AAndy Farrell doesn’t suffer from long hangovers. You guessed it, these seemed to be on a long list of things he considered a waste of time. Last week, he seemed utterly baffled whenever he was asked whether his team was in a post-World Cup slump.
“To be honest, the World Cup has nothing to do with it,” Farrell said again late on Friday night. “All this talk about hangovers, we don’t have hangovers. Hangovers are for tomorrow. We’re three months in. If you can’t get over it in that time, that’s a big hangover.”
Ask Fabien Galthié about it, or give him a minute to swallow another paracetamol. At 9pm local time on Friday, the match between France and Ireland was not intense. They were the favorites to win the championship. If anything, France is slightly ahead as they have home advantage in this match and whoever wins this match will win the Grand Slam in 2022 and 2023.
They spent the past four years chasing each other up the world rankings, all the way to the World Cup knockout rounds, where they were defeated by both finalists. South Africa is one point ahead of France and New Zealand is four points ahead of Ireland.
Ninety minutes later, the gulf between them seemed as wide as the Mediterranean Sea. A 38-17 victory would do just that.In French newspapers, this is not only a loss; southwest It can be said that this is a “shame” and a sign that “something is wrong” with Galtier’s team.
It was his biggest defeat since taking over and the first time they’d lost two games in a row under him. Last week, a French tabloid was paid to publish photos of Galtier frolicking naked on a beach with his girlfriend, Belgian actress Helena Noguerra. After this result, it can be regarded as the second most humiliating thing he has experienced recently.
Galtier blamed this performance on Paul Williams, who was shown a red card in the 31st minute, but even he had to admit there were bigger issues here. “Obviously, our offense wasn’t there, we wasted opportunities, we turned the ball over, we lost the ball, we didn’t have enough speed.”
France next face Scotland away from home in what has become their toughest game of the tournament. Galtier only recently signed a new contract but has pissed off a lot of people over the years and it won’t take many bad results to turn public opinion against him. It’s unclear what Farrell would have to do to get Irish players and the public to give up on him. At this point, he’s probably prancing around O’Connell Street naked and disguising it as a masterclass in tactics and man-management.
Ireland produced one of their finest performances in Marseille, scoring five tries and recording a record win. There was a quiet sense of contentment from Farrell and his players, clearly pleased with a job well done, but no one got carried away. Some of them even worry about what they could do better.
“It’s right there,” Dan Sheehan said. “Being able to beat France in France was special because it was a hostile environment and the crowd were behind their team. We controlled most of the game well but there were some things we could have done solve.”
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“It feels good at times, certainly the first 30 minutes it felt really good,” Ireland captain Peter O’Mahony said. “We felt like we were firing on all cylinders defensively, like our offense was rolling, our lineouts were going well, but there were some areas, like the last 10 minutes before half-time when we had a few backups. A penalty, we put ourselves under pressure. So we still have a lot of work to do.”
This is ominous for everyone else. Sheehan and O’Mahony blamed Ireland’s discipline, which they felt was often overlooked once or twice. “We took too many penalties near midfield, which allowed them to kick into our corners and we were in trouble in both halves,” Sheehan said. He also listed a few other things he’d like them to improve.
“There were times where we maybe didn’t recover quickly enough, there were times where we could have scored a phase or two earlier, or maybe there were times when we struggled to get out of our own half”. All of which speaks volumes about the attitude Farrell has instilled in this team.
“We’ve been talking all week about this not being a new journey, but just a continuation of the journey we’ve been on,” Sheehan said. “Ninety percent of what we’ve done before has been great, so now we’re starting over.”
