There was an audible gasp when Joe Schmidt brought up the topic of Ireland’s late arrival to Murrayfield last week.
I know. I was in the room. I was the one that gasped.
Five days on from Ireland’s chastening 27-22 loss to Scotland on the opening day of the Six Nations and here we were talking about team buses, police escorts and 15 minutes that the Irish team will never get back.
For those of you that missed this storm, Ireland got to Murrayfield 15 minutes late after a sufficiently clear route to the stadium was not cleared from the Irish team hotel. They arrived late and their down-to-the-minute preparations were thrown out of whack.
Now, according to former Ireland internationals Donncha O’Callaghan and Kevin McLaughlin, this sort of delay is far from helpful with already taut and pent-up players. “When things get kicked out a little bit,” O’Callaghan told The Hard Yards, “you’re talking about elite sport here, it’s not like small margins don’t count, these are big, big things.”
Just one of many things that went wrong on Saturday https://t.co/mcbY39Uo4d
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) February 6, 2017
Unhelpful and a downright pain? Yes and yes.
However, five days out from that loss to a Scottish team that were far more physical in the opening half and clinical with their chances all game, Ireland are still harking back to that 15 bloody minutes.
Joe Schmidt joked about it post-match, team manager Paul Dean addressed it on Monday, several players have been asked about it [they did not fuel this fire] and, today, Schmidt brought it up.
Following this afternoon’s team announcement for the Italy game, Schmidt was asked about Ireland avoiding another slow start, like the one that saw them 21-5 down after 30 minutes last week. He commented:
“It was incredibly disappointing the way we started last weekend. I don’t think it was apathy, a bit of anxiety at not having the full period to warm up.
“Players get anxious – they are re very routine based and I do think it’s a challenge for a professional player to be adaptable in different circumstances that they can still cope and still start well.
“We were really disappointed with the way we started. They scored three tries in the first 30 minutes. They didn’t score another try after that. I think that reflects what the team is capable of.”
While it is clear Ireland were disrupted by the change to their schedule and Schmidt was far from impressed with it, we should not be talking and typing about this on a Thursday after a Saturday game.
This Ireland team has received a lot of credit over the past nine months for performances in tough conditions against the southern hemisphere giants but the undercurrent of grumbling does the team no favours.
There were refereeing gripes in South Africa, a week-long back-and-forth with the Kiwis after New Zealand avenged their Chicago loss and now reams upon reams of quibbles about those 15 minutes.
The bus!! You'd think Schmidt would be able to have the resilience to deal with a 15 minute delay
— Whiff of Cordite (@WhiffofCordite) February 9, 2017
Schmidt unveils new team bus #TeamOfUs #ITAvIRE pic.twitter.com/EAJ1Sd8WZV
— Ivan (@ivansantry) February 9, 2017
Jeez Ireland, will you stop whingeing about the bloody bus. It's embarrassing
— Tom English (@TEnglishSport) February 7, 2017
The media are not blameless in this imbroglio but it was Schmidt that brought up ‘Late-Gate’ today when it was clearly time to let it go.
One hopes this Saturday’s transport plans have been quadruple and quintuple checked as we can’t take another week of this.
