If rugby is a fight, this one was outside the chip shop, after the pub. Ireland were beaten up. They never dropped their heads or took a backward step, but they were fed into the blender, like a smoothie. South Africa ran through them and ran over them and bludgeoned them with blunt force. Only Ireland’s courage saved them from a scoreboard thrashing.
It was an extraordinary Test match, full of tension and viciousness and hoarded bitterness. The Springboks are not just the best team in the world, they are master bullies. Once they grabbed Ireland’s throat, they didn’t let them breathe.
Ireland’s defending in the last ditch, especially with men down in the second half, was a monument to their togetherness and their elevated sense of duty. But it would be pointless for Ireland to take any comfort from this Test match.
It was Ireland’s intention to win the last World Cup and it must by their intention to win the next one. Over the last 15 years or more Ireland surrendered the right to win and lose like underdogs and accept pats on the head. On Saturday night they met a team from their peer group and were outclassed. How they manage the search for solutions will determine where Ireland go next.
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For all the science and sophistication that has entered the game in the professional era, a team without a scrum is still built on sand. Scrummaging has always been the most potent emblem of the Springboks’ machismo and in that theatre of combat they murdered Ireland.
Even before Ireland were forced to play most of the second quarter without James Ryan, their scrum was under pressure. After he was sent to the line, South Africa took every opportunity to prosecute their advantage. After a while they turned down kicks to touch or shots at the posts when they were awarded a penalty and simply beckoned Ireland into their torture chamber: crouch, bind, set, destroy.
Ireland’s discipline imploded. Ryan’s clear-out in the build up to Bundee Aki’s disallowed try after 18 minutes was reckless. He led with his shoulder and made contact with Malcom Marx’s head; after a bunker review Ryan’s yellow card was upgraded to a 20-minute red. Marx wasn’t sent for a HIA but that wasn’t the point.
As Nathan Johns pointed out on these pages last week, Ireland’s record with cards for head contact is now a serious problem. In the last World Cup cycle, Ireland received just four cards for that offence; in just the first year of the new World Cup cycle that number has climbed to seven.
Tadhg Beirne’s red card in Chicago was overturned but Ryan has no chance of clemency in this case. His sending off was a turning point from which, ultimately, Ireland had no way back. Under excruciating pressure, Ireland cracked.
By the break, Ireland had suffered three yellow cards and a red. The referee Matthew Carley spent half the match with his left arm raised, like John Travolta’s famous dance pose from Saturday Night Fever.
Ireland finished the first half with 12 players. After all the debate about whether Sam Prendergast or Jack Crowley should be on the pitch, both of them were in the sinbin by half-time.
Carley walked to the tunnel at half-time followed by a sustained cacophony of boos from the incandescent home crowd. It must have landed on his head like a giant spit. Ireland’s indiscipline, though, wasn’t his fault.
Crowley was sinbinned for hands in the ruck, Prendergast was yellow carded for offside, after repeated offences by his team-mates, Andrew Porter was sent to the line for repeated infringements in the scrum and all it was caused by relentless pressure. It was a vicious cycle: Ireland broke the law in order to survive, but by breaking the law they had no chance of survival.
In the last minute of the first half Rassie Erasmus changed both of his props, replacing sledgehammers with jack hammers. His obvious intention was to screw Ireland’s scrum into the ground. Within a minute, South Africa were awarded a penalty try after yet another pulverised Irish scrum.
Ireland’s resistance and defiance were extraordinary in the first 25 minutes of the second half. Ireland had 15 players on the field for only about 10 minutes of that period, and started the second half with just a dozen players, but they repeatedly hurled their bodies at Springbok players as they pounded the Irish try line.
There was one period of not much less than 10 minutes when South Africa were camped under the Ireland posts and forcing Ireland to defend scrum after scrum, like they were tied to a medieval rack. Astonishingly, Ireland escaped the siege without conceding a score.
For most of the second half, though, they were trapped in a forcefield. They made one brief entry into the South Africa 22 shortly after half-time and didn’t return there until the closing minutes. By then they were trailing by 11 points, which in every respect was a miracle.
At one stage in the second half the penalty count was 17-8 against Ireland. In the last few minutes, that gap was closed and South Africa finally had a player sent to the bin. But the world champions refused to give and inch and Ireland couldn’t get the try that would have distorted the scoreboard beyond all reason.
For Ireland, in this World Cup cycle, this game must be a watershed. There are no comforts.
