Evaluate Ireland's progress since RWC 03 - Were we really THAT good?

01-10-2007 10:15am #1

Okay first of all this isnt a sack Eddie/I hate Eddie rant (although I do think he has had his time, 2 RWC's) but more of a look at exactly what we've done since the last World Cup in terms of progression and Ive put a few of my opinions in along with that.

Since RWC 03 (where lets not forget that beating Argentina by one point was the only decent thing we did bar LOSE to an Aussie side that was there for the taking) lets examine how good we have really been..........

Now my chronology is probably all over the place since Im going from memory as google isnt available to em on this computer.

- We won a triple crown in 2004, which we lauded as if we had just won the World Cup, against what can best be described as poor opposition (a Scottish team in chaos, a Welsh team that were building towards playing open rugby but were very light at the back and an English team that was on the decline and over time showed that they were a very poor team)

- We then go down to South Africa full of confidence talking about being "World Class" and we get destroyed....twice.

- Roll on autumn where we beat the Argies in a very tight game and beat SA (who again in the weeks following showed that they hadnt travelled by losing to England) and the USA(?). Impressive enough but no proof so far that we are world beaters.

- We then bottle our "grand slam year" by losing to Benoit Baby (who?) and the Welsh in Cardiff. Poor campaign.

- Not gonna talk about the 2005 summer tour since most of the team were away with the Lions.

- In the winter 2005 we get annihalated by New Zealand and Australia in consecutive weeks, we then put out almost our full team against the mighty Romania instead of developing young talent and face is saved as we beat Romania.

- Then we have our next crack at a 6 nations and again we win a momentus triple crown! In the game against England we get out of jail as a crosskick to Cueto is judged to be offside when replays show it wasnt and thus we win our triple crown. But again we fall short of winning a Championship.

- That summer we go to New Zealand and while giving a good account of ourselves we lose both tests (not a reason to be depressed as its known as the hardest place to get a win) and then go out the following week with nothing left for Australia and get tooled.

- So along comes the Autumn and we go out and beat the South African C's and and Aussie side that while personnell wise is strong-ish, is oplayin a lot of players out of position as an experiment. A win over the Pacific Islanders says goodbye to Lansdowne Road and hello to the optimism that has carried into this tournament. No complaints, you can only beat whats put in front of you but maybe we should have been more cautious about gettng carried away.

- The 6 nations yet again sees a Triple Crown which of course means yet again we cant seem to beat the French. Although we can count ourselves unlucky we started incredibly slow and were lucky to even be in the game after 20 minutes. The win against England was impressive but the English were hugely intimidated and were beaten before they stepped onto the pitch. Our performance in Rome was impressive except for a few cases of poor decision making when we leaked the try at the end.

Since then we all know what happened.

Now in my eyes there were a couple of glaring and unforgivable mistakes. The main one was to nt use at least one of these seasons to bring in new talent, give them a run, and I mean full games, not 5 minutes at the end here and there, lose a few games but give them big game experience so as to have more that 15 players capabale of wearin the jersey come the WC. Look what happened, we ironically harp on about "If O'Gara and a few others stay fit we have a great chance" and as it turns out, his inability to perform along with our complete lack of someone else to cover his position even half as capably leave us banjaxed.

So my question is.........is our record in the past 4 years really good enough to merit Eddie staying on?

All of these triple crowns to me signify one thing and that is our absolute inability to beat the French and/or win on the bigger stage in general.

LuckyLloyd · 01-10-2007 10:57am

Well, the key of it all for me is the performances away in New Zealand 15 months ago. We SHOULD have won the first test. And we stood toe to toe for the first hour of the second. There was a lot of positives from the performances in those games - and the performance levels reached on that tour were not even approached in this world cup.

Where a reality check should have come is with regards to our record against England (four straight six nations wins). They have been in disarray for the past four years. They took too long to clear out some of the heroes from 2003; and they have been playing everyone and their brother over the past two and half years. The South Africa hammering they received in their first game should really put the Croke Park win last February into some perspective.

So, maybe we were kidding ourselves if we thought we could win this thing. But struggling against a second string Georgian team? Getting deservedly beaten by Argentina yesterday? To not escape our group while playing as poorly as we did is miles below what this team was capable of. If it were a case that the team was performing - and just lost out - it would be easier to take. Instead, the last two months have left a bitter taste in the mouth.

Stev_o · 01-10-2007 4:58pm

Well consider this in 2003 RWC

We again were given a group like the one we were in for 2007

Australia
Argentina
Ireland
Namibia
Romania

Now if boards members memory can stretch back that far after so many pints you can remember that we put it up to the Aussies just loosing by a point in the end and got into a titanic battle with the Pumas and managed to win by a point

We then brushed aside the two minows with ease

Went in against France who took us for a spin around the park by putting 40 plus points on us before the 2nd half even begun

BUT at least we decided to keep playing and played our way pack using the traditional Ireland spirit.

Now this year was a bitter bitter disappointment. My problem with the packs manily lies with the fact that our only back move was 10 skip pass to 13 when we KNOW we have one of the BEST 12's in the world.

Darcy who has ALWAYS [metaphorically of course] gotten pass the gain line has in total of this world cup seen 10 balls come his way and when they have they are flat and he's basically told to do a crash ball, he gets nailed by two players because O Gara is too lazy to draw a man.

Ulstermell0 · 01-10-2007 6:45pm

definitely a distinct lack of backs moves. but what else was there? forgetting all the crap off the pitch what did we do so badly on it?

i think i saw a few things:

4-8 not breaking the gain line on crash balls.

1-8 moving slowly to action areas resulting in slow ball/turnovers (esp against the 'minnows')

backs playing with a lack of flair or confidence.

there really seemed to be a total lack of passion. im just gutted, i'll be thirty by the time the next worl cup kicks off - it seems like miles away (sorry to you older ones!)

TheJesusWarrant · 01-10-2007 8:17pm

I'm starting to wonder if we're heading for the wooden spoon in next year's 6n. What games can we really expect to win the way we're going? Italy maybe, but even that game's not a certainty.

terry mac · 01-10-2007 10:06pm

Stev_o wrote:

Now this year was a bitter bitter disappointment. My problem with the packs manily lies with the fact that our only back move was 10 skip pass to 13 when we KNOW we have one of the BEST 12's in the world.

Darcy who has ALWAYS [metaphorically of course] gotten pass the gain line has in total of this world cup seen 10 balls come his way and when they have they are flat and he's basically told to do a crash ball, he gets nailed by two players because O Gara is too lazy to draw a man.

I thought plenty of balls went to Darcy and he did nothing with them. We probably would have been better with David Wallace at 1st centre, Darcy didn't have time to do anything with the ball and ended up getting smothered in contact, but he wasn't even going forward with any great momentum so just ended up as messy ruckball the whole time-> turnover or Irish possesion 20 yards behind the gain line. I'm not overtly laying blame on him or O'Gara - I don't know why he used to be able to break the line from 12 but for some reason it just didn't happen for him (who did it happen for)...

Evaluate Ireland's progress since RWC 03 - Were we really THAT good?

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