The latter stages of the World Cup have started to take shape as the pools head towards their denouement with only the BNZ pool more or less sorted. In that pool, the standard of rugby has been strong, with BNZ creaking in the second quarter but putting in one of the best 20 minutes of football seen yet in their opening game with Argentina. The Pumas, for their part, have looked invigorated after four years of the Championship – in previous World Cups they have looked like a Northern Hemisphere team, full of forward power and strong kicking games, but here they look like a combination of South African forwards and Australian backs. And, speaking of huge forwards, Georgia have been cowed by no-one and the sight of their brutish pack staring bemused at the haka was one for the ages – we couldn’t think of a team less likely to be intimidated. Gorgodzilla has been a force of nature, and his emotional response to being named MOTM * on Friday night was what the development of Tier 2 rugby should be about.

Here in Ireland we have never quite got to grips with the concept that the pool stages of the world cup are for the most part a warm up exercise, and that the real business starts in the quarter finals.  In all except the freakish Pool of Death, the two teams coming out of each pool have been flagged well in advance, and so – even with South Africa’s early abberation – everything has panned out as expected.  The only thing down for decision in the vast majority of world cup pools dating back to whenever, is the fight between first and second, which isn’t always of great consequence.  In 2011, Ireland placed too much importance on having beaten Australia in the pool.  It was a fine performance and tactically shrewd, but ultimately immaterial.  In the quarter finals, when winning really mattered, Ireland fluffed their lines and Australia, who had come second in the pool, advanced to the semi-finals.

The only pool with no teams yet qualified (mathematically anyway) is the South Africa one. In reality, the Springboks are home and hosed – the defeat against Japan woke the squad up, and with Meyer privately briefing against Jean de Villiers’ twin for crimes against the gameplan in that defeat, the defeat and the captain’s injury has allowed Meyer to let yoof have its fling. Damian de Allende and the ginormous Lood de Jager have come in for JdV and Victor Matfield – the physical comparison with Scotland seemed unfair at times, and their pure beastliness will take them far but the team still feels a little callow at this point. Even if Wales lose to the Wobs, as seems likely, they might fancy a cut off these Boks. Second place will come down to Samoa-Scotland – if the Scots win, they are through, if Samoa win Japan will get through with a bonus point win against the USA. Whatever about (largely made-up) Celtic brotherhood, we for one will be cheering heartily for Samoa on Saturday.  But with Samoa a disorganised shambles, the Scots should coast into the quarter finals.

In the Pool of Death, England have had the huge misfortune to come up against two of the best coaches in the world coaching intelligent and focused teams, at just the wrong time. Australia followed up on Wales’ triumph with a scintillating display of scrummaging, backrow brilliance and creativity out wide – England’s props were taken out of the firing line before the hour mark! We’ll have a scapegoat watch on England later in the week, but few would have lived with the Wobblies on Saturday night. Fiji were also hotly tipped to cause an upset of one of the big three – in the event, they didn’t really come close, with just too much inaccuracy against good teams, but man they can play when they want to.

And what then of Ireland’s pool? The only one without any Southern Hemisphere skill or Pacific Island magic has largely stunk the tournament out, to be frank. The pool has been peppered with low standard and forgettable games, with Ireland-Italy merely being the latest – all three French games have been desperately poor quality. Canada have brought some of the effervescent Tier 2 buzz that have characterised the tournament, to be fair. The pool carries a faint whiff of the English pool in the last tournament – chock full of European teams (and Argentina in their previous Northern Hemisphere iteration) – the pool was defined by forward power and was eminently forgettable, barring the amusing off-field tales concerning the England players. When it came to the knockouts, both Argentina and England were dumped out without too much bother – and they weren’t lamented.

The nagging worry at this point is that the general lack of inspiration present proves fatal to Ireland and France in the next round when they will be abruptly exposed to high class rugby, with New Zealand and Argentina waiting, probably two of the best three sides to this point.

The Italian game at the weekend was, by some distance, the worst performance of the Joe Schmidt era – this is a very limited Italian side, yet Ireland somehow managed to make Simone Favaro and Edoardo Gori look like Schalk Burger and Aaron Smith. Schmidt’s success has been built on forcing mistakes from opponents through an extremely accurate kicking game, intelligent rucking and watertight defence – all three elements were conspicuous by their absence on Sunday. If it wasn’t for Italy’s inability to run a lineout (and O’Mahony’s defensive excellence – he may have been called Ireland’s Bakkies Botha last week (!) but could Bakkies have made that tackle? I don’t think so) today’s conversation would be very different, and much more fraught.

