Rugby balls

You can draw an awful lot of conclusions from Ireland’s recent 54-10 massacre of Wales at Lansdowne Road, but the idea of Eddie O’Sullivan suddenly having a Triple Crown-winning side on his hands should not be one of them.

At the final whistle, Foul Play eschewed the satisfied crowing of George Hook and Brent Pope (or, as his own accent would have it, Brint Pipe) on RTE, and instead turned over to the BBC, where Jonathan Davies was being invited to share his thoughts on the matter with the rest of us.

As the camera cut to Davies, one of the few truly great players that Welsh rugby has produced since the 1970s, his facial expression was that of a man who had just walked in on an unsightly living-room tableau involving his teenage daughter, the local dope dealer, several household appliances and a couple of Friesian heifers.

It can’t have been too enjoyable for Davies, a guy who routinely beat defenders for fun and represented his country with considerable distinction at both of the oval-ball codes, to sit and watch a performance like the one turned in by his compatriots in Dublin.

When we peruse the bald statistic that Wales did not once get inside the Irish 22 in the entire first half, we are only starting to address the serial incompetence, spiritless blundering and unforgivable lack of effort that permeated their performance.

Only the scrum-half Rob Howley, as usual, looked as though he could be bothered. Meanwhile, the increasingly gormless Iestyn Harris, poached last year from rugby league at great expense, died the most public of deaths at number 12.

Wales fired their coach, Graham Henry, four days later, at a cost of around £100,000 (to buy out the rest of the autocratic New Zealander’s lucrative contract). All in all, they have become permanent residents of Shit Street, as my old man used to say.

This should preclude Irish fans from the dangers of reading too much into this most facile of victories. Indeed, I suspect I am on safe ground in asserting that while the majority of us are glad to see a winning Irish side, the majority of the majority don’t really give that much of a fuck.

For most of us, the sight of Ireland doing nicely is a mildly edifying one, but nothing more, and if they slip back into their old ways, well, we’ll live, basically.

Declan Lynch, the erstwhile PP of this parish, has similar views on this one. Declan was often heard to remark that on those rare occasions when Ireland won a match in the Five Nations (as was) or the Rugby World Cup, as an Irishman, he was happy.

On the other hand, whenever Ireland received an embarrassing 30-point trouncing from better and more motivated opponents, he would surmise that this would lead to the massed ranks of drink-swilling, blazered IRFU types experiencing intense feelings of misery and despair.

Which, of course, is a state of affairs to be hankered after by all right-thinking people, and therefore equally desirable if not more so.

So, to follow the Irish rugby team with a cynical disposition is to be in a situation where you can’t really lose, whatever happens. On the occasions when the team triumphs over England, or rustles up the bi-annual win in Cardiff, there is an undeniable patriotic kick to be had, of course; and whenever they get turned over by Tonga or Italy, you can have a damn good laugh at the preposterousness of it all.

The fact that this season, the games against England and France are away ones, will probably put paid to any nascent hopes of a Grand Slam. Still, though, Ireland are in way better shape than any of the other sides, particularly the Welsh, who have a game at Twickenham coming up in a month or so. That will most definitely be one for rugby’s own Chamber of Horrors.

Speaking of England, there are signs that the white-shirted ones, who are the bookies’ favourites as usual, are perhaps not taking the tournament quite as seriously as they might otherwise be.

With a full twenty minutes remaining of the

normally full-blooded Calcutta Cup encounter against Scotland at Murrayfield, they brought on a replacement scrum-half, the debutant Nick Duncombe, who looked about a decade short of the minimum age required to order a legal drink.

The commentators then revealed that Duncombe had overcome the not inconsiderable hassle of a broken neck a couple of years ago to resume his rugby career, and that he had played only three and a half games for Harlequins before Clive Woodward “fast-tracked” him into the England squad.

Three and a half matches, eh? Presumably the broken neck stopped him getting into the team any earlier.