Peter Jackson: Irish dominance whittled down to two certain Lions
DAN THE BAN: Ireland's Dan Sheehan after scoring their side's third try during the Guinness Men's Six Nations match at the Stadio Olimpico, Rome. Picture date: Saturday March 15, 2025.
This time last year a putative Lions Test team would have amounted to Ireland and a few of The Rest, a prognosis designed to turn the old red jersey into 40 shades of green.
If it sounded a bit too good to be true back then when Peter O’Mahony raised the Six Nations trophy towards the heavens, it sounds all the more so now; about as implausible as you-know-who making a public apology to the people of Ukraine.
A sporting weekend that began with Willie Mullins and Paul Townend cleaning up during Ireland’s monopoly of the last day at Cheltenham petered out in Rome. A ropey old victory of Pyrrhic proportion for a third place finish left the IRFU counting around €5m in lost prize money and a few too many players exposed to a double whammy.
Twelve months ago a case could have been made for Ireland’s champions filling two-thirds of the Lions starting positions. As of now, the number of certainties, those head and shoulders above the rest, has shrunk to two: Dan Sheehan and Jamison Gibson-Park.
Hugo Keenan, for so long the most accomplished full back in the four home countries, is no longer a Test shoe-in. Blair Kinghorn, all the better for his enrolment at the Toulouse academy of Total Rugby, has seen to that.
Other champions of 2024 justifiably touted as No. 1 contenders have no need to look over their shoulders for challengers because they can feel them breathing down their necks. Andrew Porter, Tadhg Furlong, Joe McCarthy, Josh van der Flier, Robbie Henshaw, even Caelan Doris, given Ben Earl’s rampaging form for England, fall into that category.
All, save for the returning Furlong, have been affected by Ireland’s subdued performances before and after the French rout. Porter’s claim to be the starting loosehead is now under threat from England’s Ellis Genge.
Furlong has ground to make up at tighthead on Zander Fagerson and Will Stuart. McCarthy has lost ground to recover in a second-row pecking order headed by Maro Itoje, so important that he is, literally, unsub-able.
Amid the ferocity of competition at openside, van der Flier is in some danger of being overtaken by opposite numbers from Scotland (Rory Darge), Wales (Jac Morgan) and from England (the Curry twins). The heat is not confined to those in the pack.
Garry Ringrose, recognised until recently as the best outside centre in the home countries, now finds his status jeopardised by the Welsh-sounding Scot Huw Jones and Tommy Freeman’s spectacular conversion from wing to England’s midfield, albeit against embarrassingly feeble opposition.
Bundee Aki, at 35 still giving Father Time a hard time, faces a severe test at inside centre from one of the Six Nations’ major absentees, Sione Tuipulotu. The Lions’ decision to defer naming their squad until early May gives the Scotland captain every chance of regaining match fitness in time.
Tuipulotu isn’t the only one hoping to be given a free trip to see the folks back home in Australia. Mack Hansen, granted the rare luxury of an 80-minute run free of handicap, made the most of it to revive his Lions dream as did Tom Roebuck on the same wing for England.
That could force Andy Farrell to make a choice, one he would hope to avoid like the plague, between James Lowe and Duhan van der Merwe on the left wing. The undeniable shift of European rugby’s tectonic plates from Ireland to France will leave Farrell no option but to fill some positions without a serious Irish contender.
Fly half is one. Two seasons ago, a lad whose grandfather propped for the Lions in the 1950s found himself out of work at the age of 20 when his club, Worcester Warriors, went bust. Do not be surprised if the lad, Fin Smith, starts at stand-off for the Lions ahead of Finn Russell.
Another Six Nations has come and gone, one like no other as the first to generate a century of tries over the 15 matches, a fact which the cheerleaders have been shouting about from Cork to Carcassone and any old rooftop in between.
Far from being a source of acclamation, the soaring number of tries ought to be ample reason for raising alarms for the future of the tournament. Far from being seen as thrilling evidence of Test rugby’s money-for-value entertainment, it heralds the advent of something rather more serious: a divided tournament.
