Georgia no longer on Irish minds

RUGBY/2003 World Cup Qualifier - Ireland ... 63 Georgia ... 14: Better than what went before, but could have been better still, and will certainly need to be when the world champions come calling in six weeks. Whatever about the value of this Eastern trilogy, as a dry run for that game, this was the chalk before the cheese.

There's been an unreal, even surreal, air to the trio of games played so far. It rather diminishes the value of sporting contests when only the size of the winning margin, not the identity, is known beforehand.

When bumping into Brian Ashton before the rearranged Scotland-Ireland game last September, the former Irish coach merely stated: "It's too early to be playing Test match rugby."

Players, no less than Joe Public, need to crank themselves up for it and even the Irish management will be glad to get back to watching real, competitive provincial stuff over the next few weeks.

It would be splitting hairs to be unduly critical of an eight tries to two rout, and in the first half this was undoubtedly the pick of the three Irish performances to date, as they garnished the non-occasion with some good rugby and some good scores.

Maybe it was a mental fall-off with the game won, an element of fatigue, or a Georgian resurgence after the air in the visitors' dressing-room was turned blue at half-time and they showed their true colours. Given a free £1,000 bet, Eddie O'Sullivan for one would back Georgia to beat the Russians in their winner-takes-all qualifier in two weeks.

In any case Ireland switched off soon after the break, and, unlike a tap, it's hard to switch back on again. In any event, it's hard to believe that, say, England or New zealand would not have pressed home a 49-0 lead after 43 minutes with more of a cricket score. Somehow this Irish team, like many before it, just don't have that ruthless, killer instinct.

As against Romania and Russia, Ireland sought to keep some structure on proceedings for much of the first half by using the wind to play for territory and take the three-pointers when on offer. However, they also had a better line-out, more penetration from the target runners close in, and also with more width and depth in the backs, and ran some good support lines when attacking in clusters.

"It's a bigger pitch for a start," reasoned O'Sullivan. "The pitch last week was tiny and we always felt that we could use the width of the pitch. But we had to do the hard yards first and the pack. But there was more space to attack and we ran better lines which meant we got better gain lines. So it's a chicken and egg thing and, yeah, we did get more width in our game in the first half."

The aerial work of Malcolm O'Kelly and Simon Easterby at the restart and the line-outs, where they pilfered five Georgian throws, was top drawer. Anthony Foley ran the ball back aggressively, O'Kelly also making plenty of ball carries.

The scores came freely and easily, even off first phase, such as the opener when Kevin Maggs straightened on to Brian O'Driscoll's offload to set up Denis Hickie for the opener.

But they worked the Georgians around well, taking them to the corners and back infield with some high tempo recycling, such as Brian O'Driscoll's second try when O'Kelly presented the ball well despite a double hit and O'Gara's skip pass put O'Driscoll over.

"That was a nice try, I liked that one," said O'Sullivan approvingly, "and we'd dragged the defence into a corner, and then we tied them in again under the posts before we got 'em in the corner. Most teams will not give you the corners, and if you want to get them you're going to have to get a very good passage of play together, so given that was a comfortable two-man overlap, yeah that was probably the try of the day."

That took O'Driscoll to within one of equalling the Irish try-scoring record of 17 which Brendan Mullin, another number 13 Blackrock graduate, has long held but it was almost a relief that he didn't reach the landmark here. It would, somehow, have seemed too cheap. Against the Wallabies in a packed Lansdowne Road next November would be altogether more meaningful.

The sense of anti-climax is more acute when a team fails to follow up a point-per-minute first-half by almost losing the second period. To a degree it's all about perceptions and O'Sullivan, not unreasonably, made the point that if it had been two 30-point halves adding up to the same total people's viewpoints might not be so critical.

But then again, it wasn't and he's probably as disappointed as anyone that Ireland couldn't press home their 49-0 lead 43 minutes in. Indeed, they were outscored by 14-0 over the next half-hour. For sure this was in part due to a much improved Georgian display after the interval. Then again it could hardly have been any worse. An AIL first division club would have put up more resistance.

They'd certainly have had a better line-out and better defensive organisation, even from first phase, never mind the all-at-sea reorganisation from second phase onwards. Witness Girvan Dempsey's routine blindside try from Peter Stringer's feed off a scrum, as scrum-half Irakli Abusseridze did a passable imitation of a statue while snails wouldn't have covered the ground much slower than the back-rowers David Bolghashvili and Ilia Zedguinidze.

