DURBAN - With respect to Super Rugby, the game of the weekend is going to be in Dublin where an Irish team incandescent with passion will “host” an England team they dislike with, well, a passion!
According to newspaper reports from Ireland and the UK, the Aviva Stadium sold out for this fixture months ago and black market touts can command just about any price for tickets to one of the most eagerly anticipated matches in the Northern Hemisphere for some years.
England are tied with New Zealand on 18 wins, the record for tier-one nations, and in their path of breaking the world record is the same Ireland team that last year halted the All Blacks’ winning streak with an ambush in Chicago, of all places.
Al Capone himself would have appreciated how the Irish sneaked up out of
nowhere and emptied their guns into a New Zealand team that did not see it coming.
Can Ireland replicate the ultimate rugby party-pooping act two years in a row, and stop Eddie Jones’ free-wheeling England team in their tracks?
The manner in which they demolished Scotland 61-21 at Twickenham last week was something to behold.
It was the best Scotland team to travel south of the border for many a year, and Highland hearts
believed the “Sassenach” could be put to the sword in true Braveheart fashion.
Sadly for the Scots, who mostly remain fiercely
anti-English to this day,
despite their “economic” vote to remain part of the UK two years ago, they were as ruthlessly dispatched as Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Scottish army was at Culloden Moor in 1746.
Scotland was incorporated into England and the Scots have been miffed ever since.
Ireland have as much “history” with the English, the difference being that their Easter Uprising in Dublin in 1917 culminated in their independence.
Suffice to say, the Irish this week would love nothing more than to do what Scotland could not last week.
I phoned my Irish mate living in Durban, Harry Monks, the musician who was half of the popular duo The Leprechauns and asked him, as a Dubliner, what the atmosphere would be like in Dublin.
“Bejeezers the black stuff (Guinness) will be flowing, make no mistake. Friday is St Patrick’s day and the celebrations will continue on Saturday,” the broad-accented Irishman said.
“And if we beat England, the barrels could run dry!”
Indeed they could, but the Irish ambush will have long been anticipated by Eddie Jones. The pluck of the Irish will not be good enough on its own and Eddie will be plotting to ensure the luck of the Irish is not a factor either.
Jones is just too wily a campaigner. He is a diminutive little fellow who was once a combative hooker in first grade club rugby in Sydney. He punched above his weight as a player but boy has he delivered some knockout punches as a coach when in charge of teams that were average but managed to out-manoeuvre fancied
opponents.
And this is long before Jones masterminded arguably sport’s greatest ever upset - that small matter of a Rugby World Cup match in Brighton between Japan and the Springboks in 2015.
Jones has not always had it easy. He had a season in charge of a Queensland Reds team that picked up some monumental hidings.
In 2007 his team was walloped 92-7 by the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld. Also that season, a reporter overheard him
addressing his side in the changeroom at Suncorp Stadium after a 50-point pasting from the Sharks that year and his caustic words were: “You guys are as soft as warm sh*t”.
It is that hard-edge and attitude that has turned England around. The Poms were laughed out of their own World Cup two years ago, but since Jones was asked to write his own cheque (in pounds sterling) to get him out of his contract with the Stormers, the Red Rose Army has been undefeated.
He has used more or less the same players as previous coach Stuart Lancaster. The difference is that Lancaster was too much of a nice guy.
The chemistry between him and the players was just not working.
Jones brought in attitude, highlighted by his choice of captain, bad boy hooker Dylan Hartley who was notorious for foul play, including a ban for biting. Jones’ choice of captain showed that he was drawing a line in the sand there would be no “softies” in any England team coached by him.
Ireland are by no means incapable of beating England. Heck, they beat the All Blacks a year ago. But they might just need the help of a few Leprechauns