It was coming up to midnight French time last Thursday when Andy Farrell took his seat at the post-match press conference in Stade de France and lamented his side’s “lack of fight and intent” in the Six Nations defeat to France.
The embers of the conflagration that had torched his team’s title hopes were still burning as he spoke. Players and coaches can change tack when passions cool, but Ronan O’Gara doesn’t expect the Ireland head coach will be for turning.
“Andy Farrell is human, he’s in the box, he’s watching the game and he’s disappointed with losing breaking ball, not winning in the air, which are probably traditional strong points of the Irish game.
“And [while] I don’t think he’d reviewed the game on the laptop, I don’t think his opinion would differ today because he gave a good resumé of what he saw live and maybe he was a bit shocked by the first-half performance.”
O’Gara’s own immediate take was hitting the printing presses at pretty much the same time in the form of the next day’s . His thoughts then had skirted along some similar lines to Farrell’s and that of others.
The La Rochelle boss had touched on the visitors’ failure to stifle the French in that first quarter, and how a decent opening was undone by Louis Bielle-Biarray’s clean pair of heels. He highlighted the absences of key men and how the belated ‘revival’ came in garbage time.
Similar themes emerged on Monday as he reflected on the game with Dan Biggar on a media call to promote their pair of ‘BIGGS and ROG On The Fly’ shows that are happening in the Savoy in Cork and Dublin’s Harcourt Hotel early next month.
Through all this analysis, his appreciation for France is stitched.
“Anyone that follows French rugby [knows] they’re very capable of playing like that week in, week out. [Farrell] would be disappointed with maybe the accuracy in the air and winning breaking ball, but sometimes they don’t break for you.
“And Ireland were good for 15 minutes at that [early] stage. They didn’t get much of the rub of the green in the first 15 minutes, but I thought tactically they were smart. But after that the reality is that Ireland don’t have a Bielle-Biarray.”
His fears for Wales this weekend, when France go to Cardiff, were all too real as he waxed lyrical about a Matthieu Jalibert “coming to the boil” against Ireland and how only five athletes in the world would have scored Charles Ollivon’s try.
It looked at times last Thursday as if the French were playing a different sport and he spoke to this too when observing how the use of Ollivon and Paul Boudhent, more athletic back row types, in the second row is breaking new ground.
As for Ireland, there are only nine days to digest all that and recalibrate for Italy.
The former Munster man gave a wry smile when pointing out that he too has been grappling with how to turn things around when a successful side loses control and “it spirals out of control, where it’s like the sea and you’re trying to turn the tide”.
“The narrative now around Ireland is negative. It’s difficult, it’s an ageing team, they’re out of form and people will always give their opinion and they’re fully entitled to give their opinion like that. And so much of that is true.
“But not alone are you battling what you can control, you’re trying to battle what you can’t control, and it becomes nearly a vicious trap of eating away at your mental reserves so that by game day you don’t have as much energy as you’d like for giving it everything you can.
“That’s sport, and especially for someone like Faz who has been so successful in what he’s done, and now he’s probably on a bit of a rebuild cycle. I feel like I’ve been on a rebuild cycle for a long time so I’m nervous to comment on that.”
Injuries played their part in Ireland’s issues, O’Gara has said as much.
Ireland do not have the luxury of sweeping seas filled with alternative props and centres and out-halves. They go with what the four provinces produce for them and recent big losses for the Ireland XVs and U20s complete a picture of a net that is coming up near to empty.
Thursday’s team selection is awaited with keen interest.
“I’d say after a weekend like that… Never in Andy Farrell’s tenure has he probably seen that [manner of performance]. All his performances are based on mindset, accuracy, playing the moment in front of your nose well.
“So I’d say, like a lot of coaches, he got a bit of a shock and kind of said, ‘okay, well we’re missing our normal accuracy here and we need to get that back quickly’.
“Knowing the competitor that he is, I would say he has his team lined up and he probably has seven names on the team sheet with probably discussions for seven or eight more positions to fill.”
