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Unbeaten Ireland head to Farrell family reunion chasing triple crown | Michael Aylwin


Three games into the new era, and Andy Farrell’s Ireland are playing for a triple crown. They will travel to Twickenham in a fortnight, where Farrell will send out his boys in search of the prize against his homeland, his former employers – against his son. The narrative is delicious.

In the end, Storm Ciara did the right thing, holding off for just long enough to allow the home team to whip up enough turbulence themselves. In so doing, they saw off a Wales team embarking on new journeys of their own. Ciara’s stiffening winds could only assail the high south walls of the Aviva. There was evidence, certainly, of some capricious eddies in the stadium, but the integrity of the contest was preserved.

If a new coach wants improvement with each match, Farrell can have no complaints: this was a notable step up from last week’s win over Scotland. The dark days of the end of Joe Schmidt’s reign are already starting to feel well in the past. Ireland did not have it all their own way. An absorbing match reached its pitch either side of the hour, as Wales, trailing 19-7, pushed hard for the try that not only would have been well deserved but might have propelled the match into the next level of drama.

Hadleigh Parkes, who was but one of several to shine as Wales wound up the intensity in attack, picked a fine line, broke the tackle of Peter O’Mahony and reached out for the line. Everyone seemed happy with a good try, but closer inspection revealed the ball to have slipped from his grasp just as he placed it. A few minutes later, a euphorically celebrated penalty at an attacking Welsh scrum allowed Ireland to clear their lines. Storm weathered. The rest of the match was theirs.

A sprinkling of luck, then, but Ireland capitalised on it, closing out the game with authority. The two late tries, one apiece, were decoration by then – no less, though, than the match deserved.

There was an urgency about both teams from the off, as if they knew they had to work fast before the storm came. Ireland’s first game under Farrell could be rated no more than satisfactory, but here they immediately found some joy on the wide outside. Jacob Stockdale and his mates made hay down Wales’s outside-centre channel, where Nick Tompkins, after his dazzling debut as replacement in last week’s romp against Italy, was introduced to the discomforts of life on the international stage. His most glaring error was to allow Jordan Larmour to step inside him on the way to the game’s first try, but if we can measure a player’s comfort by the number of times the opposition pour through his channel, the storm seemed to start early for Saracens’ latest international. Whether it was entirely his fault will be picked apart by the analysts later.

Wales spent the first quarter of the match under the cosh as Ireland came and came in the finest of traditions. Not that the visitors were unduly perturbed. They forced turnover after turnover in that period, practically Irish in the alacrity with which they sacked Ireland’s rucks and mauls.

Life under Wayne Pivac feels more invigorating already. After two rounds, Wales have already scored nearly as many tries as they managed all campaign last season. Few needed reminding in Dublin, in the bars, buses and hotels, that that campaign yielded Wales a grand slam. The gist of the retorts, equally pointed, was that it was just about the least convincing grand slam of modern times, 10 tries from five matches, the same as winless Italy. This term they have seven from two. It might have been eight, but for Parkes’s careless fingertips.

Wales’s use of big, ugly forwards as pivots was adroitly worked and very of the time. Their response to Larmour’s try was to seize their first meaningful stretch of possession, which culminated in a beauty of a try by Tomos Williams, sparked by a wall pass from old Alun Wyn Jones.

Brilliant – but it is almost more important how a team respond to their own brilliance than how they respond to the opposition’s. Williams’s next act was to fumble a lineout, which paved the way for Ireland’s second.

It was the sort of error that probably would not have happened in Cardiff. Conversely, Farrell’s regime has been eased into its rhythms by the luxury of two home matches on consecutive weekends. Now his mission increases in its intensity, a trip to Twickenham for an early tilt at some tangible reward. He could not have hoped for a more poignant development to that narrative.



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