The Aussies kick you while you are up AND when you are down.
Fox Sports Australia are gearing up for another World Cup semi-final and asked two legends of the game to get together for a natter on the current state of affairs.
Two-time World Cup winner Tim Horan interviewed Ireland’s top try-scorer Brian O’Driscoll in London, this week, and asked all about the skills divide between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
Before they switched over to Tim and Brian, however, Rugby HQ host Nick McArdle could not resist a dig or three at the nations watching the semis at home.
“The Southern Hemisphere has clearly stamped its mark as, clearly, the most dominant hemisphere.
“The playoff for fifth at the World Cup is now known as the Six Nations, would you believe?”
So as reigning Six Nations champions, we’re now the fifth best side in the world? Harsh but probably true. Damn you McArdle!
As for O’Driscoll, he harked back to Ireland’s crippling quintet of injury blows [not including suspended Sean O’Brien] but acknowledged Ireland and their European counterparts have a ways to go ahead of the 2019 World Cup.
He commented, “You just get the sense that we’re not playing the same sort of game. When you do play one of the Southern Hemisphere sides, the expansive game and the ball-in-hand is something that is… not alien to us but we’re not up to speed with them yet.
“It tells its own tale that you have four Southern Hemisphere sides in the semi finals for the first time.”
