously shunting his shoulder into a trapped Ryan Jones.

Cue James Hook, who may well make Wales an even better team, to glint into the sun above the Davin Stand and effectively put the issue beyond doubt.

Land of My Fathersgrew in volume. So much wasted effort by the men in green. Much the more leg-weary in the second half, sadly they were only playing for threepointers.

And once it went beyond three points, the game was up. As it is in many ways.

Scoring sequence: 5 mins:O'Gara pen 3-0; 19:O'Gara pen 6-0; 26:S Jones pen 6-3; (half-time 6-3); 46:S Jones pen 6-6; 51:S Williams try, S Jones con 6-13; 62:O'Gara pen 9-13; 68:O'Gara pen 12-13; 76:Hook pen 12-16.

IRELAND:R Kearney (Leinster); S Horgan (Leinster), B O'Driscoll (Leinster), A
Trimble (Ulster), T Bowe (Ulster); R O'Gara (Munster), E Reddan (Wasps); M Horan (Munster), R Best (Ulster), J Hayes (Munster), D O'Callaghan (Munster), P O'Connell (Munster), D Leamy (Munster), D Wallace (Munster), J Heaslip (Leinster). Replacements:B Jackman (Leinster) for Best, T Buckley (Munster) for Hayes, L Fitzgerald (Leinster) for O'Driscoll (all 71 mins). Not used:M
O'Driscoll (Munster), S Easterby (Llanelli), P Stringer (Munster), P Wallace (Ulster).

WALES:L Byrne (Ospreys); M Jones (Llanelli), T Shanklin (Cardiff), G Henson (Ospreys), S Williams (Ospreys); S Jones (Llanelli), M Phillips (Ospreys); G Jenkins (Cardiff), M Rees (Llanelli), A Jones (Ospreys), I Gough (Ospreys), A Wyn-Jones (Ospreys), J Thomas (Ospreys), M Williams (Cardiff), R Jones (Ospreys, capt). Replacements:J Hook (Ospreys) for S Jones (65 mins); D Jones (Ospreys) for A Jones (72 mins); G Delve (Cardiff) for R Jones (75 mins). Not used:G Williams (Cardiff), I Evans (Ospreys), D Peel (Llanelli), S Parker (Ospreys).

Referee: W Barnes(England).