Tour can put smile back in Irish eyes

By CHRIS HEWETT*

Ireland have not been Ireland just recently. For the past seven weeks, since the end of the Six Nations and the start of the business end of the European Cup, Ireland have been Munster.

No great change of culture, you may think, for Munstermen do the things all other Irishmen do, only more often: drink, travel to the big game, drink, watch the big game, drink, go home, and enjoy a last drink before hitting the sack (not forgetting to put a drink on the bedside table, just in case).

Unfortunately for followers of Irish rugby, Munster were beaten by Leicester in last weekend's Heineken Cup final - the biggest club game in the Northern Hemisphere - and they took it badly.

Not just because Neil Back diddled them out of a possible match-winning try by knocking the ball from Peter Stringer's hands as the halfback prepared to feed the final scrum of the game - a scrum five metres from the Leicester line, smack in front of the posts. But because Munster, a side of mature years, know they will struggle to make another final in the foreseeable future.

So Irish rugby, driven by Munster these past four seasons, is feeling sorry for itself - hardly the optimum frame of mind, given the standard of opposition the test team are about to encounter.

Indeed, there is a feel-bad factor about the Emerald game right now. Take the coaching panel as an example. Warren Gatland, effectively sacked as national coach before Christmas on the back of one desperate misfire against the Scots in Edinburgh, is still wondering what he did wrong.

His replacement, Eddie O'Sullivan, has not made the greatest of starts, and his refusal to pick outstanding young forwards such as Donnacha O'Callaghan and Mick O'Driscoll for this tour was not the action of a confident man.

What is more, some of the big-name Irish players have endured low-grade seasons. Keith Wood has been struggling for months and Ronan O'Gara choked in the Heineken final, not for the first time.

David Wallace, a Lions dirt-tracker in Australia last year, has been so anonymous he missed the original cut, . Peter Clohessy has retired, Mick Galwey is semi-retired.

All that stuff about an Irish renaissance, about the best Irish team since the early 1970s, has been exposed as so much baloney. They are better than Scotland, and certainly have the sign on Wales. But that is not saying much. Though they are a handful at home, their poor form on the road tells the true tale.

Yet New Zealand will do well to treat them with all due seriousness. Everyone knows about Wood and Brian O'Driscoll, but the brilliant young lock Paul O'Connell and the abrasive back-rower Alan Quinlan are also worth a second look.

David Humphreys has played exceptional rugby at first five-eighths for Ulster - a couple more centimetres and a few extra kilograms would make him a world-beater - and if the outsized Shane Horgan ever gets his head together, he could be an Irish Jonah: slow on the turn, but one hell of an item going forward.

The Irish need a lift right now, and though the average All Black is the last person on earth to give anyone an even break, Ireland will be happy with a respectable showing at test time and a new loosehead prop to replace Clohessy.

If they achieve both, they will build towards next year's World Cup with genuine ambition.

* Chris Hewett is chief rugby writer for the London Independent.