Ever since the World Cup came into being in 1987, coaches in the northern hemisphere have been thinking and working overtime to ensure their players are as conditioned and physically fit as can be to compensate for the quadrennial competition arriving so early in their seasons. They’re still trying to crack it.
Back in 2007, there was an overt emphasis on strength and conditioning in the Irish squad, and this was compounded by there only being two warm-up matches – away to Scotland and at home to Italy.
A hastily arranged warm-up match was arranged in Bayonne, thereafter dubbed the Battle of Bayonne as home players looked to leave their imprint on an Irish team who would be pool rivals to France.
The hard-earned win, featuring a broken jaw for Brian O’Driscoll, could not soothe the warning signs evident in a 31-21 loss to Scotland in Murrayfield and a decidedly fortunate 23-20 defeat of Italy in Belfast. And so Ireland’s inglorious and only World Cup pool exit came to pass in France.
Learning from that experience, the IRFU upped Ireland’s warm-up programme to four matches prior to the next three World Cups. The preparatory itinerary was trimmed back to three matches this time around, which must at least be partially due to learning from the mistakes of four years ago.
Hindsight is rarely wrong and so it is that the wisdom of taking on England at Twickenham at effectively the same point as this weekend in Ireland’s build-up to the 2019 World Cup can simply be judged in the context of history. And history is not kind.
Then, as now, Ireland began a four-game schedule of warm-up matches by beating Italy 29-10 a week previously – akin to last Saturday’s 33-17 victory over the Azzurri at the same Aviva Stadium.
With a two-week gap to Ireland’s second warm-up game, similarly the squad went to their base in the Algarve for eight days of hard, warm-weather training, and have done so for six days this past week.
Unlike this week, the media were in attendance then and players and coaches talked of embracing heavy training loads in temperatures around the mid-30s, before a matchday squad took in a diversion to London on the way home two days before a game against England at Twickenham.
“They are probably a little bit ahead of us in terms of their preparation but you want to make sure that you periodise it [timing] right so that we are on an upswing by the time we get to that September 22nd game,” said Joe Schmidt a tad ominously while viewing it in the context of Ireland’s World Cup pool opener against Scotland.
Schmidt made a dozen changes in personnel as the bulk of the team were afforded their seasonal reappearances, with Ross Byrne thrown to the lions on his full Test debut. England had already played two games and were virtually at full strength in front of an 80,000 capacity crowd.
Players have since spoken of their fatigue that weekend, of taking three-hour afternoon sleeps after the Friday captain’s run, and of being weary come matchday. The debilitating effects of warm-weather training were compounded by a scorching matchday in London, with temperatures in the 30s which was in stark contrast to the Baltic St Patrick’s Day of 2018 when Ireland sealed the Grand Slam in temperatures of minus five degrees.
What followed was a horror show. Ireland actually started quite well, Jordan Larmour scoring from a fortuitous bounce of the ball off Jacob Stockdale’s chip ahead, and Byrne settled in well. But thereafter, the Irish lineout came apart and the defence was all at sea, the emphasis on shooting up from the outside undermined by repeatedly losing collisions inside.
England scored eight tries and recorded their largest ever win (57-15) over Ireland in what is now 141 meetings, surpassing the 40-point margin set in 1997. In the coaches’ seats, Schmidt and co looked on more and more forlorn.
“It was a litany of disappointing aspects and uncharacteristic inaccuracy from us today to be honest, that contributed to our own downfall, and we looked dishevelled,” said the Irish head coach.
“We didn’t get our set-piece going, didn’t really scavenge as well as we would have liked. We fell off 34 tackles, 21 in the first half. We were underdone, a bit heavy-legged.
“The players will take responsibility to do everything they can to turn it around next week and build from that, because what really matters is in four weeks’ time, for the World Cup opener against Scotland.”
But that record Twickenham thrashing underlined how more advanced England’s attacking game was.
By contrast, after a build-up that focused heavily on strength and conditioning, the World Cup would demonstrate how Ireland had become overreliant on starter plays, and their phased attack had become neutered, often leaving them no option but to resort to box kicking.
The embarrassing scale of the defeat for such a strong selection reopened the wounds inflicted by in the Six Nations opener at the Aviva the previous February, and ensured the degree of psychological damage was pronounced.
Admittedly, Ireland did overpower Scotland in their opening pool game, before a Johnny Sexton-less side lost to an inspired Japan.
But arguably the mental baggage was most keenly felt in the 46-14 quarter-final thrashing by the All Blacks, with 11 of the same Irish starting line-up and 15 of the matchday 23, in the manner the game again fell away from Ireland quite rapidly.
A week later, in the semi-finals, the bulk of that same English side which hammered Ireland would beat the All Blacks to reach the final.
Talk to most Irish players, never mind supporters, and the abiding memory is of a damaging World Cup build-up. It would probably surprise many to be reminded that Ireland actually won three of their four warm-up games, with a double over a good Welsh side which reached the semi-finals to follow. That is in large part due to the mental scars from that post-Algarve diversion to Twickenham.
Schmidt’s legacy to Leinster and Irish rugby remains immense but even he must have privately admitted that the Twickenham game was a gamble which didn’t pay off.
In mitigation, Ireland needed to hit the ground running against Scotland and were also acutely mindful of the humidity, as much as the heat, to come in Japan.
By contrast, Ireland could hardly have handpicked a schedule comprising Romania first up, followed by Tonga and South Africa a week apart before a helpful two-week gap to the pool finale against Scotland. This decreases the need for a fourth warm-up game.
What’s more, conditions shouldn’t be as debilitating or unusual for what will mostly be 9pm kick-off times on September and October evenings in France.
Hence Andy Farrell, who was the defence coach four years ago, has chosen to sacrifice one warm-up game – effectively that trek to Twickenham this weekend – while allowing the players to recover fully from their Algarve exertions.
Plenty in last week’s performance against Italy also seemed to ratify word from inside the camp that this preseason training programme incorporated much more in the way of rugby-related work. In this too, the squad are being truer to themselves, and adhering to the type of smart and skilful game which will make them best equipped to do something special in this World Cup.
Maybe this time, touch wood, Ireland have finally cracked it.
