Ireland boss Andy Farrell says he is over his team’s World Cup quarterfinal exit, but can this Ireland team ever properly recover from the heartache of their 2023 Rugby World Cup quarterfinal loss to the All Blacks?
Ireland tour South Africa for the first time since 2016 for this season’s July internationals.
The Boks have not beaten Ireland since 2016 in South Africa, having lost in Dublin on two occasions, 38-3 under Allister Coetzee and 19-16 with Jacques Nienaber the coach.
Ireland also beat the Nienaber/Rassie Erasmus Boks 13-8 in a Pool match in Paris at the most recent World Cup, a tournament won by the Springboks for a fourth time.
Ireland, in the history of the World Cup, have never made it past the quarterfinals in eight attempts.
The Springboks beat hosts France 29-28 in a dramatic quarterfinal in Paris and French coach Fabian Galthie admitted it was a result that would haunt him and his squad for the rest of their lives.
Galthie told the media it was a scar that the 2023 French World Cup group would wear for the rest of their lives, such was their disappointment. They were shattered at the defeat, given they were one of the favourites to win the World Cup.
The other favourite was Ireland, who had beaten everyone in Dublin and created Irish rugby history by coming from one Test down to win a Test and then a series in New Zealand for the first time.
Farrell’s Ireland won the second and third Tests to claim the series 2-1 against the All Blacks and recovered from losing their tour opener against the Maori All Blacks to win the second ‘Test’ against the Maori.
Farrell could not have asked for a tougher start to 2024, playing France in Marseilles and then touring South Africa for two Tests against the Springboks in Pretoria and Durban in July.
Ireland were red-hot in the pool stages of the World Cup. Jonny Sexton, their veteran flyhalf and captain, was anointed a World Cup-winner in waiting, then it all went to pot in the quarterfinal against the All Blacks.
Ireland, trailing 28-24, played through 34 phases in the final minutes of the Test before conceding a penalty for holding on in the 35th phase. It was their most impotent passage of play of the year and it cost them their World Cup dream.
Farrell, on the eve of the Six Nations, has said that the team was capable of moving on from Sexton, who has retired after a 15-year international career, and he has also said that Ireland had moved on from the World Cup trauma.
Ireland play France in Marseilles on February 2, with the hosts already without star scrumhalf Antoine Dupont, who will play Sevens and lead the French rugby challenge at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
France, at home, will be favourites, and France in Marseilles is even more difficult to play than France at the Stade de France in Paris’s Saint Denis suburb.
The crowd in Marseilles, in the south of France, is more hostile.
Galthie wears his heart on his sleeve, and he wears the scar of the World Cup defeat against the Springboks with heartache and regret. His honesty is telling because it is not a result to be dismissed or waved away.
Farrell, like every Irish player, can’t have moved on from the pain of their defeat. It has to haunt them, and it has to trouble the players, who were adamant 2023 was their world champion year.
Ireland’s performance in the Six Nations is the one that will command South Africa’s attention, in the form of Erasmus, the Springboks players and the rugby public.
Farrell could not have asked for a tougher start to 2024, playing France in Marseilles and then touring South Africa for two Tests against the Springboks in Pretoria and Durban in July.
Ireland has won just once in 10 Tests in South Africa, at Newlands in 2016 when they played 14 against 15 for the last hour because of a red-card to South African-born No.8 CJ Stander.
The Boks won in Johannesburg and Gqeberha to seal the series 2-1 and maintain a stranglehold, in South Africa at least, against a team they first played in Belfast in 1906.
That Test was played in front of 15,000 and won 15-12 by the Springboks.
Expect a similar result when Ireland tours in July, but also expect the most interesting of matches in Marseilles on February 2, when the 2023 World Cup’s two biggest losers get back on the horse that is international rugby.
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