Ireland are still unable to beat half-time bogey
The game wasn’t up for Ireland at half-time on Saturday evening but it sure didn’t look encouraging.
Not only because England had bossed that opening 40 minutes in Ballsbridge but because the record books were emphatic that Ireland simply haven’t been a team accustomed to, or capable of, turning around the 17-10 deficit at the interval.
The statistics are remarkably consistent and boil down to the fact that when Ireland lead at half-time they win, but when they are chasing the game at that point then they invariably lose.
It has been the case now for 29 games stretching back to the summer of 2016.
Ireland led the Springboks at half-time of the second summer Test, in Johannesburg, three years ago but went on to lose.
They have led 23 times at the 40-minute mark since then and seen the game out each and every time. The six times they have trailed they have lost.
It’s an incredibly accurate and, in a way, concerning barometer. Some of the leads and deficits have been painfully thin — Ireland trailed Australia and Wales by two points and lost, for example — but Eddie Jones clearly understood the import of all this.
“It was two good teams playing as well as they can but when you get behind on the scoreboard you have to play differently,” said the England coach.
“That’s the reality of Test match rugby. That’s what you always try to force the opposition to do.
“You try to get in front and make them play differently because they don’t practice that and then it becomes hard and then you get errors as we saw.
“We had a good win (on Saturday) but there’s nothing between the teams and we understand that.”
Yet, if there are grand conclusions to be drawn about Ireland — or England – on the basis of this one meeting then Jones was reluctant to make them.
Ireland, he stressed, had not morphed into a bad team overnight and England still has some way to ‘grow’.
The same went for any meaning this might have for the World Cup.
Having been involved in three World Cups previously, I know that that period that counts to have the team at its best is that period just before the World Cup.
"It’s very hard to sustain absolute outstanding performance for a long time because the game’s so exacting now.
“What Mako Vunipola did — he’s 125kg. That’s a big guy, big enough to be a sumo wrestler. He’s making 23 tackles, carrying the ball ten times, he’s scrummaging and lifting in the lineout.
“The intensity in the game is such now that you’ve got to work out when you’re going to peak and when you want to take it off a bit. That’s certainly at the back of our minds.”
