Theories abound as to whether there were any underlying reasons, or even correctable flaws, that contributed to Ireland’s latest World Cup quarter-final exit, but the outgoing IRFU high-performance director, David Nucifora, was dismissive about the notion that too many key members of the squad were overplayed.
The core of the Irish squad played in all four pool games in a five-week period, as well as the 28-24 loss against New Zealand. It was probably the most heartbreaking of all Ireland’s quarter-final defeats given they had won their previous 17 Tests, were the best team ever sent to a World Cup from this country and were riding an unprecedented wave of public support.
Although the World Cup review is still nearing completion, Nucifora said: “It’s something that we looked at but obviously it was a strategy of ours to be able to do that. We don’t just decide on the day that that’s what we were going to do. We had a plan about how we wanted to go about that. Our players were superbly conditioned and had the ability to cope with the loads that were presented to them.
“Sometimes, having that cohesion in your team and being able to get on a roll like that is really important as well. Sometimes you might make a choice to say: ‘Okay, well, I’ll choose to play a different team’. And other teams made those decisions.
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“But I think we’re really comfortable with the decisions we made around how we used the game time of all of our players, so I don’t think we’d look at that. We certainly don’t look at that as a reason why we lost to New Zealand by a couple of points.”
Nucifora’s review into the 2019 World Cup, which ended in a quarter-final loss by 46-14 to New Zealand, had identified performance anxiety as a contributing factor to the team having come up short of expectations (having also lost to Japan in the pool stages).
However, despite the quarter-final glass ceiling remaining impenetrable, Nucifora also ruled this out as a factor.
“No, not at all. Not at all. I think that you only have to look at the quality of the performances for the 15-16 months leading up in to that. It wasn’t an issue. I mean, it’s a game of rugby and you’ve got four teams at the moment in the world who I think on any given day could beat each other if you played them multiple times.”
Although France pulled away to beat New Zealand by 27-13 on opening night, bearing in mind the subsequent four clashes between the world’s top four were decided by margins of five points, four points and one point (twice), it’s hard to disagree with Nucifora on this.
Highlighting the Ireland-New Zealand quarter-final, he added: “There’s probably two instances in that game where the ball might have bounced differently or we might have made a different decision about a certain time we decided to do something. And that’s probably the difference between winning and losing that game.
“So, I certainly don’t relate that to performance anxiety in any way, shape or form. It’s a high-level international rugby match with fine margins and unfortunately that’s the way that game panned out.”
One underlying flaw in the Irish performances, which went back to the warm-up games, was the lineout. Ireland emerged from the World Cup with their lineout ranked 13th, but Nucifora maintained: “I think it wasn’t a failure, as such, but I think the consistency of the lineout at times proved to be a bit of a challenge for us and we weren’t as consistent as we’d have liked to be.
“I certainly think that, from having this discussion with Paul [O’Connell], the quality of lineout defence in the game is improving and that’s something he’s looking at really closely at the moment.
“As to how do you get ahead of that, it’s like the rest of the game – you get times in the game as it evolves that sometimes attack is miles ahead of defence and then the defensive side of the game catches up.
“Lineout defence at the moment across the game has improved and we’ve got to find a way to be able to improve our lineout attack to be able to get ahead of the game as well.”
Whereas the 2019 World Cup review was completed when Nucifora gave his annual media briefing four years ago, one of the reasons this one has not yet been completed was to allow the players and some staff a complete three-week break after the quarter-final defeat.
“Look, there’s not emotional damage. You get into this business as a player or a coach and you know what you’re signing up for. Was it difficult to accept? Absolutely it was. A lot of people have put everything into this and when you wake up the next morning after the quarter-final and you’re packing your bag to go home, it’s not a very pleasant feeling and you disband as a group. That’s tough.
“People needed space to be able to get over that disappointment. But in saying that, sometimes the best medicine is just to get back involved and get on with it.
“By the time they reassemble for the Six Nations, everyone is well able to get on with things and go forward because the game and these jobs as coaches, it’s unrelenting. It just keeps moving forward and you haven’t got time to wallow in your own self-pity. You’ve just got to get on with it or you do get left behind.
“We’ll come back ready to go and ready to fire in the Six Nations and hopefully we can repeat what we did last year. That’s our aim.”
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