Donal Lenihan was struggling. “I’m trying to work out if it’s 13 players we have at this stage,” he said as Ireland re-emerged from the dressingroom for the second half against South Africa on Saturday. Hugh Cahill did some totting up. “Twelve,” he said. “Twelve?! My counting was never great,” Donal sighed, the fella desperately in need of an abacus by now.
The sin bin, meanwhile, was desperately in need of more chairs, maybe even a chaise longue, a très longue one, to accommodate all the players who had been banished there by referee Matthew Carley.
Sam Prendergast and Jack Crowley, as we know, have thus far been inseparable in the battle for the number 10 shirt, and they were inseparable again after both were binned for having sinned. “Oh God, oh my God,” said Donal as Jack took a seat alongside Sam. “We don’t have an outhalf now!”
We were short a lock too after James Ryan had received a yellow that looked a bit orange-ish and eventually turned red. Over on TNT Sports, commentator Joe Byrnes noted that we were seeing every autumnal shade out there, neither Brian O’Driscoll nor Rory Best entirely chuffed about the sight.
Ireland were back to 13 men, though, when someone returned, but Donal feared Tadhg Beirne was about to be yellowed and we’d be at 12 again. “It’ll be seven-a-side soon,” he said, but Beirne escaped so we stayed at 13. Until: “He’s gone! Porter’s gone!” Another yellow. Back to 12. “I don’t how many we’ve left at this stage.”
The Ryan yellow/orange/red prompted a bit of a disagreement between the RTÉ and TNT crews. Stephen Ferris was bordering on the incandescent come half-time. “I think our game’s broken at the minute, I don’t know what I’m watching,” he said. “James Ryan’s shoulder brushed the nose of Malcolm Marx,” he insisted as we watched a replay of Malcolm Marx’s nose nearly ending up in the middle of next week.
“That collision looked significant,” BOD said of the same incident. “The big one is Ryan looked wildly out of control as well,” said Rory. So no arguments from either about the upgrading, Stephen possibly in need of a trip to Specsavers.
“Yellow cards to beat the band,” as Jamie Heaslip put it, John Smit – “Springbok rugby royalty,” as Jacqui Hurley described him – estimating that we’d seen “a thousand”. Not quite, but it felt like that’s how many minutes the first half had taken to complete, much of it occupied by Carley watching the big telly in the stadium.
Second half. While the IRFU lodged an emergency application for an extension to the Aviva sinbin, South Africa took a 24-10 lead. “This could go from bad to worse, you’d fear it’s finger-in-the-dam stuff,” Donal groaned as he spotted movement on the visitors’ bench. “Look who’s coming on.” RG Snyman. All 6ft 9ins and 20 stones of him, the fella weighing more than what was left of the Irish pack.
But Bernard Jackman was heartened by the sinbin emptying a little. “Back to 14 now. Or 15.” And Donal was too after Sam narrowed the deficit a small bit with a penalty. “It’s like the old saying, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
Despite a Jumbo effort by Ireland, though, it finished 24-13 to South Africa who, judging by the rather rude reaction of the crowd, had played with 16 men for the entirety of the game. “The player of the match should have gone to the referee,” Stephen grumbled. “He was the centre of attention throughout the whole game.”
“It was mental,” he added in his final verdict on the game, one that provided some Aviva debut for Catherine Connolly. Mind you, despite having promised to be a president for all, the Uachtarán showed a bit of favouritism when she was greeting the Irish team, Bundee Aki and Mack Hansen receiving particularly hearty hugs. “Connacht abú,” she just about stopped herself from hollering.
Back on TNT, Joe described her as “the queen of keepie-uppies”, but then engaged in some shameful slander. Her “skills were so sharp they merited an inquest into deep fakes and all of that sort of stuff”. People had been sinbinned for less on Saturday.
