Ireland are the #1 team in the World Rugby rankings for the first time ever.
Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter. Whoever wins the World Cup in November will be the real #1 team in the world but for now – we’ll take it. Anyone who watched Ireland in the 90s – and a lot of the 2000s, in fairness – will look at Ireland with #1 next to their name in the World Rankings on Monday with a mixture of bemusement and, well, giddiness. I, like you, know that it’s a meaningless accolade this close to the World Cup, given that the title of “Number One Team In The World” has been like a game of musical chairs over the last few months and we just happen to be the ones sitting down when the music’s stopped before Japan. But still. It’s surreal.
When I think of that ranking as I sit down here, the game I keep going back to isn’t in Chicago or the Aviva. It’s in Hamilton. Watch that video and then come back. Look at that pumping. Seven of the players that featured that day in 2012 were in today’s squad. To go from that harshest of reality checks seven years ago to being #1 in the world, however tenuously, not 12 months removed from beating the All Blacks for the second time in three years… like I said, it’s surreal. From whipping boys to peers to being a legitimate threat to the very best in the world. That’s how far we’ve come.
We won’t go throwing any ticker-tape parades or anything – we still have to get beyond a quarter-final after all – but I’ll take a fraction of a second to savour it, however tenuous. Well, 280-ish words, but you catch my drift.
***
Warren Gatland was trying very hard to brush this result off his shoulders in the post-game presser, but I think he’ll find this preseason malaise dandruff will take some shifting.
Wales offered very little here. They dominated possession and territory in the first half but found themselves running into an angry green wall for much of it, their nicely taken try aside. Ireland, in contrast to the last few weeks, were direct, physical and the right kind of clinical without ever stitching together much with the ball in hand. Warren Gatland was very quick – a little too quick, if you’re a Welsh fan, I think – to opine that Ireland “didn’t play expansively” and “played mostly off 9” when they were put away but that in itself should be a concern for Wales. Maybe it will be behind closed doors. When Wales started losing collisions around the fringes from 50 minutes – on the back of some exhausting scrummaging against a heavy Irish front five – they looked far from the side that put us away so handily in the Principality Stadium earlier in the year.
That factor – the scrum – played a big part in this game. Ireland had 14 offensive scrums in this game and Conor Murray/Luke McGrath made sure Ireland leaned on Wales for as long as possible after the set and before the put in.
One second, two second, three second … we were happy enough to let them feel our weight for as long as possible and those seconds of pressure add up. Do it well enough, and you can carry off #9 with increasing effectiveness, play mostly off Two and Four ball lineout and wait for a drop off in the third/fourth quarter.
That’s pretty much how Ireland won this game.
A Jordan Larmour breakdown penalty earned Ireland a 5m lineout opportunity, which Wales turned over due to closing the gap (again). That lead to a series of close-range scrum opportunities – and we weren’t in any rush to complete those – that turned up the heat on the Welsh defence.
Eventually, they broke.
Ireland took a scrum from a Welsh offside on the try line and, off a strong Henshaw carry, brought Ryan and Kleyn around for a big second phase carry.
That latch and drive took Ireland to the try line, committed multiple Welsh forwards to the ruck and Murray found Furlong for a relatively straightforward finish through Williams.
The Welsh front five were starting to creak and, with a few changes in the Irish pack around 50 minutes, the floodgates started to open. Henderson and Killer got up on the loosehead side and Ireland had a scrum penalty.
From that lineout position, Ireland would score a decisive third try through James Ryan and that would be that, bar one solitary 22 entry from the Welsh that was repelled with relative comfort.
Ireland ran out comfortable enough winners in the end and perhaps could have added to the scoreline while camped deep in the Welsh 22 for most of the last five minutes. It wasn’t to be.
This was a win ground out through the kind of physical domination that we didn’t show back in March. Gatland decried our lack of expansive rugby but, truth be told, we didn’t need it. That isn’t to say that we didn’t show a few bits of nice play, don’t get me wrong.
This no-look filth burger from Johnny Sexton to Bundee Aki, for example.
Sexton drew Hadley Parkes onto Henshaw’s line and freed up Aki to attack Williams. Only an excellent stop from Leigh Halfpenny prevented Aki from making a killer break here but Ireland would score a few phases later regardless.
We also showed one or two nice glimpses off maul breaks. This one, in the build-up to Rob Kearney’s try in the first half, had some really nice elements to it. First – it was a pressure maul to draw Welsh numbers in.
Once Furlong caught a hold of Tipuric – the Welsh openside – he wasn’t going to let go. This was to set up Ireland to break with six Irish attackers on six Welsh defenders. When Murray saw Moriarty commit, he released the ball to spring the strike play. 
Once we broke, Wales were struggling to contain our offensive numbers.
Adding Larmour – it could be Conway or Earls in a different scenario as a breaking second receiver off Bundee Aki’s pass was a nice touch but it was made by Henshaw drawing and bumping Davies. That opened up two avenues for Larmour – the step inside that we saw and an isolation for Sexton to exploit as he floated in the second layer.
