This week we go back to yet another Ireland win over England, just because.
Technically our choice of Throwback Thursday match should be based on our NEXT featured match, but, well, Twickenham. Nuff said. Let’s harp on that some more, shall we.
So there I was, writing my weekly 80+ column (one back here on the Substack feed) and I brought up the time it got leaked that England had produced a load of Grand Slam winning t-shirts ahead of their visit to Dublin, only to forget to do the most important thing, namely actually winning said Slam.
All of which inspired me to hark back to my writeup of that match in the Aviva Stadium. It was a time when Declan Kidney’s good will from his own 2009 Slam was starting to wear off…in this 2011 Championship we had already struggled to beat Italy & Scotland and lost to France & Wales before the English rocked up to our shiny new D4 home for the first time.
We all know what happened, yet I assume we all enjoy remembering what happened same as any other time we beat them, so here are the starting lineups followed by the writeup…
IRELAND
15 Keith Earls 14 Tommy Bowe 13 Brian O’Driscoll (c) 12 Gordon D’Arcy 11 Andrew Trimble 10 Johnny Sexton 9 Eoin Reddan
1 Cian Healy 2 Rory Best 3 Mike Ross 4 Donncha O’Callaghan 5 Paul O’Connell 6 Seán O’Brien 7 David Wallace 8 Jamie Heaslip
16 Seán Cronin 17 Tom Court 18 Leo Cullen 19 Denis Leamy 20 Peter Stringer 21 Ronan O’Gara 22 Paddy Wallace
ENGLAND
15 Ben Foden 14 Chris Ashton 13 Matt Banahan 12 Shontayne Hape 11 Mark Cueto 10 Toby Flood 9 Ben Youngs
1 Alex Corbisiero 2 Dylan Hartley 3 Dan Cole 4 Louis Deacon 5 Tom Palmer 6 Tom Wood 7 James Haskell 8 Nick Easter (c)
16 Steve Thompson 17 Paul Doran-Jones 18 Simon Shaw 19 Tom Croft 20 Danny Care 21 Jonny Wilkinson 22 David Strettle
RBS Six Nations – Round 5
Saturday, March 19, 2011
KO 5pm
Aviva Stadium
Referee – Bryce Lawrence (NZL)
SLAM, DENIED. FAITH, RESTORED.
Professional rugby union has evolved into so much more than an 80-minute slosh in the mud at the weekend. It’s now a process that begins the previous Monday morning.
As well as all the general work to be done on the training pitch and in the weights room, there’s DVDs to be analysed, charts to be drawn and top-secret code sequences to be created.
But when all is said and done, the real work behind everything associated with a team begins in just one square foot of real estate…the noggin of the head coach.
And for me, the most satisfying aspect of Ireland’s slam-denying victory at the Aviva Stadium was that it was clearly the culmination of a superior week’s preparation from Declan Kidney, who totally outfoxed his opposite number.
HARPIN' ON RUGBY 