The gap between top and bottom has grown into a chasm in the space of the two years since Wales stopped competing, their regional game neglected by their Union’s policy of pouring so much money into the national team that the rusting assembly lines seized up.
Of the 100 or so tries, virtually half were conceded by Wales (24) and Italy (27). France ran in eleven against Italy, seven against Wales; England seven against Italy, ten against a Welsh 23 that offered a collective contradiction of the old saying about a team being too bad to be true.
Wales going awol throughout the Six Nations detracts from that tournament as Real Madrid missing in action would from the Champions League. No-contests are bad for business and the last few weeks saw too many, like France 73 Italy 24, Wales 14 England 68, France 43 Wales 0.
For those seasoned members of the Red Dragon Brotherhood who had grown old before their time, watching their team implode against the old enemy meant living through an unimaginable nightmare. That there is no sign of their stricken rugby team recovering any time soon makes it feel even worse.
Historically, the Welsh have supplied the Lions with more players than England, Ireland and Scotland. In 1971 when the best of British and Irish won a series in New Zealand for the only time, the backs for the opening Test were all Welsh (JPR Williams, Gerald Davies, John Dawes, John Bevan, Barry John, Gareth Edwards) save for a lone Irishman, Mike Gibson.
Having left Wales nursing their worst championship beating of all time, England had ample reason to see it as belated payback for a few of the Cardiff misadventures inflicted upon them down the decades.
They have never been allowed to forget any of them, not least the Gavin Henson match of 2005 when a teenaged Mathew Tait made a premature England debut. Twenty years on, 20-year-old Henry Pollock scored twice on debut, debunking the theory that Cardiff on big-match day is no place for English kids.
Dan Sheehan’s hat-trick is the first by a hooker in the Six Nations, the Five Nations and, before the Home Unions made their minds up about admitting France to the cosiest of cosy clubs, the Four Nations.
Better still, it is only the second by a forward after CJ Stander’s trio at the same venue in 2017 and, best of all, the first by a front row forward since Jehoida Hodges for Wales against England at Swansea 122 years ago.
The Newport prop scored his hat-trick not from a total distance of three metres but from wide out on the touchline. Considered the most versatile prop of his generation, Jehoida was redeployed among the backs after Wales had lost their left wing Tom Pearson.
One record though remains beyond Sheehan’s reach, as held by one of his more illustrious predecessors, Keith Wood who touched down four times against the grounded American Eagles at Lansdowne Road during the 1999 World Cup. ‘Uncle Fester’, as he used to be known in a previous life at Harlequins, won’t be surprised if Sheehan matches that soon enough.
Far from conceding that Fabien Galthie might have had a point, Rory Best rebuked France’s head coach for daring to allege that Antoine Dupont’s mangled knee had been caused by foul play.
The former Ireland captain responded to the issue with some old-school philosophy on ITV: "There are times to jump up and down about incidents but this was not one of them. It was an unfortunate rugby incident, unfortunately."
Most meaningless stat of the tournament, an ever more depressingly congested field, emerged halfway through the Cardiff mis-match:
Territory 50-50. A close run thing, then? Wales had just lost the first-half 7-33 and would lose the second 7-35. Consistent…
Ex-Wales captain Alun-Wyn Jones at half-time during the obliteration by England: "They (Wales) have nothing to lose.’’ Only their national pride, self-respect and the credibility of their so-called national sport.
15 Thomas Ramos (France) 14 Damian Penaud (France) 13 Huw Jones (Scotland) 12 Tommaso Menoncello (Italy) 11 Louis Bielle-Biarrey (France) 10 Fin Smith (England) 9 Maxime Lucu (France) 1 Ellis Genge (England) 2 Dan Sheehan (Ireland) 3 Uini Atonio (France) 4 Maro Itoje (England) 5 Thibauld Flament (France) 6 Francois Cros (France) 7 Tom Curry (England) 8 Gregory Alldritt (France)
