Advantage Gatland in the Mind Game

If there were a Geneva Convention for pre-match banter, Welsh coach Warren Gatland would be getting a stern letter this week from Mr Ban Ki-Moon. Gatland’s remarks during the week about the Welsh hating the Irish was the equivalent of some African warlord dropping a dose of beriberi onto one of his neighbours from the clear blue sky, with a spot of whooping cough thrown in for luck.

What’s particularly tricky to figure out about what Gatland said is that the Welsh don’t hate the Irish at all. The Welsh hate the English, just like everybody else. The English hate the French, themselves, and the French, naturally enough, hate them back.

So why then did Gatland say it if it’s patently not so?

He said it because Gatland is a master of psychological warfare. Gatland lived in Ireland long enough to pick up a few traits about the Irish psyche, and the particular one that he’s thinking about here is the tremendous Irish need to be loved.

It’s not enough for Ireland to win a Grand Slam, even though Ireland haven’t won one for sixty-one years. There is a tremendous need for the Irish to be acknowledged as a great as well. If we don’t get the pat on the head, the nation pouts like a teenager.

If we stepped back a little, we could see that glory and Grand Slams are not necessarily the same thing. David Sole’s Grand Slam team of 1990 – and it by no means An Spailpín’s intention to have a cut at the Scots, God love them – were by no means a glorious team but the record book shows 1990, Grand Slam, Scotland, and that’s all that counts.

Gatland is clearly fully aware of this insecurity in the Irish psyche, this tremendous need. He’s also aware of that word that rhymes with poke, and joke, and coke, and the Irish connection with same over the years. So, like Begbie in Trainspotting throwing the glass over the stairs to see what would happen, Gatland has rolled his hand grenade in under the Irish door and walked away laughing.

He’s a sly dog, Gatland. The Irish are blessed in that Declan Kidney is no eejit either, but it is a sad truth that teams have been psyched out of games before by soft chat in the press, and England are the most famous example of that.

Brian Moore has been unfairly criticised in Ireland for calling the Irish chokers two years ago, but anyone who took the trouble to read what he wrote will notice that Moore was upfront about why it bothered him so much. Because Moore himself was hooker and pack leader on the England team that choked against Scotland in 1990, and then choked again against Australia in the World Cup Final the year after.

The story bears repeating. 1988 was a red-letter year in English rugby. The selectors finally did away with the Corinthian ethos that saw quality players being regularly dropped for fear of chaps getting too big for their boots, and instead boiled their rugby right down to brass tacks. Rob Andrew kicked the ball ahead of their pack and bad men like Mickey Teague and Wade Dooley chased after it, giving no quarter to whomever or whatever got in their way.

By 1991 England were unstoppable, grinding their way through opposition like so many locusts fed exclusively on bully beef. In the World Cup Final that year, England faced their antithesis, Australia, a flair team epitomised by the mercurial David Campese on the wing, one of the greatest players ever to play the game.

Campese knew that Australia stood no chance in a battle in the trenches with England. So he spent the week before the final giving interview after interview saying that England were destroying the game with their ten man game and it broke his bloody heart to think of the game he loved, a game about boys running with ball in hand and the wind in their hair, being crushed by the fearsome hooves of the yeomanry.

All balls, of course. Australia is not a rugby nation. They’d play League if only they were let, and they’re doing their damnedest to turn Union into League with those cursed ELVs.

But Campese was an exceptional talent, and a masterful student of the human condition. Campese looked into the soul of English rugby and saw Roundheads who wanted to be Cavaliers. Campese’s goading caused England to change their gameplan as they tried to play the Australians at the Australian game in the final. England were wiped out, Campese laughed his way back to Australia with the Webb Ellis Trophy under his arm, and Brian Moore is still bitter eighteen years on.

The parallel is not exact but the level of psychological insight is the same – sublime. And worse, the last time Ireland played for a Grand Slam they fell for another psychological trick. The Irish huffed and puffed over the insult to our President in 2003, but if they were that upset they would have trooped off and let the International Board sort it out. But the Irish are too afraid of being unpopular, so they let Johnson pull their pigtails, and then payed the price when the game began.

This same need to be loved is what Warren Gatland is playing on so expertly now. How will Ireland respond?





Technorati Tags: sport, rugby, Six Nations, Ireland, Wales, Grand Slam, Warren Gatland

Slam of BOD? Irish Rugby on the Cusp of Glory

Peter Stringer’s triumphant return to the Irish rugby team yesterday evening two years after he was made the sole scapegoat for the 2007 World Cup disaster was a moment to delight the hardest of hearts in these hard times. In fact, laughing out loud when Stringer made his break to set up Jamie Heaslip’s try was the only sensible reaction. Stringer did the same thing for Munster in the 2005 Heineken Cup final, a break that won that game as well.

