Wales coach Warren Gatland must have been a disaster to mind as a kid. Any sight of a hornet's nest and he'd be straight over with a big stick. His mantra on Joe Schmidt's Ireland, always said in victory, is that they play negative rugby.
Successful but negative rugby.
“I don’t think Ireland play a lot of rugby,” said the Welsh coach after their 16-10 victory. “They have been incredibly successful. I thought they were really narrow at times, a lot of players quite narrow. When they play that game effectively, using one-off runners effectively, and get some success from cross kicks. That’s what they are good at doing. They are good at pressurising you and forcing you into turnovers and building the score.
“But we didn’t feel like we were troubled at all in the wide channels. They got some turnovers and some kick returns which put us under pressure but when they played with the ball in hand we didn’t feel like we were under a huge amount of pressure.
“But they are a quality side. We just worked really hard on our defence in the last while. We used that as a focus because they blew us away in the first game. We needed to address that I thought we did a good job.”
Joe Schmidt was asked to respond: "That's a perception that Warren's fully entitled to.
“The ball was pretty slow to be honest,” he explained.
Really though, Ireland didn’t show their hand, certainly nothing new anyway.
“Once the ball is slow you are almost defending with the ball.”
That’s how it looked in Cardiff and again here.
“They have a style and a game plan that has been incredibly successful for them,” Gatland added. “Sometimes it is hard to move away from that. I can understand that. Sometimes criticism of us is we play too much rugby. Sometimes you have to keep it simple. That was the message for our guys at half-time. Kick the ball long and put some pressure on them.
“Look, I’m not being critical of Ireland. What Joe and that Irish team has achieved is absolutely outstanding. They’ve got a formula that has been successful for them. I’m sure they will tweak a few things and look to try and add things to their game.
“I’m sure they are very much like us – we haven’t brought everything to the table yet. Haven’t shown things, we are keeping things behind for the next few weeks because there is so much analysis going on if we showed everything we are going to do it is not going to be a surprise for that first big game which is going to be England in Twickenham.”
That also being Ireland’s next stop along this long road.
