Results determine success and failure, albeit with some latitude to seek some mitigation in performance levels. That was my finishing thought last week when discussing the Nations Championship and Ireland’s prospects.
Had Thomas Clarkson been held up over the line against Australia in Sydney, or Bundee Aki’s ruck indiscretion been properly punished by Ben Donaldson’s boot, I would be writing a different column this morning: one about a tiring Ireland, a lineout in disrepair and a young outhalf’s limitations laid bare. It would be a lament.
Ireland won, so instead I get to write about resilience, attitude and the intangible glue that bonds the team. It is important to emphasise how thin the line is between writing those two columns, because the performance was the same either way.
Where do Ireland now stand in the Nations Championship?
A line that my old forwards coach Gert Smal used in the Ireland camp years ago springs to mind. When a part of your game isn’t working – the scrum, the lineout – don’t wait for it to come good. Find another way to win. Ireland won a Test in Sydney on Saturday in which their lineout malfunctioned. They found another way. That is worth more than it looks.
A misfiring set piece is usually a slow death. It takes away a key platform, depowers the attack and it drains belief with every overthrow and every turnover. Ireland lost their first lineout inside three minutes, and Dylan Pietsch was under the sticks before anyone had settled.
The margins at the top of Test rugby are often just that one botched throw, one gap, a wing diving over. Thankfully this match was not decided on an overthrow, but for long stretches the lineout was a recurring problem rather than an occasional one, and yet the scoreboard at the end read 33-31 to the visitors.
Despite the issues out of touch, Ireland found a way to win. That tells you about attitude, about problem-solving under fatigue, about players who trust each other enough to keep playing when the obvious route is shut. You cannot coach that in a week. It is banked over years, and it showed.
What does the win prove and what does it not? Let me be careful here, because I flagged before the Nations Championship that the value would be in the performance and not just the result, and I meant it. I will hold to my words.
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The performance reinforced what we already know Ireland to be: resilient, connected, a group that plays for Andy Farrell and, just as importantly, for each other. When Australia edged back in front, and they did it more than once, there was no visible panic, no fracturing. The response was collective, just as it had been in the tougher moments in the Six Nations, revealing Ireland’s identity.
What it did not do, for the most part, was show us a new Ireland. The attack had its moments, and the best of them was a glimpse of the ceiling. Jamison Gibson-Park’s try on the stroke of halftime was down to instinct and belief, not shape.
There were other flashes of promising interplay, the connected, heads-up rugby that the Ulster influence can bring. But those were the exceptions. Ireland trailed Australia in line-breaks, defenders beaten and offloads, important barometers in today’s attacking currency. In the main Farrell’s side won by being very good at the things at which they are already very good.
That is not a criticism. It is an observation about where this group is on the curve. The evolution I wrote about last week, the willingness to ask whether the attack can grow into something less rigid, will be a longer project than one Test in Sydney.
The foundations are so strong that they will always be the default, and defaults are hard to abandon when you are 11 points down in the second half in someone else’s stadium. You reach for what you trust. Ireland trust their identity, and it did not let them down.
Farrell went with Sam Prendergast where I had leaned towards Ciarán Frawley, and Prendergast repaid the faith in the most literal way; he kicked the winning conversion. He also threw an intercept that cost seven points, which is the kind of moment that gets amplified if the result goes the other way.
On balance, he kept his head above water, and against a Wallabies side in this condition, keeping your head above water is enough to get the job done. But that phrase, enough to get the job done, is the whole point. Australia are a team Ireland can overpower in patches.
Against the sides Ireland cannot get parity with, the sides at the very top, an outhalf’s limitations become more prominent, not less. There is less margin to absorb a costly pass, fewer soft opportunities to make good the deficit. Prendergast did what was required on Saturday.
He will likely get the nod when Ireland face the All Blacks in Eden Park. That will benchmark his progress in this window as well as Ireland’s, as they reconfirmed how they can beat teams ranked below them.
The game between France and New Zealand offered a reminder of where Ireland need to progress over the next 15 months. Individually there were plenty of positives, Stu McCloskey, Jack Conan, Gibson Park and Tadgh Beirne, the latter off the bench.
However, if there was a single performance that stood out, it was that of Hugo Keenan. His first Test in 16 months and he looked as though he had never been away. There is a calm that comes with him, under the high ball, in the backfield, in the decisions he makes about when to counter and when to hold. His two try saving tackles highlighted a quality operator doing his job.
Australia stressed Ireland for large tranches of the game but didn’t have the strength in depth to take it to the final whistle.
So how do we judge this? By the result. Ireland got the job done and took a step closer to a top tier position in the Nations Championship. By the performance, they reaffirmed their strengths and left the bigger questions such as the lineout, the attacking evolution, the outhalf, still open for another week. Both contingencies are true.
But I keep coming back to Smal. Ireland found another way when the obvious one failed them. That habit, more than any single score, is something we should never take for granted. Japan, conquerors of Italy, will pose a different test, but equally worthwhile.
