{"id":22132,"date":"2025-09-15T05:23:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T05:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/22132\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T05:23:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T05:23:12","slug":"heartbreak-in-the-studio-as-ireland-fail-to-channel-their-inner-munster-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/22132\/","title":{"rendered":"Heartbreak in the studio as Ireland fail to channel their inner Munster \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lindsay Peat\u2019s advice to Ireland ahead of their World Cup<\/a> quarter-final against France was clear enough: \u201cWe need to absolutely smother them, torture them.\u201d As it proved, though, it was our bunch who endured a torturous conclusion to the game, one that left their semi-final dreams, well, smothered.<\/p>\n

Lindsay had, then, been bullish before the game, Niamh Briggs a touch more wary, while Bernard Jackman tried not to put too much pressure on the team, apart from noting that \u201cit\u2019s now or never, this group will never be together again\u201d.<\/p>\n

Jacqui Hurley, in her neutral all-green outfit, reminded us that a) no Irish team, male or female, had ever won a knock-out game at the Rugby World Cup, and b), Ireland\u2019s women hadn\u2019t beaten France since 2017. <\/p>\n

Other than that, the mood was upbeat, not least because where there\u2019s an Aoife Wafer, there\u2019s hope, Ireland\u2019s cross between Antoine Dupont and Roy of the Rovers back after her knee injury. <\/p>\n

And that first half went swimmingly, Des Curran and Fiona Coghlan left pinching themselves after Ireland went 10-0 up with two tries, before Dannah O\u2019Brien made it 13-0 at the break with a penalty. <\/p>\n

\u201cIs 13-0 enough?\u201d Bernard asked, ominously, at half-time, reckoning Ireland had left way too many points out there. That rendered Jacqui nervous. \u201cHow do they go about this second half?\u201d she asked. \u201cChannel their inner Munster \u2013 ball up the jumper, don\u2019t give it in to French hands,\u201d Lindsay replied. <\/p>\n

But the second half turned in to the shape of a pear, the killer moment when Joanna Grisez turned on her afterburners to score the try that put France ahead. A game of two halves, fair to say.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kitchen sink time,\u201d said Des, and Ireland did indeed chuck that and more at France in those excruciating final moments, but no joy. Tournament over. <\/p>\n

\"Ireland'sIreland’s Aoibheann Reilly dejected after the game. Photograph: Ben Brady\/Inpho <\/p>\n

No end of heartbreak both back in the studio and with Eve Higgins and Sam Monaghan when Clare MacNamara spoke to them, but the postmortem was an honest one: a gutsy display, but \u201cwe had no plan B today\u201d, as Lindsay put it. And Bernard wondered about the failure to make use of the bench a bit earlier. It was a day of \u201cif onlys\u201d, then, as most Rugby World Cups \u2013 boys and girls \u2013 have been for us lot. <\/p>\n

The tears flowed in Exeter, as they did on any couch trying to watch Ireland v France live on RT\u00c9, Aoife O\u2019Rourke<\/a> live on the RT\u00c9 Player and Shamrock Rovers v Athlone live on the TG4 Player all at the same time. <\/p>\n

Did any of you wonder why the commentary on the World Boxing Championships in Liverpool was in Irish, before realising you\u2019d muted it and the only thing audible on the laptop was TG4\u2019s coverage of the FAI Cup semi-final at Tallaght? And you didn\u2019t realise why O\u2019Rourke pummelling Busra Isildar was resulting in \u201cKelly Brady! Baile \u00c1tha Luain! C\u00fal!\u201d? No? All right then.<\/p>\n

But after a week that delivered us no end of sporting misery, from Yerevan to Exeter, O\u2019Rourke\u2019s triumph was a beaut. Mind you, trust in boxing judges, even after so many of them have been exposed as shysters, was somewhat tested when the Moroccan lad gave the first round to Isildar despite her spending the bulk of it trying to defend herself from a Castlerea onslaught. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s … surprising,\u201d said our polite commentator, who was equally flummoxed by the Guatemalan judge giving the second round to Isildar. So when it came to the hand-raising moment, you just couldn\u2019t be sure, but justice was served \u2013 we have ourselves another world champion. <\/p>\n

\"Ireland’sIreland\u2019s Aoife O\u2019Rourke and Turkey’s Busra Isildar in the World Boxing Championships in Liverpool on Sunday. Photograph: Kieran Smith\/Inpho <\/p>\n

\u201cI asked her what food she\u2019d treat herself to after this, and she just said, \u2018ah, a smoothie,\u2019\u201d our co-commentator told us. \u201cWell, she can have lots of smoothies now with sprinkles of gold on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The least she deserves is a double cheeseburger, chips and onion rings, but maybe that\u2019s why Aoife O\u2019Rourke is a world champion and some of us aren\u2019t? <\/p>\n

Anyway, it was a very lovely bright spot in a largely miserable week, as was Sonia O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s reaction on RT\u00c9 to a certain Sophie O\u2019Sullivan<\/a> chucking herself over the line to qualify for the 1,500m semi-finals at the World Athletics Championships. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe was in Cobh with me for three weeks and she was in at the Coral Leisure Centre twice a day. People thought she was mad, she was doing so much training, but that\u2019s what athletes do when they\u2019re injured. You work even harder when you know there\u2019s the possibility of a reward at the end of it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know the half of what these folk put themselves through to get themselves to the start line, never mind throw themselves over the one at the end to progress through a championship. A smothering torture, no doubt, and we sit on the couch nibbling cheesy nachos while judging them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lindsay Peat\u2019s advice to Ireland ahead of their World Cup quarter-final against France was clear enough: \u201cWe need…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[19292,61,60,1254,43,2446],"class_list":["post-22132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-aoife-o-rourke","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ireland-womens-rugby","tag-news","tag-womens-rugby-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}