Mick Cleary: Five reasons to be cheerful ahead of another Six Nations weekend
Source: Irish Examiner
Author: Mick Cleary
Ireland have not won a Grand Slam. Or a tournament. Or their next match. You could be excused for heading to the Aviva on Sunday with a calculator in hand to count the chickens in the expectation that they will hatch favourably. But that is not the Andy Farrell way and the Andy Farrell down-to-earth, it ain't over 'til the dame appears to sing her song has stood Ireland in great stead. As we noted before, knockout rugby has its allure but tournament rugby has value too if only because the ride does not finish until the last whistle blows and the deed, for good or for bad, is done.
Of course, fortune favours Ireland with three home games to come, starting with perennial whipping-boys Italy on Sunday. Wales and Scotland follow at the Aviva across the next five weeks but is there ever such a thing as an easy trip to Twickenham? Will France ever be as muted and half-soaked again? Might Scotland have had the shot across the bows that will finally encourage them to get their act together and claim a first ever Six Nations title? And with such a heritage, isn't it only right that the Welsh might dream? It ain't over yet.
2. A new galaxy of stars
The wheel turns, new stars emerge. Step forward and take a bow - Joe McCarthy and Jack Crowley for starters, also five debutants in England colours and some sleight-of-hand and boldness eventually from Wales, a tantalising glimpse perhaps that their transition has legs. There was such a star-studded cast of absentees from the 2024 Championship, from Johnny Sexton to Owen Farrell and on to an entire troupe of Welshmen, that there were concerns that the tournament would lack heft and status. Those fears lasted as long as it took for referee Karl Dickson's first whistle to fade on the Friday night Parisian air with McCarthy and Crowley into the fray within minutes and making their presence felt.
If there is a case study to be done on how perseverance pays off then McCarthy's name should be on the folder. A late developer by comparison with others through the Irish schools system he drew as fulsome a set of reviews for a first appearance in the Championship as many of us can recall and already looks to be nailed-on for a Lions place on the tour to Australia next year. There was one absent friend, however, who was much missed - Antoine Dupont. Clips of his performance for Toulouse on the same weekend, playing as a fly-half would you credit, only served to illustrate that Sevens' gain is the Championship's loss.
3 Home Advantage - is it all it's cracked up to be?
Three matches, three away wins. That's not how it's meant to be, is it? The myth of home advantage has never really made sense in the professional era when athletes are nurtured to within an inch of their lives against all sorts of metrics, practising, in particular, pressurised situations such as playing with 14 men or whatever. Why, then, can't they manage to deal with playing in a stadium away from home? It's not even as if there is an enormous disparity in the amount of fans with generous allocations for the away team. Or, as Munster have long shown and Ireland fans did at the World Cup, where there's a will to attend there's a way to get your hands on tickets by hook or by crook.
None of these stadiums or locations, either, are unfamiliar to the modern pro who is used to travelling for URC and Champions Cup fixtures. Long gone are the days when teams played almost exclusively in their own terrain. Manager Geoff Cooke once confronted the 28-year Cardiff Arms Park hex that that had afflicted England teams (1963-91) by getting 'Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau' played through the Tanoy at Kingsholm (where England were training) and on the bus later as they crossed the Severn Bridge. It did the trick (or maybe it was just that the team contained some of the best players of that entire decade in Jeremy Guscott, Mike Teague, Rory Underwood et al and England won, 25-6. Home advantage ought not to matter. Irish fans will be hoping that it most certainly does, except at Twickenham.
4 - What would Barry John have made of Wales's first-half performance?
It's a mixed feeling when the Greats die, a seemingly, and horribly so, all too recurrent a situation these days with JPR and Barry John passing to leave us all feeling that much more forlorn and emptier. And yet, it also gives rise to a tumult of recollection and sepia-tinted footage, enough to warm the cockles of the stoniest of hearts. In that regard there was a jarring disconnect in the first half at the Principality Stadium last weekend when Wales played anti-BazJohn rugby, all hoof with little hope. It was a rigid, soulless demonstration of rugby by numbers, sticking to a joyless game plan that not only numbed the senses - a criminal charge in its own right - but which played into Scottish hands who took gleeful receipt of such gifts. It prompts the thought - how much do you stick to what the coach has ordained and how much do you play what is in front of you?
Are Ireland not a better team now that they have loosened the Joe Schmidt tactical strait-jacket? Were England not much easier on the eye against Italy (albeit only narrow victors) after they showed some gumption and initiative? And, finally, wouldn't the game itself be much the better if there was a tweak to the laws to prevent all that stultifying kick-tennis with a great mass of players rooted to the spot as the rear-field defenders kick the ball to each other?
5 - Five hopes for the weekend
1- That Italy show the same verve and skill in attack as they did in out-scoring England three to two on the try-count
2- That France rediscover the France that made them such a force to be reckoned with.
3- That Finn Russell has a stormer to counter all that.
4- That England-Wales generates the sort of fierceness and edginess that once made it such a compelling fixture.
5- That the TMO becomes as unnoticed as the best referees have always been.
