In the most maligned national team stakes, our men’s footballers and women’s rugby XV have probably been neck and neck at the top of the leaderboard the last while, so an afternoon that had both of them on our screens, one after the other, was a trepidation-overload. Cushions to shelter behind and flasks full of chamomile tea at the ready.
Lindsay Peat and Ciara Griffin were Nervous Nellies themselves in advance of the Six Nations opener away to France, a year after Ireland lost 53-3 to the same opposition on home soil en route to that wooden spoon. So the fear was that these 80 minutes in Le Mans would feel like 24 hours.
Peat, it should be said, did nothing to calm the nerves by pointing to the size of some of the French players, a number of them on the highly lofty and athletic side. “Madoussou Fall is 6ft 2in — I’d rather tackle a bus than her, to be honest with you.”
And the clock had barely passed the two-minute mark when Ireland opted to refrain from any tackling at all as France went over for their first try, the groans out of Hugh Cahill and Fiona Coghlan suggesting that they’d settle for 53-3 there and then.
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But. And it’s a reasonably sized one. “We’re not going to go all completely smiley-faced optimistic on it, but that’s a huge improvement,” said Daire O’Brien at half-time, 17-3 the deficit. Peat and Griffin agreed.
That 3-17 was a huge improvement says something of the misery of the last campaign, but there was a gutsiness about this showing against a much superior side, as evidenced by those 119 first-half Irish tackles: 119! Fire restored to bellies. That’s a start.
“Limitations in attack, for sure,” added O’Brien, but two second-half Irish tries were just one less than they managed in all of last year’s campaign, their final points tally of 17 just eight short of their entire yield over those five games. Granted, France put 37 past them, but you’d take any gain, no matter how, eh, marginal.
“A marked improvement on last year,” said Griffin. “Rome can’t be built in a day,” said Peat. “We’re not the silver linings department,” said O’Brien, for fear we’d be too content with another trouncing. And Peat conceded that a complacent France didn’t even get out of third gear, so there was that.
But? “I’ve got a warm fuzzy feeling compared to last year, which is a bit fluffy,” she said. “Last year was like coming out from watching a horror film, this year you’re coming out from watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory … there’s a bit of hope.”
Would John O’Shea’s charges give us the same warm Willy Wonka fluffy fuzzy feeling? Well, they kind of did, yeah.
Granted, Belgium were without a few promising youngsters, like Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku, so we shouldn’t go all completely smiley-faced optimistic on it. But if the FAI’s interminable search for a permanent successor to Stephen Kenny, which thus far has seen everyone but your plumber and milkman linked to the job, fails to unearth anyone, then give it to Sheasie.
True, Mick McCarthy and Gary Breen stopped a bit short of endorsing him for the permanent gig, his coaching CV being a touch on the limited side thus far, but they were well impressed with his interim debut.
“All round, a very good performance,” said McCarthy. “I felt the shape of the team was absolutely brilliant.” And like Breen he swooned over Sammie Szmodics’ debut, very much liking the look of that Irish attack, with Szmodics and Chiedozie Ogbene, and later Mikey Johnston, supplying the bullets for Evan Ferguson. The missed penalty, though. As Virgin Media’s caption put it, “Evan help us”.
McCarthy, lest we forget, is between jobs, so it’s not like he’d be new to the gig. Brian Kerr is available too, among the highlights of the night the whooping cheers that filled the ground whenever his face popped up on the big screens. But your plumber and milkman are probably up for the job too, so we’ll just have to wait for that white smoke to billow out of the Abbotstown chimneys.
So, a trepidation overload of a Saturday didn’t end too badly at all. But what was that old slogan again? “A lot done. More to do.”
