Ireland leave it a little too close for comfort against Italy

Ireland reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup for the seventh time yesterday. The hosts, among others, would happily swap places with them. By rights, it should be a cause for celebration, and the 53,000-plus crowd at the Olympic Stadium did their best to raise a cheer. So did the players and Joe Schmidt, but deep down you knew that they knew that this wasn't remotely good enough.

Ireland did enough, and barely enough at that, to labour past a limited Italian side by 16-9, thereby extinguishing the Azzurri’s interest in the knockout stages for the eighth time.

They didn't generate enough quick ball to test Italy's defence through the phases, or offload enough, or keep the ball long enough. The backrow hardly counted as a carrying unit. There was a lack of penetration from all bar Iain Henderson, and that included the back line, while the defence conceded yards softly out wide.

In any event, as expected, Ireland’s fate in this World Cup may well hinge on next Sunday’s pool D shootout with the French in Cardiff, where the winners will almost certainly play Argentina in the quarter-finals the following Sunday. The losers would then face New Zealand the following Saturday night.

A draw would see Ireland top the pool due to a superior points difference.

Prize worth winning

Schmidt said: “Winning a Test match is a prize worth winning regardless of where you’re placed in any pool you’re playing. So it’s a gilt-edged victory if you can get those two things, if you can get a Test victory, and you also get that opportunity to maybe play an opponent that’s not that difficult.”

But in light of the ever-improving Argentina beating Tonga 45-16 to all but cement their anticipated place in the quarters, Schmidt admitted: "I think both [quarter-final] opponents [New Zealand and Argentina] are going to be very, very difficult. I think both teams are gathering momentum. I don't really want to think about that too much at the moment. It's just going to be about France, and try to grab those two windows Wednesday and Friday and do the best we can to be as well prepared as we can."

That both Ireland and France have qualified will hardly take any edge off the game.

“No, unfortunately not. Look, they’ve got a 10-day lead-in to the game and I think you can build a decent edge in 10 days. We’ve got three and a half hours’ travelling tomorrow. We’ll have a couple of days to recover, probably train Wednesday, Friday and try to hone in on what we need to do in those two short windows and try to keep a degree of freshness going into next weekend.”

Having worn a face like thunder whenever the cameras panned to the Irish coaches’ box, Schmidt did his best to sound chirpy about the achievement. “The lads have achieved something and I’m delighted for them because there was a lot of talk about us having a pool that allowed us a little bit easier access to the play-off stages, and that in itself exerts a little bit of pressure, because then there’s an expectation and to meet that expectation is always going to be a little bit of a distraction and a challenge.

“Do I look delighted? I really am happy that we’ve got there. I’m very relieved to be honest.”

As a natural born worrier at the best of times, Schmidt was fully aware that this performance left him and his staff much to ponder and work on this week. While this was an alarmingly low level of performance in the third week of the World Cup, one imagines Ireland will hardly play as flatly again, and surely not in a pool decider against France.

Perhaps it can even be a wake-up call. “It can be,” said Schmidt.

“Sometimes you get that reality check but it is then how you act beyond it and we were very aware that this was going to be tough. But we didn’t react to that as well as we should have and now with this reality check, we’re lucky to escape with the points that we need to get out of the pool. I think players will take heed of the inaccuracies we demonstrated today. Some of the penalties we gave away just didn’t need to be part of our make-up.”

Too easy

Maybe Ireland have been floating around the edges of this World Cup a little too much. Maybe they’d had it too easy on the pitch. Maybe they were too conscious of knowing they had to win and should win.

Whatever, Ireland’s display lacked the kind of intensity they will need to produce if they are to either beat France or win a quarter-final over the next two weekends in Cardiff.

“Normally there is a bit of chat on the bus on the way to the ground,” said Schmidt. “We try to stay a bit relaxed. We get here 90 minutes before the game so you don’t want to be getting too tight, too tense before you arrive. But there wasn’t a whisper today.

“I do really think it was a bit of a tense performance. I don’t think that we managed the end game particularly well and we got quite speculative in what we were doing towards the end.

“Maybe we were lulled into a false sense of security over the last couple of weeks when we were able to build scoreboard pressure on our opponents.”

Unable to pull more than a score clear at any stage of this match, Ireland retreated into a tactical shell.

“Sometimes you can drop off in intensity. You wait for things to happen rather than make them happen, and I think that happened today,” admitted Schmidt. Of some consolation at least is that he believes he will have 31 players to choose from against France.