KILLINAN END - Anti-post Paris trip pays off

During the first lockdown three years ago, a tentative deposit on a trip the Rugby World Cup seemed a long-term bet that could go either way rather than a definite one for the calendar. At times it seemed the day would never arrive. Last Saturday night in Stade de France it was a pleasure to be among the vast numbers of Irish who witnessed an historic win. Leaving aside the significance of the game for the actual group it was a measure of Andy Farrell’s team at a new level. This is a team who has literally beaten all-comers, but to beat the World champions in a tight World Cup game where they were battered for long periods, was indeed a new benchmark.

Ireland, of course, are cursed by the draw, an issue that dogs all competitions to some degree. We see it in soft focus in the hurling championship where there is a clear discrepancy between the Munster and Leinster championships which creates a built-in embedded advantage. This is what makes Limerick’s achievements all the more impressive. You’ll always have those who’ll say, ‘you have to beat them all anyway’. Actually, you don’t. South Africa won the 2007 World Cup in France without having to play any team from the top 5 ranked teams in the world. There is such a thing as a good draw and a bad draw. Ireland, unequivocally, has the latter in this tournament. New Zealand in a quarter-final is not a great reward for beating South Africa.

Ireland, however, ticks the box of another of the great lines that covers many sports – offence win matches, defence win championships. Some twenty minutes into the game Ireland were on the rack with line-out and scrum malfunctioning. Yet they were just 3-0 down to a team which relished the way the game was unfolding. A South African beside me was going full Springbok every time there was a scrum. He celebrated a successful scrum like a score.

The story is told of a telegram from Paul Roos – Springbok captain of old – to the 1937 Springbok team ahead of the final test on tour against New Zealand. It was brief and to the point: ‘skrum, skrum, skrum’. On the way up to the game a South African father fought off the attempts of a couple of ten-year olds to take him on a rolling maul around the stadium. They do enjoy a good physical confrontation.

If one of the Southern Hemisphere giants is in rude health and still standing another is in a bleak situation. Australia’s collapse against Wales brought to mind the old comment from the novel ‘The Sun Also Rises’ by Ernest Hemingway when a character describes how they went bankrupt two ways; “gradually and then suddenly”. In other words, the underlying causes and signs are there long before the outward symptoms become manifest. Australia had a golden era in Rugby Union. Maybe 1980 to 2003 covers it? Before that they were merely a tangent for the Lions on a tour of New Zealand. Their successes on autumn visits to these parts in the old days were occasional only. But extraordinary progress in the ‘80s and onwards led to the country hosting a Lions tour on its own by 1989.

The gradual nature of decline is evident in the fact that Australia shipped a 25-point beating in the final test against the Lions as far back as 2013. Test series at home against Ireland and England have been lost. The Bledisloe Cup which is contested between New Zealand and Australia has taken up near-permanent residency on the other side of the Tasman Sea. The country’s teams in Super Rugby, the southern equivalent of the European Cup, have struggled for competitiveness in the last decade. Losing to Fiji and getting battered by Wales was an outcome a long time in the coming but is consistent with the trends. In another sense it is a potentially exciting time for Australian rugby with a Lions’ tour in two years’ time and hosting a World Cup in four. They just need a team and soon. The matter of getting together a team capable of making a Lions tour competitively viable into the future must be another concern.

The great venues of Paris are all on the periphery of the city. Roland Garros, home of the French Open tennis, is in the extreme west of the city in the same vicinity as Parc de Princes, home of Paris Saint Germain, which is literally only yards away from Stade Jean-Bouin, home of rugby’s Stade Francais. Stade de France itself is in the north of the city but the Metro train system makes hitting any area of the city straightforward. Remarkably given the history of the venue, Parc de Princes is not one of the venues for this World Cup. The stadium is still in public ownership and leased by PSG, the kind of business model common enough on the continent. With the Olympic Games coming up there next year it certainly is an exciting time for sporting Parisians.