the road to
the world cup
Ireland
It was Ireland that emerged from
the RBS Six Nations with
victory in hand and having
had time to let that
triumph sink in they
can now turn their
full
attentions
towards
the
World Cup.
With one of
the closest
tournaments
in recent years
everything came
down to the final
day and a resounding
victory over Scotland
for Ireland proved to be
enough despite the best efforts
of England and Wales. The side
had taken some criticism earlier in
the campaign for not being attack minded
enough but proved that when they needed
to they had the ability to open a game up.
The victory over Scotland followed a
comfortable win over Italy, professional
performances against France and England
and a narrow defeat against Wales. The
standout feature of Ireland’s performances
as a team was their game management
which was considerably stronger than the
other team’s competing and turned out to
be the deciding factor.
Perhaps their best performance was
against the English, when backed by a
typically vociferous home crowd their
physicality around the break down allowed
them to take a comfortable victory in what
had been billed as a tournament decider.
There were a number of fine individual
performances from Irish players and a
major highlight was the quality shown
by Robbie Henshaw who outli