Expect the usual commentary about us playing badly being a good thing because <cup rugby> and <complacency>. In truth, cup rugby doesn’t involve kicking the ball away and hanging on by your fingertips, and you’d have thought that three games into a World Cup, we wouldn’t need a reminder of what is at stake. But there is good news – the expected return of Jared Payne and Bob will beef up our defence and kicking game, and it pretty tough to see Conor Murray playing this badly again. The lack of form shown so far this year by Sexton and O’Brien is a concerning issue – and while Schmidt might be tempted to turn to Chris Henry, we urgently need Sexton to show some of his best form.

Another positive is that this France team thrive on one thing and one thing only – beef in the tight. The set piece has been a continual strength, even against Italy, and that is unlikely to change. If our rucking work improves and our defence is a little less passive, we have it well within our werewithall to keep them out – add in how vulnerable they looked to DTH van der Merwe, and you might just expect the likes of Earls to look threatening .. if Ireland manage to get the ball to him. There is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater – if Ireland tighten up on the basics, they will beat an unstructured and poorly-coached France team, and that’s what they should concentrate on. Forget not knowing which French side will show up, let’s worry about ensuring the correct Ireland side show up – the one which kicks and rucks well.

* This being the first RWC in the mass social media era has been both good and bad – it’s been good for the fans worldwide who can now read the likes of Dorce and Charlie Morgan, whose forensic brilliance has been brought global by new meeja. The bad: the nonsensical MOTM system. Around the 50 minute mark of every game, a WR gnome nominates three players who are then voted upon by ver people. This horseshit system got the result it deserved on Saturday night, when Joe Launchbury was named MOTM in the aftermath of one of the great World Cup performances … by his opponents. Gorgodzilla is a rare exception.

Before we nail our Ireland preview to the metaphorical door of Wittenberg church that is tinterwebs, we need to consider just a couple of things:

• The best teams in the world usually win the competition – obvious question marks surround the BNZ teams of 1995 and 2007 – the South African team that won so memorably in ’95 did very little else, and while the ’07 team peaked 24 months later when winning the Tri Nations and beating GivvusahugShawsie and 14 other red-clad men, but BNZ blew both in truth. However, no other champions weren’t the best team (either at the time or in retrospect) and indeed neither group of Springboks were unworthy champions.  Everyone associates the 2011 New Zealand winners with the nervous wreck that fell over the line in the final, but scroll back to the semi-final, quarter-final and pool stages and they were the best team in the tournament
• Runners-up are not necessarily the second best team in the competition – this isn’t a league, remember. While the cream normally rises to the top, no-one is going to remember the 2003 Wobblies, 2007 English or 2011 French as vintage crops. Indeed, most in English rugby seem to have wilfully expunged the Ashton era from memory, and the French lost to Tonga and were an utter shambles rescued only by the leadership of Thierry Dusautoir, one of the all-time greats
• Ireland have never progressed beyond the quarter-finals – and have really only had two tournaments you could judge a success, and 2011 only was one because we claimed a Southern Hemisphere scalp. That’s been our level, like it or not.  Put simply, Ireland’s record in these tournaments is pretty average at best, dire compared to our pretensions

So what was all that in aid of then? Well, let’s start on the third point – Ireland haven’t progressed beyond a quarter-final. It’s hard to pinpoint a time when Ireland were obviously among the best in the world – top 8 has been our level. Are we better than that now? Easy to say yes, clearly, on the back of our back-to-back Six Nations, but it’s not that simple. If we consider England, Wales and Ireland during the Schmidt era, games between the three have resulted in two wins each. In the last edition, the teams finished with the same number of points, with Ireland taking the gong on points difference. In our view there is a fly-paper between the sides.

If there is a fly-paper between them, there is a hardback book to the level the Southern Hemisphere showed during the Rugby Championship – it would be hard to see any of the Northern Hemisphere powerhouses living with the general standard produced during the summer. But – like we said – it isn’t a league. Ireland, quite obviously, aren’t the best team in the world, or anything close to it, but while that might preclude us wining the thing, it isn’t the end of the world (see: Lievremont, Marc – 2011). A semi final would constitute a “best tournament ever”, and seems to be something of a national obsession – and it’s achievable.

