What this team lacks most are the sinews of its captain’s will

Ireland are heading for a fallow period due to a lack of talent, says Neil Francis

Well, the FUBAR, SNAFU and GUBU weekend has passed and at this stage it is done to death. The bottom line though is that putting your faith in the hands of the blazers is like sending your dog for a holiday to the taxidermist — you know what is going to happen sooner or later.

Imagine if the same bunch of idiots were charged with flying the team home — another clusterf***, God forbid, of Munich air disaster proportions, although at least Matt Busby had some extravagantly talented teenagers hanging around when half his team were tragically killed. Declan Kidney hasn’t got that luxury.

There is a great line in the song Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell and laterly covered by the Counting Crows, ‘Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.’ A good coach needs a patient wife, a loyal dog, an understanding public and a great captain, but not necessarily in that order.

Kidney’s great captain is gone. We miss so many things that are conspicuous by his absence: everything from his game management to his very presence. People questioned his offensive input stating that mostly it was his defensive qualities which we still found remarkable.

While Wales were patiently making their way unhindered up the field in the Aviva everyone else was waiting for someone to put in one, just one, devastating hit to stop the Welsh advance cold. It never happened. O’Driscoll’s team-mates are spokes in a wheel, O’Driscoll was the hub; take away the hub and you have a rim with loosened spokes. What this team lacks most are the sinews of O’Driscoll’s will.

Paul O’Connell has come in and manfully tried to put his mark on the badge. I stand to be corrected but I don’t think O’Connell has won a meaningful game for Ireland as captain. He has done the job for Munster as captain but not Ireland. Ireland was the inferior team in the Aviva, yet it was a match that they should have won. The buck stops with the leader on the field when the game goes down to the wire. A coach can influence a game from 20, 30, 40 minutes out, but at the death it is the on-field leader who takes responsibility if the deal is not closed.

So, different captain, different dynamic. The team is about to go through a fallow period. I chose my words advisedly in the sense that if you thought the term transitional period was more appropriate you would have to have the personnel to go through the transition. I have a sneaking admiration for business managers who use the rule

500 Word Extract from Original Article Only...