Aside from questions about Jared Payne’s foot or Johnny Sexton’s general fitness, Ireland having exciting, attacking movers up their sleeve was a common World Cup topic.
Justifiably so. We went into the World Cup as Six Nations champions and Joe Schmidt had a whole pre-season to work with his players.
Surely we would see some dynamic backline moves and plays off attacking set-pieces? It happened at Leinster so it was bound to happen with Ireland?
Unfortunately not. Aside from picking apart the limited Canadians and Romanians, Ireland reverted to the rock ’em, sock ’em approach and used an aerial game to close out tight affairs [Italy and France].
Nothing too groundbreaking during the pool stages but maybe, just maybe, Ireland would cut loose against Argentina. Nope. Instead, we were flat-footed and torn asunder by an Argentinean side determined to win every collision and trust their men out wide.
Heading into the 2016 Six Nations, hopes were high that Ireland would test the waters with a more expansive game-plan. They have not.
Ireland have kicked the ball much less than in 2014 and 2015’s successful campaigns but they remain a team that thrive off cleanly win set pieces. The only problem is, Ireland are not winning anything clean. The scrum was the problem against Wales and France while the lineout faltered against England.
As a result, Ireland are 0 from 3 and have just one point to their name.
Italy and Scotland are up next, however, and Ireland are hoping to show some new pages from the play-book and unload a sense of injustice about chances missed and stringent referees.
At this afternoon’s press briefing at Carton House, Ireland assistant coach Greg Feek told us:
“There is definitely that temptation [to change things up] but, again, we are hungry for that win. We’re hungry to play good rugby and we’re eager to get that win in front of all the loyal supporters we have, and ourselves as a team.
“Trying too much can sometimes be detrimental but we have some good things there that we probably haven’t played with, which we’re excited about too.
“We just haven’t got going. That’s exciting for us as a team, to hopefully have an opportunity to get… We need to get some of those things right and hopefully we will get going this weekend.”
There you have it. Those plays you thought you would see, you might get to see them this Saturday at the Aviva Stadium. Possibly.
Cynics might say too little too late.
However, as Ben Rumson [Lee Marvin] said in Paint Your Wagon, ‘A little taste is better than no taste at all’.
