The Rugby World Cup is not all glamour. South Africa are staying outside a one-horse town 25 miles north of Paris where even the horse took one look at Thursday’s torrential rain and declined to leave its stable. Ireland are now based next to a motorway junction near EuroDisney, a long, long way from the capital’s smartest boulevards.
It was hard to avoid the sense of another big missed promotional opportunity for rugby, certainly from a photographer’s perspective. Johnny Sexton and Siya Kolisi posing in front of the Arc de Triomphe? Faf de Klerk offering passing tips to the dancers at the Moulin Rouge? Instead, on the eve of this most marketable of top-level games, all of them were sitting in sterile conference rooms, doing their best not to generate any unwanted headlines.
Mostly they succeeded but the next person who asks Ireland’s head coach, Andy Farrell, for his view on South Africa’s bench selection might be best advised to do so from a safe distance. “I did pose the question to our forwards coaches as to whether we should go with seven backs and one forward, but they weren’t up for that,” replied Farrell, wearily. Touché.
In private, even the Irish management will probably concede their Springbok counterparts have done a decent job of hijacking the pre-match agenda. Whatever anyone thinks about the notion of naming seven forward replacements, it has created a talking point that is still racking up impressive yardage.
And, a cynic might say, cleverly reinforced the idea of South African physicality despite the absence of two of their strongest forwards, Malcolm Marx and Duane Vermeulen.
Going early with the announcement of their “nuke squad” (the “bomb squad” has been superseded) has also helped to overshadow Ireland’s team unveiling, which might otherwise have had a wider impact. Look down the Irish team sheet, with Jamison Gibson-Park back at scrum-half and the fit-again Dan Sheehan on the bench, and there is class everywhere, as befits the world’s No 1 side.
That lofty title, rather bizarrely, is up for grabs based on this weekend’s outcome, with World Rugby having decided to update the rankings during the tournament rather than waiting until after the final. What is really focusing the minds of both sides, though, is the chance to cement a path out of Pool B and strike a psychological blow that might just come in handy later in the knockout stages.
The Boks, in particular, have been planning for this weekend for years. Jacques Nienaber is heading over to work for Leinster after this World Cup but that does not mean he is preparing to bend the knee to an Irish team that have lost only two of their past 29 Tests. Nor is he minded to apologise to those who believe the 7-1 split, while perfectly legal as things stand, has uncomfortable safety implications, particularly if too many other sides opt to send on a fresh pack of forwards simultaneously.
“It’s not against the laws of the game and I don’t think it has any bearing on player safety at all,” said Nienaber, well aware discussions about reducing the number of permitted substitutes are ongoing. “It will be a sad day, I think, if you’re innovative in the laws of the game and then they would change that.”
Farrell would clearly far rather be talking about Ireland but the size of the challenge coming down the track is impossible to duck. “Barring us, our team and management and Irish people all over the world, I think everyone thinks they’re the favourites and they’re going to win this game,” he suggested. “I can see why because of the form they’ve shown. But we don’t think like that. We are ready for a tough battle and it will take its own course.”
His captain Sexton also knows exactly what to expect – “They test you in every aspect and that is why we are going to have to be on top form” – with the battle of the breakdown certain to be critical. South Africa may be lacking Marx, so good over the ball, but they do have battalions of low-slung forwards well capable of filling the void.
Farrell, similarly, will be backing last year’s world player of the year, Josh van der Flier, and Caelan Doris to thrive in that area and injury could yet wreck South Africa’s best-laid bench plans. “Even with a 5-3 split, you can’t cover everything,” stressed Farrell, whose respect for the Boks’ modus operandi does not yet extend to wanting to copy it. “I am pretty confident in the five forwards we have got coming off the bench and the type of game we’re going to play when that happens.”
Wait and see, in other words. Farrell also referenced Ireland’s 19-16 win the last time the sides met in Dublin some 10 months ago. “More important than the 7-1 split, which is a bit irrelevant to us, is the last game we played against each other. We feel we could have performed better on that occasion.” Even on a wet day, in an unfashionable part of town, there is serious anticipation in the damp Parisian air.
