{"id":285402,"date":"2026-02-07T08:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T08:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/285402\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T08:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T08:45:09","slug":"tony-ward-what-we-witnessed-on-thursday-truly-was-puke-rugby-irish-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/285402\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Ward: What we witnessed on Thursday truly was Puke Rugby, Irish-style"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Kick, kick and kick it high again: Jamison Gibson-Park clears the ball against France in Paris. Photo: Adam Davy\/PA Wire\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/9d2a167d-69ff-4962-a324-beb01e3a1561.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Kick, kick and kick it high again: Jamison Gibson-Park clears the ball against France in Paris. Photo: Adam Davy\/PA Wire<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">We knew we\u2019d finish a distant second in the singing of the so-called anthem on Thursday night, but in terms of what was to follow, we were underdogs yes but surely the \u2018fighting Irish in Paris\u2019 weren\u2019t without hope? How wrong was that assessment! \u200b<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">What we got was as flat and insipid an Irish performance as anything we\u2019ve witnessed in recent times. And I include the poor autumn displays against New Zealand and South Africa in that judgment. Even allowing for a mid-second-half comeback of sorts this was a truly dreadful Irish collective performance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kick, kick and kick it high again: Jamison Gibson-Park clears the ball against France in Paris. Photo: Adam&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[25747,61,60,112,50534],"class_list":{"0":"post-285402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-andy-farrell","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tony-ward"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285402","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=285402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}