Their attacking game, such as it was, consisted of a few close-in passes behind the gain line before running into a congested Irish midfield. Admittedly, they weren't as match hardened as Ireland, this being their first match since April.

"The boys were saving themselves for the Russian match in two weeks' time," explained one of their representatives, George Mirtskhulava. At half-time the coach (Claude Saurel) and the vice-president came into the dressing-room and animatedly questioned their Georgian pride.

"So in the second half you saw the Georgian fighting spirit," added Mirtskhulava, "the spirit which will beat and crush Russia in two weeks' time, the spirit which they (Russia) are afraid of. That is why they (Russia) want to change the venue." Fighting words, and no wonder the Russians are edgy about travelling. But the Georgian vice-president, Zara Kassachvili, said they had insurances from the IRB that if the Russians do not travel to Tbilisi, where a capacity 82,000 crowd will await them, then the Georgians will progress to Australia.

O'Sullivan wasn't too perturbed by the manner they conceded the second Gerogian try, Denis Hickie instigating a thrilling counter-attack before Ireland turned over the ball in turn and Irakli Abusseridze tapped quickly to send Bessik Khamashuridze over untouched under the posts.

However, Ronan O'Gara will have felt the coach's wrath for missing the tackle which allowed Vassil Katsadze - who has played for Georgia at centre, wing, lock and back-row - to breach the green line.

Perhaps the fatigue of the trek to Krasnoyarsk took a toll. But given there is a notion, augmented by the impact of the Irish bench, that after weeks of cameo appearances at best, they should have been used much earlier.

With the Georgians themselves wilting and reduced due to the sinbinning of Mevlud Mtiulishvili, the Irish replacements made hay, particularly the strong-running Rob Henderson and the sniping Guy Easterby, who first put Alan Quinlan over and then scored himself. A modicum of embarrassment was averted.

IRELAND: G Dempsey (Leinster/Terenure College); J Kelly (Munster/Cork Constitution), B O'Driscoll (Leinster/Blackrock College), K Maggs (Bath), D Hickie (Leinster/St Mary's College); R O'Gara (Munster/Cork Constitution), P Stringer (Munster/Shannon); R Corrigan (Leinster/Greystones), S Byrne (Leinster/Blackrock College), J Hayes (Munster/Shannon), G Longwell (Ulster/Ballymena), M O'Kelly (Leinster/St. Mary's College), S Easterby (Llanelli), A Foley (Munster/Shannon, capt), K Gleeson (Leinster/St. Mary's College). Replacements: Alan Quinlan (Munster/Shannon) for S Easterby (54 mins), D Humphreys (Ulster/Dungannon) for O'Gara (61 mins), R Henderson (Munster/Young Munster) for Maggs (66 mins), F Sheahan (Munster/Cork Constitution) for Byrne (72 mins), P Wallace (Leinster/Blackrock College) for Hayes, L Cullen (Leinster/Blackrock College) for Longwell, G Easterby (Llanelli) for Stringer (all 74 mins).

GEORGIA: B Khamashuridze (Auch, Fra); M Urjukashvili (Tours, Fra), T Zibzibadze (Tours, Fra), K Alania (Locomotivi, Geo), B Khekhelashvili (Angouleme, Fra); P Jimsheladze (Aurillac, Fra), I Abusseridze (Aurillac, Fra); G Shvelidze (Beziers, Fra), A Guiorgadze (Rovigo, Ita), L Tsabadze (Montferrand, Fra), V Nadiradze (Beziers, Fra), V Didebulidze (Cannes, capt), D Bolghashvili (Mazamet, Fra), I Zeduinidze (Rovigo, Ita, capt), G Chkhaidze (La Rochelle, Fra).

Replacements: I Gundishvili (University, Georgia) for Bolghashvili, V Katsadze for Alania (both half-time), Z Mtchedlishvili (Domon, Fra) for Gundishvili (62 mins), M Mtiulishvile (Beziers) for Shvelidze, T Ratianidze (Beziers, Fra) for Guiorgadze, E Iovadze (Agde, Fra) for Khekhelashvili (all 70 mins), Shvelidze for Tsabadze (74-77 mins) and for Chkhaidze (80-84 mins).

Referee: N Williams (Wales).