'Top six inches' issues remain for Irish rugby

RTÉ News​

17-05-2025

The season is far from over, and it may well end up with an Irish team lifting a trophy but there is no doubt that there has been a worrying fall-off this season in Irish rugby, across a number of metrics.
A quick glance at the notable achievements in 2023 reveals a stark decline.
The men's senior team completed a valedictorian Grand Slam, comprehensively beating France and England along the way. Andy Farrell was named World Rugby coach of the year.
They started the World Cup ranked number one but fell at an all-too-familiar hurdle.
The Under-20s claimed a second Grand Slam in a row and reached the World Championship final.
The Women's team began their resurgence by winning WXV3 following a wooden spoon Six Nations, while both Sevens squads qualified for the Olympics.
On the domestic front, all four Irish teams qualified for the URC play-offs, with Leinster and Ulster finishing first and second in the table, while Munster famously went on to win the tournament.
Leinster reached another Champions Cup final, but fell to a gut-wrenching defeat to La Rochelle in Dublin.
But it was clear the system was working.
"We were seen as best in class for a long time," said former Ireland captain Donal Lenihan when the topic was discussed on RTÉ's Against the Head earlier this week.
"Other countries were coming over to see how well we were doing things."
The following year began positively as well.
Ireland were superb against France at the start of the Six Nations and came within a late drop-goal defeat to England of a second consecutive clean sweep.
But they looked tired when the All Blacks visited in November, while Simon Easterby came in as interim coach after the autumn.
The Women's team finished third in the Six Nations, best of the rest, and went on to take the scalp of World Cup champions New Zealand at WXV1.
Indeed, everything was still rosy in the garden on the underage scene, with Ireland going unbeaten in the U20s Six Nations.
An opening-day win for Farrell's side against England in the 2025 Six Nations boded well but they were simply outclassed by France in the penultimate round and finished third.
Scott Bemand's side also finished third but rounded off their campaign with a lacklustre loss in Scotland, while serious injuries that ruled star forwards Erin King and Dorothy Wall out of the World Cup, also soured the mood.
The U20s finished with a first wooden spoon and, unlike the previous seasons, didn't have a stand-out graduate among their ranks.
Back home, the provinces, Leinster aside, were incredibly inconsistent and when Pete Wilkins departed Connacht in April, he became the third mid-season head-coach departure in a 14-month spell, joining Dan McFarland of Ulster, and Munster's URC-winning coach Graham Rowntree.
Munster scraped into the play-offs, but Connacht and Ulster will play Challenge Cup next season.
Yes, Ireland have a record 15 Lions heading for Australia but there's a fair argument that it has been their form over the last two years, and not that last two months that got them on the plane.
Leinster's URC and European form had been flawless; Leo Cullen's side, seemingly fully comfortable in Jacques Nienaber's new defensive system, went 16 games unbeaten and, with the added firepower of RG Snyman and Jordie Barrett, looked certain to have enough to get over the line this time.
What happened next goes down in infamy.
The RTÉ Rugby panel react to Leinster's loss
The post-mortem of Leinster's surprise defeat to Northampton Saints in the Champions Cup semi-final is continuing and the overlap of players shared between the club and Ireland means their plights are hard to analyse in isolation.
The quarter-final defeat to New Zealand - when Ireland gave up a 13-point early lead they couldn't haul in - the Six Nations defeat to England, and Leinster's three European final losses and the defeat to Saints, all bore similarities.
Faced with an uphill battle, the teams couldn't escape the fog that descended.
"The big question has to be in the top six inches," said Lenihan in relation to crucial late penalty decisions in Leinster's Champions Cup loss two weeks ago.
"When they got in trouble in that last 20 minutes, there didn't seem to be a response, a natural reaction.
"Leaders grasp the nettle at the right time."
Leinster have previous. Last season, they blew a home URC run when, in their penultimate regular-season game against Ulster, they refused to take a late shot at goal before losing to two late kicks.
"It's just happened far too often now to be accidental," added Lenihan, wondering why they refused to take their 'learnings'.
It's a sentiment that Bernard Jackman, the former Ireland and Leinster hooker, echoes.
"Frustratingly, from an Irish rugby fan or Leinster point of view, this is Groundhog Day, this has happened to this group of players a lot, too often, for the talent they have," he said.
"The mindset thing is everything. Jacques Nienaber, his defensive system works."
There's an accusation that the management sent out undercooked teams for dogfights.
Aside from the fact that Leinster left Barrett on the bench, a stat that emerged on the Left Wing podcast also stood out.
In Leinster's seven Champions Cup knockout losses since their last title victory, of the 105 starters across those games, 85 did not play the week before.
"It's not an issue until you come up against a team with self-belief," quipped Luke Fitzgerald, the former Leinster and Ireland back.
Jackman added: "If you believe cohesion is a strong performance indicator, would it not be any harm to play them the week before, to have them match-ready.
"Leinster, for that first 20 minutes, were nowhere near they needed to be.
"They might have had lots of energy, they might have been fresh but that didn't transfer to be up to Champions Cup semi-final level."
The Barrett decision, along with not starting Andrew Porter and Jack Conan, also left Leinster open to complacency allegations, a charge bolstered by the baffling decisions not to take points on offer.
Former Leinster hooker James Tracy, who retired just over two years ago and has many friends in the dressing room, struggled to defend his old team-mates.
He said: "As much as I want to argue against that and stand up for the individuals, two of the tries were from kick-chase. Kick-chase is effort, that's within you.
"The decision-making at the end, I don't care what decision that they made, it looked like they were looking to the sideline.
"You need someone who's assertive at the moment."
The list of issues listed above can, of course, be drilled into and reasoned out individually but overall, they paint a worrying picture.
It's not panic stations yet but David Humphreys, who took over from David Nucifora last summer as high performance director, has work to do.
He showed he's not afraid to take bold steps, with the axing of the men's Sevens programme seen as a justifiable cost-cutting measure. Time will tell.
The question was also posed during the Against the Head debate whether Irish rugby is struggling for identity?
"I wouldn't have said so at the start of the season but I think it's hard to argue against that now," said Tracy.
"There has been progress made in certain areas but what other teams are talking about us now is the mentality side of things.
"That's the bit that hurts the most, teams feel like they can get after us and rattle us in games. That goes for international and provincial.
"That's a big work-on for me, how can we become more stern and steady in the real crunch moments?"
Finding an answer to that question may take some time but given that the 'performance anxiety' phrase was first bandied about in the aftermath of the 2019 World Cup, it's a question that's still worth asking.