Ireland’s second try was the essence of the new out-half: bold; spunky. When the ball reached Jack Crowley inside the France 22 Irish players were lined up behind him. The simple pass was obvious. Would Ireland have scored from a safe play? Maybe. Crowley wasn’t prepared to take that chance. So, he took a risk.
He took the ball flat and paused for just long enough to fix two French defenders. As soon as the ball left his hands he knew he would be clobbered but by delaying for that moment he made a hole for a runner on a short line. If Tadhg Beirne didn’t read it, there was no score. Crowley trusted in the risk. Boom.
On opening night in this Six Nations there were bound to be nerves. Crowley’s decision-making was sometimes clouded and sometimes impetuous; his execution was scratchy once or twice. None of that mattered. Everything about this game was a gut-check. He glided above his mistakes. He looked like a Test player.
In his pre-tournament interview Crowley addressed the unavoidable Johnny Sexton comparisons with a playful line. “You can critique it and pick it apart and let me know,” he said to the rugby reporters, sticking out his chin for their best shot, and sticking out his chest too.”
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What did we expect? How much do you remember? On Sexton’s first start in the Six Nations against England at Twickenham in 2010 he missed four kicks at goal. Ten years earlier, on his Six Nations debut against Scotland at Lansdowne Road, Ronan O’Gara flapped for half an hour. “I couldn’t control my nerves,” he wrote later. “I couldn’t control my emotions. I was panicky. Jerky. Nervous. Unstable.”
There are elements of O’Gara’s bloody-mindedness in Crowley. For longer than he would have liked Crowley was stuck in a queue at Munster: take a ticket, have a seat. O’Gara tried to lure him to La Rochelle; he stayed put. Finding a path to here was the only thing on his mind.
Ireland were smart. They eased him into the game, deliberately. In some of the early phases he wasn’t the first receiver. In the opening 20 minutes he took just one relieving kick from inside the Irish 22; James Lowe was lined up for all the others.
But once the game settled down Crowley wasn’t afraid to take a chance and fail. He played a clunky grubber 10 metres from the French line that was over-hit and probably wasn’t the percentage play. He tried a cross field kick into the corner, on the run, into a shirt pocket of space when there were green jerseys outside; the ball went out on the full. Wrong option. Pushing too hard. Next.
What Crowley has, though, is temperament. The Stade Velodrome is a breathtaking place. Each stand climbs like a cliff face. Before the start, the crowd was whipped into a frenzy of noise. A countdown clock filled the giant screen in the corner, each second ticked off with a roar. The referee blew his whistle and Crowley took his time. He had been standing on the half-way line for more than 30 seconds, ready and waiting. And then he took two more bounces of the ball, as if he remembered to take a deep breath.
How Crowley absorbed his cock-ups was always going to define his performance. His first kick in open play was charged down, but his distribution was terrific and with each pass his influence grew. The worry for a greenhorn out-half coming to a place like this was the prospect of floundering behind a back-pedalling back. That didn’t materialise.
Ireland’s numerical advantage for nearly two-thirds of the match was a comfort, but even before France were reduced to 14 men, Ireland had created a platform for Crowley. As the game wore on, his influence grew.
His touch-finders were consistently superb, and even though he missed a straightforward kick from in front of the posts mid-way through the first half, he recovered with a pair of magnificent touchline conversions when Ireland built a game-winning lead in the third quarter. By the end, he had landed six kicks from seven attempts.
There had been so much talk about Crowley in the build-up that some shade was thrown on the other players making their first start in the Six Nations. For the record, Joe McCarthy and Calvin Nash were terrific.
When Nash was picked ahead Jordan Larmour and Jacob Stockdale there was a sense of first among equals. None of them stood head and shoulders above the others. Nash, though, filled the jersey. France kicked to him repeatedly in the first half and his handling was impeccable. He carry with power and aggression and deserved his try.
For McCarthy, this is surely the start of a long career in green. Ireland needed power and abrasiveness on both sides of the ball against this huge French pack and McCarthy delivered it in spades. There’s an edge to his play that Ireland have lacked in the second row. No longer.
For Ireland, this is the start of something. Another start. Imagine.
