Ireland 9 England 20:SOMETIME BACK at the start of August, Declan Kidney and others might have optimistically closed their eyes and envisaged an ideal World Cup send-off as a capacity 50,000 crowd staying on long after the whistle to salute a victorious Ireland side against the auld enemy. Maybe the sun would have been shining too. Eh, not quite.
Save for the misleading first scrum turnover on the English put-in, the crowd were mostly reliant on a few English mistakes, such as Jonny Wilkinson kicking a penalty to the corner dead, for reasons to cheer.
Entering the last quarter, the clouds gathered, both literally and figuratively, prompting many to seek shelter from the front rows or leave the ground altogether. By the end, both teams were quickly and politely applauded off the pitch in a decidedly muted send-off.
Pretty much every Irish fear about this fixture came to pass as a vengeful England earned their first win in this country since the would-be World Cup kings completed their overdue Grand Slam in 2003.
Shorn of Brian O’Driscoll and Seán O’Brien, there was always liable to be a shortfall in the ball-carrying department, on top of which was the feeling David Wallace and Stephen Ferris wouldn’t last 80 minutes.
In the event, the cruelly unfortunate Wallace barely lasted the first quarter, and Jamie Heaslip soon followed, thereby obliging Ferris to last the pace. He did that and more, being easily Ireland’s best carrier, but apart from himself and the tireless Paul O’Connell, England bossed the collisions and bullied Ireland physically.
In a confused, muddled-looking performance, Ireland’s game management was also curious at best. In stark contrast to England, who learned from their mistakes in Cardiff and took every opportunity at goal in their desire to avenge the events of last March, Ireland eschewed three shots at goal by opting for attacking lineouts.
In all, Ireland had six lineouts in the English 22, as well as a scrum, and the sum total of their reward was the old Norwegian return in the Eurovision song contest.
The ambition was commendable if, alas, unrewarding. Even at their best in recent years, Ireland’s main route to the try-line has been through high-intensity, multi-phase attacks inside the opposition 22. Denis Hickie was always a bit of a freakishly quick Irish rugby player, and without a player of his true pace this team doesn’t score from long-range.
Yet Ireland opted to run an awful lot of ball from their own territory, but it all fizzled out as they painstakingly went through a host of phases in a narrow corridor deep inside their own half.
In fairness, although at times Ireland ran far too laterally, some of the back play was better than a week ago, with Ferris used to straighten the line as a decoy runner and Geordan Murphy adding some varied running lines, but both Keith Earls and Andrew Trimble were culpable in the first half of failing to use men outside them, with Earls also guilty of kicking the ball away.
As he feared, Earls appears to have become a victim of his own versatility and has now inherited the crisis of confidence that afflicted Luke Fitzgerald.
A la Fitzgerald, Earls has a case of trying-too-hard syndrome, as if he feels he has to do something special every time he gets possession – all the more so in the hallowed number 13 jersey.
His spirits wouldn’t have been helped by the manner in which he went too tight to Gordon D’Arcy in showing Manu Tuilagi the outside, which the Samoan-born English player took with ease for the mentally important first blow.
In part mitigation, Ireland probably shouldn’t apply a slightly passive drift defence against Tuilagi, who is far harder to stop once he gets going, and to his credit, Earls twice pushed up harder to tackle the Leicester man before he gathered momentum.
England looked significantly better at scrum time, at outhalf and in midfield than last March. Tuilagi worked well alongside the experienced Mike Tindall, who defended strongly, read the wraparound like an open book when Jonny Sexton brought some variation and a running threat, and also set up Delon Armitage’s try.
England coach Martin Johnson has honed a team very much in his own utterly uncompromising image. Hard-nosed and hard-edged, they run hard and mostly straight, and revel in their hard-man image.
They were also full of nudges and tugs off the ball, repeatedly went off their feet at the breakdown – where Nigel Owens was fairly ineffectual – or came in from the side, and were given impunity by all three officials to pretty much live offside.
One hopes the officiating at the World Cup will be more efficient in these two key areas and, if so, one could see England being whistled off the park.
There were also a couple of awful interventions by Tim Hayes and Romain Poite which accounted for six of England’s points, not to mention Hayes’ call for a knock-on against Paul O’Connell.
That said, save for that spell of nine or 10 phases leading up to the interval, much of Ireland’s clearing out at the breakdown lacked zip and accuracy.
Furthermore, as with talk of injuries and rustiness, all the excuses in the world are undermined by the knowledge that France and England were in similar positions.
Indeed, Tom Palmer having replaced Tom Wood in the match-day squad on Friday, England were then obliged to bring in a player who missed the World Cup cut, Hendre Fourie, to their starting line-up. He replaced Nick Easter, who was withdrawn with a tight calf, with Fourie at openside and James Haskell moving to number eight. They then lost both Fourie and Mark Cueto after the first quarter and, of course, were away from home.
Johnson remained in the away dressingroom to praise his team for the way they reacted to the kind of hitches that will invariably occur in a World Cup scenario. The bottom line is that about 11 of this Irish starting team would be part of a notional first XV to play Australia. On this evidence, that only adds to the sense of alarm.
SCORING SEQUENCE: 5 mins: Tuilagi try, Wilkinson con 0-7; 10 mins: O’Gara pen 3-7; 14 mins: Wilkinson pen 3-10; 22 mins: O’Gara pen 6-10; 26 mins: Wilkinson pen 6-13; 36 mins: O’Gara pen 9-13; (half-time 9-13); 46 mins: Armitage try, Wilkinson con 9-20.
IRELAND: Geordan Murphy (Leicester); Tommy Bowe (Ospreys), Keith Earls (Munster), Gordon D’Arcy (Leinster), Andrew Trimble (Ulster); Ronan O’Gara (Munster), Eoin Reddan (Leinster); Cian Healy (Leinster), Jerry Flannery (Munster), Mike Ross (Leinster), Donncha O’Callaghan (Munster), Paul O’Connell (Munster, capt), Stephen Ferris (Ulster), David Wallace (Munster), Jamie Heaslip (Leinster). Replacements: Denis Leamy (Munster) for Wallace (22 mins), Rory Best (Ulster) for Flannery (50 mins), Conor Murray (Munster) for Reddan, Jonathan Sexton (Leinster) for O’Gara (both 62 mins), Tom Court (Ulster) for Healy (70 mins), Donnacha Ryan (Munster) for Heaslip (70 mins).
ENGLAND: Ben Foden (Northampton Saints); Chris Ashton (Northampton Saints), Manu Tuilagi (Leicester Tigers), Mike Tindall (Gloucester, capt), Mark Cueto (Sale Sharks); Jonny Wilkinson (Toulon), Richard Wigglesworth (Saracens); Andrew Sheridan (Sale Sharks), Steve Thompson (London Wasps), Dan Cole (Leicester Tigers), Louis Deacon (Leicester Tigers), Courtney Lawes (Northampton Saints), Tom Croft (Leicester Tigers), Hendre Fourie (Sale Sharks), James Haskell (Black Rams). Replacements: Tom Palmer (Stade Français) for Fourie, Delon Armitage (London Irish) for Cueto (both 21 mins), Dylan Hartley (Bath) for Thompson (52 mins), Matt Stevens (Saracens) for Sheridan (54 mins), Simon Shaw (Unattached) for Deacon (63 mins), Toby Flood (Leicester Tigers) for Tindal (75 mins).
Referee: Nigel Owens (Wales).
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