Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

SA compete with NZ every year who have won 5X the number of championships as both SA and Oz, and are historically the most consistent team on the planet, and the best. Ireland's record in the 6N is very good but we rarely compete against any team that is as consistent or good as NZ, England in the early naughties and France in the last few years. Otherwise the standards are very different, exemplified by our WC record.

We've won a good few titles in the last decade but my earlier point is that SA have been consistently winning WCs for 40 years! We have a long way to go before we have that sort of consistency in any competition. And the point still stands regarding SA dealing annually in competition w NZ, we do not have that sort of competition regularly, England, France and Wales are often very ordinary and rarely reach consistent top of the world status any length of time. You could just as easily say Ireland have a few medals these days because the rest of the 6N are just not capable of consistently challenging them.

Anyway, Im not interested in a nitpicking argument about why SA really aren't that good, that's subjective and irrelevant. My point is just the people need to separate out their feelings towards Rassie and some SA fans from SAs clear ability to perform in the WC which is the comp they care most about.

As an outsider looking in (to SA) I'd love to be able to say we're double RWC Champions and to be honest, I couldn't give a fiddlers what other countries/fans would think of us. When we're not winning RWCs then we can concentrate on 6Ns again.

And a few fans here seems to care that they care.

Crazy, isn't it.

I dont see anyone caring about the Boks, they have the WC and should have the higher ground

Yet they are the ones running to the press etc

The SA rivalry is spicy partly because many of their players come up against our lads in the league, and are often on the wrong end of it, and because we have an excellent record against them, including the WC group match last year. It a bit similar to the ABs who we have parity with at least most of the time these days. Say what you like about the 6N but those two teams are the two powerhouses of the global game and they both have an intense need to be seen to dominate us. Take it as a compliment.

Yeah, this is exactly it.

Like, a two-test series between the first and second ranked teams, your first games on home turf as RWC champions, against the last team to beat you… isn't that enough motivation? It shouldn't need all this background noise and weird paranoia, but this seems to be the only way Erasmus can function.

Jesus lads, why do we even bother watching the sport for 3 and a half years between these world cups?

Because we can moan about how poor the RWC Champions are and how brilliant we are.

Like the summer tour is being built up as the 1st and 2nd ranked teams, yet, we've never, ever, got past the RWC QFs. Teams with lower rankings than us have made and won QFs, SFs, and finals

Rankings are great for what they're used for, rankings in the RWC competition but outside of that, they're utterly useless.