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Autopsy of Irish Rugby's February nightmare

Johnny Sexton looks dejected following Ireland's opening round defeat to England in Dublin (Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

It’s curious how Joe Schmidt will seek out the sanctuary of Brexit territory later this week to try and solve the intriguing February problem of his suddenly misfiring Ireland team.  

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A camp in Belfast is the next rendezvous on his squad’s schedule and it will be there, on the other side of a border that has been a crux in agreeing Britain’s exit from the European Union, where he will attempt to rally his troops in the hope they can play their way out of an uncharacteristic performance slump. 

Fourteen weeks after feeling on top of the world following the Dublin ambush of New Zealand, the emotions currently surrounding the Schmidt camp occupy a very different end of the spectrum.

It’s a rare event to see them at this low an ebb, their confidence undermined and their play muddled and inaccurate. The only other occasion during the New Zealander’s 65-match reign where there was a comparable drop-off in levels took place three years ago.

They had a valid excuse back then. Their winless three-game, February 2016 sequence – the first time in the championship since 1998 that they had been winless after three matches – was effectively a World Cup hangover following on from the previous October’s quarter-final elimination versus Argentina. 

(Continue reading below…)
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But this current slump has no similar get-out-of-jail-free card. Ireland came into 2019 at the top of their game, ready to take on all pretenders to their championship throne before taking their good vibes across to the Far East and create history at the next World Cup.

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Their unfolding dose of the yips, though, is a reminder of what can negatively happen when your are reigning Grand Slam champions and feeling so invincible on the back of a multitude of awards and praise. You can quickly lose your way if you’re not careful.

This double tackle by Italy’s Luca Morisi and Maxime Mbanda is typical of the extra attention Johnny Sexton, the 2018 World Player of the Year, has got in 2019 (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

A decade ago, Ireland cruised through 2009 unbeaten in 10 matches but they fell in love with themselves on that back of that success and all the celebrity that came with it. Just five of 11 matches were won the following year, seven of the performances leaving much to be desired.

Staying positive was what pulled Schmidt through his own previous slump, an insipid home draw with Wales followed by ugly losses away to France and England. “Any hesitation at this level is a recipe for disaster,” he said at the time. “We have got to maintain our confidence, keep our heads up, roll our sleeves up and go again… it hasn’t been smooth sailing but that builds a bit of character.”

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Joe Schmidt looked tense before the start in Rome, as if he could sense the struggle that was about to unfold for Ireland against Italy (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

The next few weeks will reveal so much more about the character of Schmidt’s current bunch of players – and even the coach himself. It doesn’t at all tally that a team which stopped the nation with its exploits versus New Zealand can now so quickly appear out of sorts and struggling for form.

If the tumble isn’t rectified in their next outing, the March 10 hosting of France in Dublin, it will be high time to query if Schmidt’s post-New Zealand revelation that he is to quit his Ireland post at the end of the 2019 World Cup has unwittingly had a negative effect on his ability to prise the best from his charges.  

It’s a weird situation for Irish rugby. Not only to have a coach announce his intention to step down 12 months in advance of his exit, but to also nail to the mast who his predecessor will be.

The IRFU’s way had previously been to fire the incumbent and only then recruit a replacement, but we already know well in advance that assistant Andy Farrell will be promoted on this occasion. Has this long-term planning privately rankled with some people and affected performance? It’s a theory that will gain legs if displays don’t quickly get better.

Lacklustre Ireland have yet to really get off the bus in Six Nations 2019 as they are still searching for a big performance (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Sift through the evidence of February’s pedestrian 240 minutes and the main takeaway is that too many of Ireland’s more established players didn’t look their reliable old selves. Rob Kearney, Johnny Sexton, Conor Murray and Sean O’Brien were nowhere near their world-class standards and it had a draining effect. 

Kearney was unable to help better shut the defensive door when the scramble was on to prevent serial losers Italy from scoring two tries in a bizarre five-minute spell in Rome. Sexton and Murray have oozed narkiness with their body language.

Sean O’Brien has struggled to get across the gainline in Six Nations 2019 (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

It’s a deflating mood not help by the increased physical attention the 2018 World Player of the Year has attracted, nor by the scrum-half’s sudden box-kicking inaccuracy and multiple handling errors.