The major reason to think Ireland can reasonably consider this as a great chance to better their previous best is the draw. If Schmidt was asked to pick a top seed from BNZ, SA, England and France – he’d pick France. If he was asked to pick a third seed between Wales, Scotland, Italy and Tonga – I think he’d pick Italy. Aside from the fag-end of the Deccie era, we haven’t had any trouble with Italy since before Dorce’s international career. And Italy in Rome in the spring is one thing, Italy in a World Cup is another.  They travel terribly, and have been hopeless in World Cups.  It’s a dream pool, eminently winnable. And if we do, the only preferable quarter final opponent to the runner up to BNZ’s group is the one in South Africa’s – but still, at least we’re avoiding the one from England’s group. Compare a scenario where Ireland were drawn with England and Wales in the pool stages – would you be as confident? Hardly. So that’s great.

If Ireland win their pool and lose in the quarter finals, is that a success? No, quite frankly, it isn’t – we’ve done that, four years ago, and despite the best efforts of Gerry and co. to insist otherwise, it was a disappointment. The nature of the quarter final defeat made it worse, but there is no such thing as heroic defeat in a World Cup – just defeat. If we don’t win the pool, we play BNZ – and we won’t win, lets be honest with ourselves. So to make the semis and make the tournament a success (by our definition), the path is winning the pool and beating the runners up from the BNZ pool. Can we do it, and what comes next?

The Pool

We will beat Canada with the firsts, Romania with the dirt trackers and Italy with the firsts. No doubt. Move on.

What about France? The mere sight of a grizzled French prop sucking on a Gitanes or an athletic and good looking wing looking suggestively at Clare Balding used to make Paddy go weak at the knees and slack-jawed, allowing the tanned and self-confident Pierre to walk in multiple tries against us. But no longer – since the O’Leary game over four years ago, we haven’t lost to our bete-noir (thanks Gerry!). Deccie fought out two draws and Schmidt has beaten them twice. Nothing has been easy, but we still haven’t lost to them. Looking in more depth at the players in our squad, we have eleven who have never lost to the French (Madigan, Henry, Henshaw, Kearney Jr, McGrath, Murphy, Payne, Toner, Zebo, Henderson, O’Mahony), all of whom will have aspirations of being in the 23, and only Earls, Jackson and Ryan have never beaten them.

It’s a nice habit. Plus, for all the cliches about “not knowing what France will turn up”, we’re going to go out on a limb here and say that we know exactly what France will turn up – the rabble we have seen since Philippe Saint-Andre took over. They have finished fourth, sixth, fourth and fourth in their Six Nations and have a grand total of 1 (videprinter moment – ONE) win over teams that aren’t Scotland and Italy in competitive games in this entire RWC cycle. They are a directionless, shapeless excuse of a team that will be piloted by Freddy Michalak! We keep hearing about all this Herculean training they are doing, but listen – they were so woefully out of shape in recent years, it’s the least they need to avoid disgracing themselves.

The team are still – still! – constructed around the peerless Dusautoir, but the supporting cast, while individually excellent, just aren’t doing it in blue. The pack are huge, but what good is a huge pack if you can’t actually win any games on the back of it. For all the behemoth hugeness, they lack mobility.  Maestri, Atonio, Guirado – big men, but hardly sprightly, and not to be feared. What, on paper, is an impactful bench, is nothing of the sort – all we can remember is France hanging on at the end of games, not stepping on the gas. Constant chopping and changing in the backs has left us with Scott Spedding in the first team. If you cut them an even break, like England did in Twickers, they will run in a few tries, but play with accuracy and structure and you’ll beat them. Sure, it’s going to be tough going, and we’ll examine some of the micro issues in depth the week of the game, but we’re not buying any talking up of the French – this is the worst team they have had in memory, and we will beat them.

Knockouts

After that, we’ll be playing the runners up in the BNZ pool – likely Argentina. Ireland have been consistently ranked above Argentina in recent years, but for an odd reason: while we have hoovered up ranking points against Italy, Scotland and France, they have bled them by losing to BNZ, South Africa and Australia. Each year, they have got closer – and this year they hammered SA in Durban, having topped the Wobs in Mendoza the year before. They’ve been largely competitive, and had the best scrum in the competition for the last two years. It’s worth asking Schmidt what preparation he would prefer – playing and losing the RC or playing and winning in the 6N – there are arguments for both. And they will fancy beating us as well – they always do.

