Paris trek just became more daunting

RUGBY:THE GAME ended in controversy, and there's little doubt the officials wrongly adjudged two so-called tip tackles – the game's two tipping points you could say. But despite the harsh call on Stephen Ferris for his tackle on Ian Evans, which resulted in Leigh Halfpenny's 80th minute penalty steering Wales to a 23-21 win, there's little doubt the better team won.

It looked a hasty call by Wayne Barnes, and Ferris’s yellow card appeared like a justification for the decision. For at no point did Evans’ left foot leave the ground and he landed sideways-on before getting to his feet and smiling as he patted Ferris on the head.

It wasn’t in the same universe as the Bradley Davies’ tip tackle on Donnacha Ryan, which had also been off the ball, in the 65th minute, for which touch judge Dave Pearson adjudicated a yellow card. Only Pearson, referee for the France-Ireland game next Saturday, will know how he came up with that one.

Even Warren Gatland admitted Wales were “reasonably lucky” with these decisions and, asked whether Davies was fortunate not to receive red, answered simply “yes”. “I won’t deny it doesn’t look fantastic so we’ve got to prepare for the worst,” he said, in discussing possible alternatives should Davies receive a suspension.

However, the ease with which Wales carried through a dozen phases in travelling 50 metres upfield for the decisive drive was indicative of much of what happened over the preceding 77 minutes. Already well-placed, in the heel of the hunt, they’d surely have worked a penalty or a drop goal opportunity, if not a try.

True to form, Declan Kidney declined to seek sanctuary in the two decisions. “We’ve been asked to work with the referees’ manager like we did last year, and we’ll try to do it again this year,” he said, before adding: “We’ll take a good look at what we can solve ourselves first. We gave Wales easy field position, they ran the ball out from the 22 – we need to look at how they made such inroads there. So we’ll work on what we can work on and we’ll let the powers that be look at everything else.

“I know we’re a lot better than that,” Kidney admitted. “We put ourselves under a lot of pressure defensively, we had to defend for 60 per cent-plus of the game and if you do that you’re going to ask for trouble. Attack-wise we weren’t too bad once we got into their 22.

“Sometimes we probably played around the halfway line and some of the guys probably need to look up to see what options there are available to them. I think we can improve there.

“Some of the aspects were quite good. I thought the lineout went well defensively and in attack. The scrums were about 50-50 and at the breakdown you get a day where you’re getting a few hands on it but you’re not getting much joy then you need to readjust, and just ruck over the ball rather than try to get on it. So there are several different aspects that I know we can improve on.”

After masterminding a third successive win over his former employers, Gatland looks a shoo-in to be the next Lions head coach now, and was surely right in venturing:

“I don’t think we played as well as we could. When we get it right we’re going to be good. To come here and be under a bit of pressure and down to 14 men, I think we showed a lot of character. They are the pleasing things. The displeasing thing was a lack of discipline which could have cost us on another day. We got out of jail.”

Gatland also revealed the message to the Welsh backs in the second half was “to run hard and stay square, and if we did that we’d get some good gain line.”

Against this, Ireland’s defence was curiously passive, almost waiting on the gain line and hardly ever employing the shooter or the more aggressive line speed that had highlighted the 2009 Grand Slam campaign, a point that seemed to annoy Paul O’Connell as he looked ahead to Paris.

“We conceded a lot of momentum in the first half and didn’t defend with our heads up. Our scramble defence was really good but we got caught on the short side. They carried hard but you can’t give a team that length of time with the ball in hand. You just put yourself under pressure.”

With the ball, Ireland struggled to retain possession through contact, had little or no penetration in midfield and, as in defence, looked much narrower and thus struggled to retain the ball through contact. It doesn’t help when the ruck ball is often painfully slow. Two well-worked tries were out of sync with much of their running game; less so Wales’s three tries.

Not only did Ireland miss a world-class number 13 to give them direction and balance, in Brian O’Driscoll they were also missing their best number seven. Furthermore, the scope for changes in personnel or approach looks minimal.

There’s little doubt Wales will improve as the campaign progresses, and more of their walking wounded return to the fray. With three home games sandwiching a trip to Twickenham, a last Saturday shoot-out against France in Cardiff looks feasible.

There are no such certainties for Ireland, not least with a six-day turnaround and trek to the graveyard that has been Paris against a French side buoyed by an opening day win under a new coach. Ireland have won just once in 20 visits dating back to 1972. And that trek has just become a whole lot more daunting.