For a scrum half, it isn’t so much a question of if he breaks, but more a question of when. Because Stringer breaks so rarely, what’s rare is truly wonderful.

The criticism of the game in Edinburgh yesterday has been harsh. Ireland struggled in the first half, certainly, but credit to the Scots, who showed a return to their own thorny traditions, despite those hideous jerseys. But when you’re so long out of practice, it’s hard to get it to hang together for the eighty minutes, and Scotland were doubly unfortunate in that they came up against a team that are on a mission worthy of the Grail Knights themselves.

The book appeared shut on this Golden Generation – your correspondent certainly buried them rather than praised them in this space. And then, suddenly, a new coach, a new philosophy, some fresh faces and a harum-scarum win over France in Dublin to start the campaign and suddenly it’s 2003 all over again.

It has to be just as obvious to the players as it is to the fans that the Golden Generation has underachieved. A friend of the blog and a great rugby man himself told your faithful narrator during the week that he believed this could be the start of a brave new dawn for Irish rugby. The great gaping hole where Ronan O’Gara’s successor should be casts doubts on that theory. Ireland's playing population is so small that any chance that comes must be grabbed with both hands, because you don't know how long you'll have to wait until it comes again.

What this season is about for Ireland, therefore, is redemption. The BBC had a graphic last night that showed when you table the games won in the Six Nations this decade Ireland are second only to France in games won, but they have no Championship to show for it. When you consider the ballaragging Mayo get for consistently winning games yet coming second in the All-Ireland the irony is warm to the touch.

But unlike Mayo’s golden generation, Brian O’Driscoll, Paul O’Connell and the rest have seen the stone rolled away from the tomb before time is called, and they now know that they are only eighty minutes away from a title, the winning of which would make up for all those left behind, and would banish the ghosts that would otherwise haunt them into the autumn of their years.

The only problem is that the title will have to be won the hard way, in Cardiff, against the Welsh.

There is no question that the majority of the Lions’ first XV will be made up of Welsh and Irish. When the teams face each other in Cardiff at half-past five on Saturday it will be a contest so even that it will all come down to the vagaries of fate who will triumph in the end.

The Welsh have home advantage and a rich and proud history behind them. The Irish have the advantage of the kind of momentum that four wins gives. Ireland edge it slightly up front, not least with the presence of the new men of the back row, the stern and resolute Stephen Ferris and the increasingly irrepressible Jamie Heaslip.

It’s advantage Wales at half-back, where Mike Phillips and Stephen Jones are the leading contenders to wear nine and ten for the Lions in South Africa. And in the three quarters it’s possibly a slight edge to Wales as well.

Ireland’s greatest strength is Brian O’Driscoll, of course. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine famously wrote of Clint Eastwood when Unforgiven came out that “in three decades of climbing into the saddle, Eastwood has never ridden so tall.” It’s tempting to think of Brian O’Driscoll this year in the same terms.

The jets are gone now, compared to what they were, but it was never speed that separated O’Driscoll from the herd. It is his sheer appetite for battle, and for getting stuck in. The Brian O’Driscoll that exists between the white lines is not the same Brian O’Driscoll that gives such anodyne press interviews. O’Driscoll has a deep reservoir of fury that he taps into, rather like the Berserker warriors of Celtic lore.

He may not have said it at the time, but An Spailpín Fánach believes that O’Driscoll himself is more annoyed than anyone at the titles Ireland left behind. O’Driscoll did an interview for the BBC that was broadcast yesterday where he mentioned what winning three games against France, Italy and England were worth if Ireland were to lose in Edinburgh and Cardiff: “we won three games in 2005 and who talks about 2005 now?”

2005 was also the year that Brian O’Driscoll captained the Lions so very briefly. Funny how the subconscious pops up when you don’t expect it.

Brian O’Driscoll has been disappointed every time he’s reached a summit in rugby. Ireland have not won a Championship in his time, his Lions’ captaincy was a disaster and the 2007 World Cup was all nightmares come true at once. None of this is O’Driscoll’s own fault – even when Ireland were getting handed their hats by Argentina, O’Driscoll was personally outstanding as the team fell apart around him. Brian O’Driscoll wants this one very, very badly.

After the drama of team selection last week An Spailpín Fánach is confident that Declan Kidney will name the following team on Tuesday: Kearney; Bowe, B O’Driscoll (c), D’Arcy, Fitzgerald; O’Gara, Stringer; Horan, Flannery; Hayes; O’Connell, O’Callaghan; Ferris, Wallace, Heaslip. Go n-éirí leo ar shlí na glóire.






Technorati Tags: sport, rugby, Six Nations, Ireland, Wales, Grand Slam