The UAR have for once done a good job, and have harvested players at home for the Super Rugby franchise that will start in 2016, with the majority of their squad now based at home. They are sprinkled with world class players (Ayerza, Creevy, Fernandez Lobbe, Sanchez, Imhoff) and are fit and rested. Similar to how Ireland will use their first three games to build up to France, Argentina play BNZ first and will use the games against Georgia, Tonga and Namibia to build up to play us.

At this juncture, this looks to us like a 50-50 match – both teams are in the bunch behind NZ, SA and Oz and around the standard of England and Wales. Still, this is what our tournament will come down to to cross the success/failure line – a one-off match with Argentina. Based on how Schmidt has prepared his teams to date, we’re backing him to pull this one off. We’re far out and injuries etc will surely have an impact, but from here, we reckon we can do it.

After that, we think Ireland will have met their match. A week after that, it’s the winner of the Group of Death (more of which anon) and for us, that’s as far as we go. A week out from Argentina facing a team who will likely have whacked Scotland pretty easily and taken off important players with 30 minutes to go. No shame, but we see a tired Ireland unable to go to the well three weeks in a row – this is a tough tournament and our best simply won’t be enough. And there is no shame in that – for this, remember, will be our best effort ever in a tournament in which we usually fall flat on our faces.

Four years ago, the half-back combination were Ireland’s biggest personnel headache heading into the World Cup – at scrum-half, Tomas O’Leary was the first choice but was playing like a drain – he was being kept out of the Munster team by young tyro (© Gerry) and 4th choice at Ireland Conor Murray and all attempts to play him into form were progressively worse. One out, after 18+ months of prevaricating between Jonny Sexton and RADGE, we still had not decided on our starting outhalf.

Unsurprisingly, this all came back to bite us – while Conor Murray smoothly stepped up and ended the tournament as starter, it was too much to ask of him to play the French petit general role. That one went to Ronan O’Gara Jonny Sexton Ronan O’Gara, which didn’t work out. Not Radge’s fault, but chickens came home to roost.

This time around it’s all so different – bringing Benty (PLEASE – let’s keep him out of this one below the line) means we have space for an extra back, which looks like being Ian Madigan, meaning squad selection dilemmas are virtually nil.

Conor Murray and Jonny Sexton would likely be the Lions starting pair if a tour started tomorrow, and Eoin Reddan is the back-up change-up scrummie on the bench.  Reddan had a poor season for Leinster, but was superb against Wales, albeit with the ball presented on a silver platter.  The only remaining question is who Sexton’s backup is – while he has started 15 games under Schmidt, he has only finished 2, with 1 of those being injury-enforced – so this is a live question.

Under Schmidt, Paddy Jackson, Ian Madigan and Ian Keatley have all started one game but Jackson and Madigan have vied for the first reserve position, with Jackson sitting on the bench for the 2014 Six Nations (except, famously, the last game) and Madigan for the other series. The generally accepted pecking order is that Madigan is the bench guy, but if Sexton is injured Jackson or Keatley are preferred. Since Keatley displaced Jackson in the squad for the 2014 November internationals, their form-lines have sharply diverged – Jackson has returned from injury playing heads-up and sharp rugby right on the gainline and is a good defender, while Keatley was a harrowed mess by season end. Madigan, the best goal kicker of the three by a distance, was stuck behind Jimmy Gopperth for most of Matt O’Connor’s Leinster reign, and was playing like Keatley for the tail end of it. When the wider squad was named, Keatley was out and Jackson and Madigan were in.

Jackson started the Wales game, playing well but kicking from the tee again remains a concern, and the received wisdom is that Mad-dog will get a shot at Scotland. And the likelihood is that all three will make the squad – Jackson will be Sexton’s nominal backup if he goes down while Madigan will wear number 22. If Sexton does go down and Jackson starts a Test, the biggest question remains around his place-kicking – while Sexton and Madigan are 80+% men, Jackson is 70%, on a good day (he went 4/7 against Wales and missed one easy kick). Can we trust an outhalf who isn’t a guaranteed kicker? It certainly contributed to Sexton’s demotion in 2011.

