by Brendan Cole
Does anyone really know what went wrong for Ireland at the Rugby World Cup? Probably not. Up to now, appearances in the media by the main participants in the drama have generally been uninformative and, while there are countless individual renditions of the debacle, there has as yet been no definitive account of what went wrong or why.
After IRFU Chief Executive Philip Browne’s Monday evening commentary on the Genesis report delivered to the Irish Rugby Football Union, that is still the case.
That is not because the players and management have been dishonest or sought to cover anything up; they really do not know exactly why things went as badly as they did. But at all levels from the IRFU down, there seems to be a reluctance to look at the deeper problems in the game.
Partly as a result of this, the self-doubt that has surrounded Irish rugby ever since the RWC 2007 warm-ups against Scotland, Italy and Bayonne has not yet dissipated. Even the players must wonder on some level whether this Ireland will ever again play as well as we thought it could.
Ireland: a shockingly quick drop
Looking back, Ireland's transition from being a strong, confident team with an aura that suggested they might just beat the world to one shrouded in a thick and stagnant fog of ineptitude happened with shocking speed.
The bare facts of the tournament are that Ireland struggled against Pool D minnows Namibia and Georgia, before going down tamely against both fellow 'big guns' France and Argentina, crashing out of a tournament they at one point were third favourites to win.
At the time, Ireland’s match fitness and conditioning, the form of certain players - mainly the out-half Ronan O’Gara, but also some of the key forwards - and the coach’s intransigence in team selection were picked out as being among the key reasons for Ireland’s disastrous drop in level in the tournament.
A 'complex mix' of reasons for Ireland's failure?
It is against this backdrop that Browne’s response to the Genesis Report spoke of a ‘complex mix’ of reasons for the failure. But how likely is it that a ‘complex mix’ of reasons caused Ireland’s RWC collapse? That depends on your individual view of groups of events and how and why they occur.
It is at least possible that while that underneath the ‘complex mix’ of factors described by Genesis lie a small number of individual reasons. The Genesis report does not, as far as we now, unravel this mix sufficiently to isolate any single factors that led to what was a shocking performance by Ireland relative to their peers. That is, perhaps, not surprising, as to do so would have led the report in the direction of the decisions and assumptions - and the decision makers - that ultimately caused the debacle.
A clear distinction must be made between the failures at the Rugby World Cup and in the period immediately prior – the individual bad plays, the failed line-outs and back moves, the poor 80-minute performances, the wrongly selected teams - and the creation of the conditions in which those failures took place. Although some mention is made of the conditions in which Ireland operated, Genesis does not appear to have gotten to grips with the latter in any substantive way.
Specific mistakes at specific stages?
Alluding to a ‘complex mix’ of reasons seeks to elide the key point that specific mistakes were made at specific stages because the people in charge had collectively arrived upon a set of very wrong ideas. In this respect, it is correct to call the report a 'whitewash'.
At IRFU level, one such mistake was the appointment of O’Sullivan for a four-year term prior to the Rugby World Cup. This is not because O’Sullivan was necessarily the wrong man for the job either now or then, but rather because it sent exactly the wrong message to this squad. Nobody else did it. Could this have played a part in creating a culture in the squad where performance became totally unrelated to consequence?
In any case, that decision, taken by an IRFU committee, showed a complete lack of understanding of basic psychology. This is not second guessing as: ‘Supernanny’ could have told them it was a bad idea to give out the reward before the task had been completed satisfactorily.
The other chicken to come home to roost at RWC 2007 was O’Sullivan’s idea of creating an elite 15-man team instead of using his squad. This is what led to the psychological fracturing of the squad into two halves. It also went completely against the tide in terms of what other teams - where squad unity and inter-changeability were the watchwords - were doing.
Official reason is nothing new:
The ‘lack of match practice’ argument at the heart of the Genesis Report has effectively been O’Sullivan’s take on why Ireland were sunk from very early on. In fact, this underpinned his team selection for the Georgia game. Rather than alter a team that had bombed against Namibia, O'Sullivan selected the same XV in the hope that they would 'gel'. It didn't work.
Genesis does not appear to address the issue of why, once Ireland began to under-perform, steps were not taken by Eddie O’Sullivan to address that situation.
An opposite case would be England, who began at least as badly as Ireland but reversed their form – and their team selection - to the extent that they were able to generate enough momentum for a run to the final. England may have been fortunate in the opposition they faced, but the Irish coach cannot realistically claim to have lacked the ammunition to beat the current Argentina side.
