Ireland's Grand Slam heroes given two days off to celebrate
Andy Farrell has given his Grand Slam winners 48 hours to toast their hard-earned success as Guinness Six Nations champions but the Ireland boss described the title victory as only “part of the journey” towards the World Cup later this year.
Ireland’s 29-16 win over England at Aviva Stadium on Saturday put a tin hat on the country’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations and the squad will extend them further as they revel in a triumph which only three previous Irish teams have savoured.
Yet September 9, 2023 is date their head coach has long been instilling in them as the most important stage of their development when Ireland get their World Cup campaign underway in Bordeaux against Romania and embark on the final stage of their quest to at least break their quarter-final hoodoo in the tournament.
Farrell’s men began their march towards France this autumn at the end of last June, when they set off on tour to New Zealand with the intent of a first series win against the All Blacks. They rebounded from an opening Test defeat at Auckland’s Eden Park to win back-to-back games in Dunedin and Wellington to clinch that historic series win and have not looked back since, also defeating world champions South Africa, Fiji and Australia on home soil before sweeping the board with their Northern Hemisphere rivals these past seven weeks.
Farrell has allowed the Irish camp to savour every step along away whilst keeping them on task and reminding them of the final destination, hence his description on Saturday night of where this Six Nations title sits within Ireland’s bigger picture.
"I said to you in New Zealand 'now this was the start of our World Cup year',” Farrell said. “And it was, and I suppose the most pleasing thing is that we've continued to be successful, you know, to find a way Everyone was nervous about that except us. So you know, this is part of the journey, isn't it?
“Obviously this stands on its own right, as does the New Zealand tour but it's part of the journey of us as a group going forward into a World Cup. Like I said, we’ll get two or three months pre-season training for the first time together and I expect ourselves to be better, obviously, because of that.” Farrell repeated his view, which bodes well for supporters, that this Irish team led by captain Johnny Sexton still has plenty of improvement to make if it was to fulfil its potential.
“We’ve carried on winning, is that the yardstick? I don’t know. I suppose we just go on the performances and the performances were pretty good in New Zealand and we’ve continued to again find a way.
“It’s never been perfect but the game is not like that, so the mental strength of our game and large parts of our game are in a good place. But like I said, there’s a long way for us to go for us to be at our best, which is a great sign.”
Ireland’s progress to the Grand Slam has come against the odds in as much as World Rugby’s top-ranked team has made light of the adversity it has faced along the way, winning in Wales, defeating defending champions France, resisting Italy’s new-found attacking flair, and then bursting Scotland’s bubble at Murrayfield against a background of late withdrawals and injuries to key players.
Farrell’s team have found a way to win in spite of it all, including overcoming a stubborn if unadventurous England side on Saturday, collecting four bonus-point wins along the way to win the championship by seven points from the French and amassing a record Six Nations points tally of 27 since the introduction of bonus points in 2017.
It should have been stressful but Farrell said: “I haven’t really been because it is what it is. I mean, what can you do when lads are injured?
“What can you do when you know that England are going to come bouncing back and they’re going to be 30 per cent better than they were the week before? What can you do when Scotland are going for a Triple Crown?
“It’s a brilliant place to be. Embrace it and see what you can get out of it, not just as a team but personally as well. That’s the challenge isn’t it? And that’s why we all love the Six Nations in that regard.” The final-round victory did not come without a cost. Hugo Keenan did not return from a 40th-minute Head Injury Assessment following the collision that resulted in a red card for opposing full-back Freddie Steward while No.8 Caelan Doris also went for an HIA in the 75th minute.
Captain Sexton, who surpassed Ronan O’Gara as the competition’s record points scorer on 566, was another casualty in his final Six Nations game, limping off to a standing ovation from the sell-out Aviva Stadium crowd. He had injured his groin as he helped to defend England’s try from a driving maul on 73 minutes.
It is the second such injury in recent weeks having been hurt against France in round two when Uini Atonio fell on him and the veteran fly-half must now be a doubt for Leinster’s European Round of 16 clash against Ulster back at Aviva Stadium on April 1.
“It doesn’t feel great at the moment,” Sexton said. “I suppose I deserve it for trying to get involved in a maul. I shouldn’t have been in there but I was trying to hold it up a bit. So I don’t know at the minute. It doesn’t feel too good.”
