SIX NATIONS SCOTLAND v IRELAND:THE IRELAND backs' coach, Alan Gaffney, yesterday admitted there is an anxiousness and a lack of confidence at the root of the team's error count of late, and pinpointed an innately Irish lack of on-field communication as part of the problem.
All that said and done, he launched a passionate defence of the way Ireland are seeking to play.
Getting the balance right is also an issue, and pinpointing a couple of examples where Ireland turned over ball when ambitiously running it in their own territory against France, Gaffney said: “We had a five-on-three, and if we execute well the crowd will be on their feet, ‘Bring back running rugby’. But we didn’t execute, we tried to pass the ball, we got penalised, they kick a penalty goal and we’re three down. We’ve just got to get our execution right. The decision to go was probably the correct decision: we had four backs and one forward versus one back and two forwards, so you’d say it’s not a bad time to go.
“Alternatively, there was a lot of space back there. But that’s again on the assumption that the kick is going to be good. If the kick’s not good, we finish back in our territory again, so there are a lot of assumptions, and hindsight is a wonderful thing.”
Again reflecting on some of the mistakes made against France, Gaffney conceded, that “there is an anxiousness”.
He cited the 9-13 wraparound move off the first scrum against France “where the timing was out between Drico (Brian O’Driscoll) and Tomás (O’Leary), and in retrospect, whether that play should have been played, but the players still say that it was the right play. If the ball – and it didn’t – goes to hand, Earlsy is in a lot of space. But it’s one of those things, the ball didn’t go to hand.
“There’s a perception that we ran everything but Jonny (Sexton) only passed the ball 10 times in the entire game; that doesn’t give you the idea that we’re running everything,” added Gaffney.
“These boys are making split-second decisions. We have to rely on the judgment of the players; we can guide the players but they make the decisions and a lot of those are done on the spur of the moment and I’ll back every decision a player makes. If we haven’t got confidence in the player, we haven’t got a team. The day that I take the flair out of a player is the day I stop coaching.”
Coaches can’t catch and pass for the players, but Gaffney acknowledged that this is, in part, a coaching issue. “It is and it isn’t. We’ve got to do maintenance, there’s no doubt. All coaches work on passing; the players have got to keep doing it. We just can’t assume that everyone passes well, because people don’t.”
A tad disconcertingly, Gaffney also admitted that the on-field error count partly reflects what’s been happening in training, which prompted him to pinpoint communication issues. “Of one thing there’s no doubt, we were coughing up a bit of ball in training and that seems to be transferring to the pitch, and that was a concentration thing, and that’s all it can be. I mean, the skill level is very, very high.
“There were a couple of things. You look at the pass that Jonny threw that went to ground; it wasn’t the sole thing. You can’t just rely on a 10 to make the decision to kick. There were four other backs there and nobody, I think you’ll find, said a hell of a lot.
“We’ve got to communicate a lot better than we’re doing at the present time. It’s an Irish thing, that we don’t talk much. There are talkers out there, like Paulie (O’Connell) and probably Darce (Gordon D’Arcy) and Drico, but we’ve got to get guys out there to stand up, be accountable, chat, communicate and make the game easier for each other.”
Whether or not it exorcises any demons from last season’s meeting, a win on Sunday, all the more so with sharper handling, could be a turning point.
“Yes, obviously, it just gives you more confidence. We’re just not getting the results because we’re not executing well enough. But if we go out there and perform the way we know we can and get that result, the confidence level will rise enormously.”
