What to make of Ireland’s win over France?
Were France poor or Ireland excellent? Will Argentina present an even tougher challenge in the quarter-final? That remains to be seen.
But one truth that should be acknowledged is that in an incredibly bruising contest against a team hell-bent on beating them up, Ireland had the gameplan, the mental strength and the personnel to cope with real adversity.
At half-time, Ireland were 9-6 ahead but had lost Jonathan Sexton and Paul O’Connell. Mentally, any Irish player could have been forgiven for thinking that France had taken a huge step towards winning the game. It would have been very easy for a sense that today just was not Ireland’s day to start spreading through the team.
Instead, we saw the opposite.
Across the board, a whole range of players grabbed the situation and produced their top performance when it counted. Devin Toner, Iain Henderson, Peter O’Mahony, Sean O’Brien, Ian Madigan, Robbie Henshaw and Tommy Bowe were outstanding.
That those on the field adapted to the circumstances and those who came on performed so well is no accident.
Cast your mind back to the evening of 24 November 2013. In the immediate aftermath, it was very hard to see how Ireland could take anything from a desperately disappointing loss to New Zealand. Joe Schmidt, not given to hyperbole, described it as a ‘recurring nightmare’ a few weeks after the game.
Ireland: Mental strength
As a group, Ireland could have been forgiven for thinking they were just not up to it after taking such a heavy blow to the team psyche. Individual players had their own memories to ponder. A box kick that went astray, a missed shot at goal, a late rucking penalty, a missed tackle.
Ian Madigan was one.
Brought on in place of Sexton in the 76th minute, he found himself the last man in the defensive line on the wing during the final sequence of play. As Dane Coles charged towards the tryline with Ryan Crotty just outside, Madigan moved towards Coles but changed his mind mid-stream and went back towards Crotty. In the end was left rooted to the spot between the two. Behind Madigan’s back, Coles offloaded for Crotty to score what would turn out to be the winning try.
At the time it was difficult to see how Ireland could move on positively from such a devastating and sickening defeat. But move on they did, winning the 2014 and 2015 editions of the Six Nations, two November Tests against South Africa and Australia and both legs of a two-match series in Argentina.
One link back to that defeat and Ireland’s victory over France on Sunday is the performance of the Irish bench.
Speaking just over a year ago, Schmidt said that one of the key things learned from the New Zealand defeat was that Ireland had to be better as a squad if they were going to win matches.
In Schmidt’s own words, there was a recognition that Ireland had to be “good enough across 23 players to make sure that we are able to add value rather than plug holes with our bench”.
All coaches preach the squad idea but those words became reality when Madigan and Iain Henderson produced superb performances as unscheduled replacements for Jonathan Sexton and Paul O’Connell.
Part of Madigan’s preparation was his role on the summer Tour to Argentina. Initially left out of the main squad and dispatched to play for Emerging Ireland in Eastern Europe, Paddy Jackson’s back injury reopened the door and the Leinster man rejoined the main squad.
Learning from defeat
He went on to play just shy of 20 minutes in both Tests, landing two key penalties in the first and scoring the match-sealing try in the second. Henderson was also given a central role on the tour, starting the first Test alongside O’Connell and playing 15 minutes of the second.
It became clear on Sunday that all of Ireland’s subs were superbly prepared and well capable of slotting in to a range of positions and playing tough, decisive rugby.
That question mark over the French performance is legitimate, but when they went to muscle Ireland into submission in the first half they did not look like a team performing poorly.
Ultimately, Ireland’s set-piece strength and ability to deny the French useful possession ground them down, but it was only with 15 minutes to go Phillipe Saint-André's men had been turned into a rabble.
It was a superb Irish performance, a victory for squad strength and mental strength. Learning from defeat is easy to talk about, difficult to do.
Schmidt and his Ireland team have finally reaped the rewards of doing exactly that.