This time around, Jacko has been working with Dave Aldred, and Richie Murphy chalked Jackson’s first missed kick in the Millennium down to it being his first of the season coming early in the game, and him not being settled in his breathing yet. Mind you, would you trust Madigan to start a game, even with his kicking? At least it’s better than 2007, when the backups were Paddy Wallace (centre) and Geordy Murphy (fullback).

At least we know both will make the squad. At scrummie, the third slot seems likely to go to Isaac Boss, who, incredibly, will be going to his 3rd World Cup (as will Eoin Reddan) despite just 7 starts for Ireland – which must be some kind of record. At least Boss has been in and around matchday squads under Schmidt. Kieron Marmion looked to have inched ahead of him nine months ago, but a poor performance in the Wolfhounds game and a significant drop in performance in the second half of the season means Boss is back. After that, the dropoff is severe.

The squad, Test 23 and Test XV selections largely pick themselves, which is nice:

• Test starter: Murray, Sexton
• Test backups: Reddan, Jackson
• Test bench: Reddan, Madigan
• Tackle-bag duty: Boss

The 2015 World Cup is the first one of the eight man bench era, and the All Blacks PR Department World Rugby have awarded everyone an extra squad place (and hopefully a bigger food allowance) to compensate them for the inconvenience. So that’s one extra slot, with Ireland going from four to five based on previous tournaments.

However, this is also going to the the first RWC where Ireland will have a substitution strategy, and backups will have a role to play beyond stepping in when the first choice gets injured. In the last two (ambi-propstrous) tournaments, Ireland have brought the following props along, with minutes played in crucial games (Argentina, France in 2007; Australia, Italy, Wales 2011) noted:

• 2007: Starters: Marcus Horan (160), John Hayes (155). Backups: Simon Best (5), Bryan Young
• 2011: Starters: DJ Church (232), Mike Ross (236). Backups: Patsy Court (12), Mushy

Bryan Young.  If you can remember anything about him, consider yourself the proud owner of a brand new hatchback.

Hard to see the bench men playing 17 collective minutes over five games this time around somehow. So if we now have four props that are critical members of the Test 23, of which we will need every man to play his role in the tournament. Best case scenario, we shove against Italy, France and Argentina just to get to a semi-final, so should Ireland be bringing a specialist backup for each side of the scrum?

First things first though – the first four slots on the plane, and jumpers 1, 3, 17 and 18 are locked in place with DJ Church, Jack McGrath, Mike Ross and Marty Moore all certain to travel. There was a flurry of “fears grow” stories started by the Indo about Church’s recovery last week, but there is simply no chance one of our few world class players won’t be given right up to kick off in the France game to get ready – he’ll be picked. And we’ve moaned incessantly about Ross starting ahead of Moore, but Ross’s performance have largely been good, and Schmidt has largely been vindicated, so we’ll park that one for another day.

So – five or six? O’Reilly suggested on Sunday that Schmidt was leaning towards five, and taking Michael Bent as the fifth prop in the squad, but that simply beggars belief – that would mean we are one injury away from pitching Bent in against the French for 20 minutes. Bent has made an admirable stab at nailing down a place in the Leinster squad (something we saw as his ceiling when he came over) but to suggest Leinster’s fourth choice tighthead could somehow play a meaningful role for Ireland in the World Cup is fairly fanciful.

With two props on the bench, the marketable skill that is being able to scrum on both sides is worth a lot less, and, given you are guaranteed to be facing a specialist, it all seems a bit pointless. Some will say “yeah, but if Church was injured, Schmidt would just call up Kilcoyne”, but if that’s the case, why even pick Bent in the first place if we are certain we won’t play him against the better sides? It seems an unnecessary risk.

Surely better to pick specialist backups on each side, and bring one less centre or wing or whatever – to place our World Cup hopes on the ability of Bent to hold up a side against Argentina seems a pointless risk. Tadhg Furlong and Dave Kilcoyne are the obvious choices for those roles – it seems to be too soon for James Cronin and to be fair to Kilcoyne, which we may not always have been, he’s a survivor in the scrum who is good on the ground and weighs in with more tries than you might think.

WoC’s Front Row squad picks: Healy, McGrath, Kilcoyne; Ross, Moore, Furlong