The IRFU response also points to the failure of the provincial supply line as one reason for the disaster in France.
Out-half: no back up for O'Gara
At out-half, that situation came about because of a failure to create options in the out-half position since David Humphreys' international retirement. Partly, that has to do with O’Sullivan’s preference for players that are playing first-team rugby for Irish provinces. This is a small group, particularly at 10.
Others, meanwhile, were happy to use ‘second-string’ players. France, for example, arguably brought not one but two ‘second-string’ out-halfs from Stade Francais in Lionel Beauxis and David Skrela. Skrela, once he played badly, was summarily dropped for the inexperienced Beauxis.
It is no surprise that the player whose form suffered the biggest drop at France 2007 – Ronan O’Gara – was also the most isolated in terms of being understudied. Across the squad the big players, the 'untouchables' seemed to suffer most.
From O’Sullivan’s perspective, his job is to not only worry about the supply line, but also to ensure that players believe they are droppable; that their performance matters.
Wrong ideas led to failure of long-standing polices:
This inept setting up of the conditions in which Ireland’s RWC 2007 took place, rather than a simple lack of match practice, is the central fault from which the rest emanated, and rather then being a mistake of a short-term nature, it was the result of long-standing policies based on wrong ideas.
O'Sullvian may cite a lack of options, but he should patently have been far more creative and open minded in how he sought to build his squad. Instead of believing in a divide between journeymen and undroppable 'supermen' he had played a role in creating, he should have used recent performances as his guide to picking his squad. In future, rather than obstinately shutting oout certain players, Ireland need to open their eyes to diverse possibilities and creative solutions.
Again, France are a good example of how it should be done. Rather then go for a player plying his trade in their domestic league, they selected Sebastian Chabal of Sale Sharks, who, along with Freddie Michalak, was the author of a game-changing intervention against New Zealand.
'Improved alignment': a problem waiting to manifest itself?
If RWC 2007 proved anything it is that Ireland cannot continue selecting the majority of its players from two-and-a-half professional teams.
This is – in the plans to create an 'improved alignment' - where the Genesis Report potentially contains the seeds of a dreadful future for Irish rugby, opening up an awful vista of squads made up entirely of Irish players scoring occasional one-off victories in Europe while the national side nab the odd Triple Crown.
Strategic goals: are they compatible?
For the record, the strategic goals as detalied inBrowne's response to Genesis are:
"1) Review Ireland's overall policy in relation to the Professional Game, clarifying the priorities and strategic goals as between the Provincial teams and the National team with a view to achieve improved alignment.
"2) The development of a performance model and specific action plan to build a far greater critical mass of international standard players competing for places in every position on the Irish Team.
"3) Identify routes to increase the opportunities for emerging players to perform competitively in an elite environment on a continuous basis."
Clearly, numbers two and three are at odds with number one, which hints at an increased control of the provinces from on high, with a view to developing options for the coach from there.
Are imports holding Irish players back?
It is obvious that rather than attempting to manufacture three player supply lines for each position at provincial level – as ‘greater alignment’ implies - the Union should be trying to create a situation in which the provinces are as strong as or stronger than most national sides. That is the situation in European football at the top level; it will soon be the situation in France and England and it is the necessary future for any rugby nation that is, like Ireland are now, seeking to avoid becoming an irrelevance.
It is already the case that players such as Mick O’Driscoll, Shane Jennings and Leo Cullen - who have spent time in France in the first case and England in the second two - are the best argument in favour of opening up Irish rugby to outsiders and in turn using other European countries to test, improve and ‘upgrade’ players.
In the future, rather than create a small corral of favoured sons to transform into 'supermen', it should be the Ireland coach’s job to pick the best available – from wherever they ply their trade – and mould them quickly into a unit capable of winning matches. In that respect, Argentina are a fantastic example of how things should be.
Long-term and short-term: both bleak
Unfortunately, the post-RWC landscape seems to indicate that this is unlikely to happen anytime soon. In the short-term, a lot will be revealed when O'Sullivan picks his first squad since the RWC on Friday. It is unlikely that - for example - Bob Casey of London Irish will be holding his breath.
Looking at the broader picture, because the Genesis Report looks back and mis-diagnoses the deeper reasons for Ireland's RWC failure, it is not surprising that the solutions it poses are likely to hinder Irish rugby rather than drive it forward. Ultimately, that is a pity for Ireland's fans, and a tragedy for the players, whose careers it is that ultimately being mis-managed.
