Must Try Harder

So, fuck it, no Triple Crown after all, never mind a second straight Slam. Clearly, we aren’t half as great a rugby outfit as we’d thought. OK, so you wouldn’t dismiss the year’s Six Nations campaign as an abject failure — we did, after all, finish second in the competition — but it couldn’t have ended on a more dispiriting note.

I have been saying all season that the Scots are on the verge of becoming a proper force again (it became a bit harder to argue the case with conviction when they lost to Italy), but I certainly didn’t see this one coming, and I’d seriously doubt whether there was a single person anywhere in Ireland who honestly expected us to lose. If there’s any positive to be taken from the Scots debacle, it should at least restore some sense of perspective, remind us of our traditional place in the global pecking order, and encourage us to be a bit less loose-lipped in speaking of winning next year’s World Cup.
The bloodbath in Paris had already demonstrated our inadequacies in painful detail, but had been swiftly dismissed as a freakish blip, a bad day at the office rather than any indicator of more serious structural problems. And there’s no doubt that we’d begun to take success for granted — intoxicated by the unbeatable buzz of Grand Slam glory in 2009, a disturbing number of Irish fans had begun to view the Triple Crown as a piddling consolation prize, almost beneath us, a bit like those Man U devotees who state in all seriousness — without even meaning to sound obnoxious — that they weren’t happy with last season because the only thing they won was the Premiership. And in truth, the psychological reward we derive from winning is directly related to its rarity value. In 2000, beating anyone at all was cause for celebration. Scotland were seen at the time as a fairly major scalp. Beating them seven times in a row made them seem something less than a major scalp – in fact, you sub-consciously begin to dismiss the possibility that they’ll ever cause Ireland any problems ever again. Thus, the joust at Croker was universally seen as a formality rather than a genuine sporting contest – until it got underway, that is, and it gradually dawned on us that this would be bloody hard work.
The fact is, success does become less special the more often you experience it. It’s not unlike the alcoholic or junkie or compulsive gambler or chronic sex addict who finds he needs to keep ‘upping the dose’ in order to attain the same hit. It’s doubtful that too many Kilkenny fans dance in the streets these days at winning Leinster titles. Privately, some of them must surely be almost sick that it’s become a habit. And the Triple Crown — which had eluded Ireland between 1985 and 2004, a not inconsiderable stretch of time — had begun to assume the same diminished status. Like, what’s the big deal? Which is a dangerous mindset to have.
If I may digress for a moment, because it is germane, the real essence of Kilkenny’s greatness is their humility, or what Brian Cody calls ‘the elimination of ego’ — the way they treat every single minute of every single match in the same merciless manner, as if they were underdogs fighting for their lives, whether they’re genuinely up against it or 20-odd points ahead. They understand instinctively that to slacken off at any stage is in fact deeply patronising towards the opposition. The way they came through the fire in the last ten minutes of last year’s All-Ireland final — rattling off two goals in the space of a few minutes when it actually appeared they might be beaten for the first time in living memory — was stunning indeed, but it wasn’t essentially any different from what they do game-in game-out against the Wexfords and Offalys of this world when the margin for error is considerably larger. Every single sports team, in every code, would do well to take them as the template for excellence.
I am not alleging that complacency was the root cause of Ireland’s downfall against Scotland — Declan Kidney certainly wouldn’t have approached the encounter with anything less than due diligence — but the point is, having made a habit of eating the Scots for breakfast, the players must at some level have felt this was an occasion where something less than perfection would probably be good enough, that there was plenty of margin for error. And the error count was pretty shocking, right from the off. Johnny Sexton, having been burdened with the curse of Foul Play’s enthusiastic endorsement, has not had the best couple of weeks. Consistently impressive with ball in hand, his sloppy place-kicking has nonetheless started to assume the dimensions of a national crisis. Whereas the likes of O’Gara or Wilkinson clearly approach place-kicks in a measured, thoughtful manner which bespeaks some degree of scientific research into the precise demands of the task, Sexton’s run-up looks casual, rushed, a case of let’s just kick it and hope for the best. There was one penalty on Saturday where I had to look carefully to make sure his eyes were actually open.
Fact is, I don’t think there’s too much wrong with the team, and while the Southern Hemisphere dreadnoughts may not exactly be quaking in their boots at the thought of facing us, they will be well aware of what we’re capable of when firing on all cylinders. The biggest area of concern is the scrum. As John Hayes nears his 100th birthday, the great man is displaying signs of wear and tear, neither Tony Buckley or Tom Court seems ready to step in, Cian Healy has a tendency to fall foul of referees, the ferocious Jerry Flannery is injured more often than would be ideal, and Rory Best can look seriously sub-ordinary on his bad days.
More disturbing still is the thought of what might happen if Brian O’Driscoll were to be rendered unavailable for any reason (though you suspect being run over by a bus, pumped full of bullets and dumped in a river still wouldn’t be enough to stop him putting in a savage performance in every single game).
The thing is, it’s all potentially reparable, and we’re still in a position that would have seemed unimaginably healthy ten years ago. The Welsh, Scots and English would undoubtedly trade places with us in a heartbeat if given the chance, and the reality-check of two fairly gut-wrenching defeats shouldn’t obscure all the good things about this team. We have the best centre in the world, a pretty immense back row and second row, a pair of gifted out-halves and a surplus of serious ammunition in the backs. And the coaching team is none too shabby either, so it’s hardly fanciful to suggest that vital lessons will be learned from the areas that malfunctioned during this campaign, and constructive solutions put in place. A wretched World Cup in 2007, followed by an equally underwhelming Six Nations, led to almighty soul-searching and heated state-of-the-nation inquests: within twelve months, we were celebrating a Grand Slam. Who would back against us winning another one next year, with France having to visit us as opposed to the other way round?
In the immortal words of, erm, Journey: don’t stop believing.