Ireland seesawed back and forth in the subsequent phases – all to compress the Welsh heavy defence – before releasing Stander for a big gainline win over Rhys Patchell. The one on one isolation came from good attacking structure.
There are three narrow carrying options for Sexton to hit off first receiver. The tight structure we’re using here is very deliberate because it sets the position of the defending players.
Sexton has three legitimate options to hit and their narrow structure means that the three pertinent Welsh defenders get stood up. If Stander or Henshaw were wider, then Davies could drift out to cover both players while at an angle. That would give Parkes and Patchell a chance to narrow their position and double tackle the inside option to Best while covering any break from Sexton.
Instead, Patchell finds himself defending Stander one on one with no one to help “shut the door” on him. Ireland got a huge gainline win, quick ball and an angle to work with.
Davies has to hold on Sexton’s line while North covers Earls. That puts Kearney in position to get a positive angle on Davies and he goes through Halfpenny for the finish.
There wasn’t much that Halfpenny could do in this instance, in fairness.
All in all, it was pretty good stuff from Ireland. I’d be hesitant to say that we left second or third gear here, but it was what was needed to get the win.
A lot of attention was paid to Jean Kleyn during the week (and during the RTE broadcast) but I thought he had an effective game. When a guy is getting slated as “not being good enough” for this level, I made sure to keep an eye out for him on the watch back. He was one of our top defenders – with a lot of impact tackles – and he carried some ugly ball around the corner quite well. He scrummaged strongly all afternoon and he was strong on offensive and defensive mauls.
This is a great sack on Ball that killed the Welsh maul stone dead in a threatening position. He had a big day at the offensive breakdown too, as you’d expect. He’s still settling into this role at test level and I would say that Henderson and Ryan are the clear #1 partnership but Kleyn is starting to show what he offers at this level and looked right at home against top-class opposition in what is an unglamorous role. A solid day out for the big man where he showed his value.
James Ryan had another stand out performance and is comfortably one of the best second rows on the planet. He could captain Ireland for 10 years plus with a fair wind on the injury front. If there was a Lions tour going away in the morning, he’d start every test without question – that’s how good this guy is and he’s still on 23 years of age.
CJ Stander dominated his opposition on both sides of the ball with the authority that we’ve come to expect. There was a lot of chat about what CJ does or doesn’t do and despite being used as a lineout forward on our shortened schemes and carrying a lot of hammer zone ball, he still found time to bring real impact around the field.
Robbie Henshaw was the star performer from me. His work on decoy, with the ball in hand and in defence was outstanding.
He might well have nailed himself on to start at outside centre on the strength of this all-round performance that harked back to the athletic player we saw at Connacht four years ago.
Playing outside Aki gave him the licence to play a freer role, and my god – it suited him.
***
Two wins over this Welsh side don’t show that Ireland are set to stroll to a World Cup final, just like the loss to England didn’t suggest we were destined to crash out at the pool stage. These are preseason games and not much can be read into them. They have had unusual selections and patterns of play to contend with that go outside the realm of what you’d expect in a do-or-die pool game or knockout. That said, I’d rather be heading into a World Cup having won two in a row rather than the opposite.
The sparring is over. The shadow games are done. The plane leaves for Japan this week and when it comes back, we’ll have a real answer to where we are in the World Rankings. Only a gold trophy will denote #1.
I can’t wait for that reckoning.
The Wally Ratings: Wales (H) Guinness Summer Series
The Wally Ratings explainer page is here.
Players are rated based on their time on the pitch, if they were playing notably out of position, and on the overall curve of the team performance. DNP means the player did not feature and N/A means they weren’t on the pitch long enough to warrant a fair rating.
| Names | Rating |
|---|---|
| Cian Healy | ★★★ |
| Rory Best | ★★★ |
| Tadhg Furlong | ★★★★ |
| James Ryan | ★★★★ |
| Jean Kleyn | ★★★ |
| CJ Stander | ★★★★ |
| Josh Van Der Flier | ★★★ |
| Jack Conan | ★★★ |
| Conor Murray | ★★★ |
| Johnny Sexton | ★★★★ |
| Keith Earls | ★★★ |
| Bundee Aki | ★★★★ |
| Robbie Henshaw | ★★★★★ |
| Jordan Larmour | ★★★★ |
| Rob Kearney | ★★★★ |
| Sean Cronin | ★★★ |
| Dave Kilcoyne | ★★★★ |
| Andrew Porter | ★★★ |
| Iain Henderson | ★★★ |
| Rhys Ruddock | ★★★ |
| Luke McGrath | ★★★ |
| Jack Carty | ★★★ |
| Garry Ringrose | ★★★ |
There’s much to cover in this game and I’ll be doing that in TRK Premium all week long with GIF and Video Articles.