As for O’Brien, he has failed to escape all the wear and tear of too many injuries and he has looked very ordinary. His concession of three penalties in a 12-minute spell invited Italy to fight their way back from a poor start and be ahead by the interval. 

Given the February pattern of underperformance, the worry is that Ireland’s back row has been found out. Against England, Peter O’Mahony and CJ Stander were successful in crossing the gain line on a respective 38% and 36% of their combined total of 19 carries.

Versus Scotland, O’Brien and O’Mahony each had only a 50% success rate for their 27 carries, while over in Rome O’Brien was limited to a 43% success and Jordi Murphy 57% on their 21 carries.  

Maro Itoje celebrates a turnover in an opening round contest where Ireland failed to match England in the collisions at the start of the Six Nations (Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

That is nowhere near a high enough success rate for a back row that appears to be suffering from a selection imbalance, and their lack of dominant physicality is a hugely contributory reason why Ireland’s collective figures for taking possession over the gainline came in at 45% against England, 38% in Scotland and 51% at Italy. 

The impression is that the approach of Schmidt – who showed he is human by getting wrong his selection of Robbie Henshaw to start at full-back against England and Sean Cronin as starting hooker in Italy – is being worked out by the opposition.

It’s as if after burning the midnight oil night after night this winter, rival coaches can now confidently predict what the prime Irish ball carriers will try and do and they have strategised accordingly to limit their influence.

Tadhg Furlong’s look of frustration while seated in the background on a bench where Johnny Sexton receives treatment has been typical of Ireland’s 2019 (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Look, for instance, at Tadhg Furlong’s gainline statistics when carrying the ball a total of 34 times – a massively effective operator throughout 2018, he has only had a 45%, 38% and 51% success rate in his three recent outings which is costly. 

Overall, the team’s all-round ability to secure better go-forward has checked their 2018 swagger, Ireland restricted to just 36% territory in Dublin, and 40% and 47% in Edinburgh and Rome. You can’t create all that much when forced to play so much in your own half. It has to change. 

One of Schmidt’s most repeated sayings during his six-year reign is that ‘nothing is every linear’ and Ireland’s unexpected downward spiral this past month illustrates this precisely.

There are always up and down periods and this particular down, which hasn’t been helped injuries that have placed a question over Ireland’s alleged strength in depth, isn’t a confirmed crisis yet. 

Unlike in 2016, when they were already out of the title race just three games in, they have still wrangled two winning results that keep them in the hunt to retain their hard-won trophy from 2018.

Beat France with an improved display and they can head to Cardiff with their chances still very much alive. That is no bad prospect given the grim spectacles of a best-forgotten February. 

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J
JW 24 minutes ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.


Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.


So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).


You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.


I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?

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f
fl 3 hours ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

"Right, so even if they were the 4 worst teams in Champions Cup, you'd still have them back by default?"

I think (i) this would literally never happen, (ii) it technically couldn't quite happen, given at least 1 team would qualify via the challenge cup, so if the actual worst team in the CC qualified it would have to be because they did really well after being knocked down to the challenge cup.

But the 13th-15th teams could qualify and to be fair I didn't think about this as a possibility. I don't think a team should be able to qualify via the Champions Cup if they finish last in their group.


Overall though I like my idea best because my thinking is, each league should get a few qualification spots, and then the rest of the spots should go to the next best teams who have proven an ability to be competitive in the champions cup. The elite French clubs generally make up the bulk of the semi-final spots, but that doesn't (necessarily) mean that the 5th-8th best French clubs would be competitive in a slimmed down champions cup. The CC is always going to be really great competition from the semis onwards, but the issue is that there are some pretty poor showings in the earlier rounds. Reducing the number of teams would help a little bit, but we could improve things further by (i) ensuring that the on-paper "worst" teams in the competition have a track record of performing well in the CC, and (ii) by incentivising teams to prioritise the competition. Teams that have a chance to win the whole thing will always be incentivised to do that, but my system would incentivise teams with no chance of making the final to at least try to win a few group stage matches.


"I'm afraid to say"

Its christmas time; there's no need to be afraid!

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