The Return of Flat Feelings

The first time I’d visited Franklin’s Gardens was a long time ago, Carlos Spencer was running about the pitch but making no headway as I remember, it was an evening game that was so foggy you couldn't see the opposite set of goalposts, it was confusing.

On my latest visit to the Gardens the view was a lot clearer, sunny, dry and only a little confusing.

We drove and parked in the leisure area at Sixfields, had a shortish walk to the stadium, the place was not as full as any previous time I’ve been there, the minutes silence and the National anthem were impeccably observed as is the norm at Rugby matches, the game kicked off and I thought both the sides seemed evenly matched, for the first ten minutes, this was until a poor clearance kick went to the Northampton scrum half, Mitchell, who capitilised on this by cutting through the cover and putting a fantastic long pass out wide for the first try.

Irish fought back but not until after a lengthy delay in play for an injury to Gigena, Curtis Rona broke up field for Arundell to score, as the ball was being placed for the kick, the TMO started to show some shenanigans on the big screen, I was sat at the opposite corner to the big screen and could not see too clearly what was being reviewed, the official stood right in front of the screen and deliberated a good while, I could not see the contact properly, but it looked like a Northampton player fell to the floor in a daze, so the try was caulked off, penalty and yellow card was shown. I don't know how the players felt but I felt pretty deflated, from potentially 7-7 to 10-0, then it got worse, a yellow card for Arundell, worse still a yellow card for Simmons, Irish were staring down the barrel, luckily they held up until half time.

With 15 against 12 I feared the worst at the beginning of the second half, but Northampton kept fluffing their lines and instead of going wide with pace they kept cutting in an going for the crash ball up the middle, resulting in them giving away 3 points in the period up until the full compliment of Irish players were back.
With a full team Irish then relaxed and capitulated, Northampton scored twice and although there was another fight back by Irish, it never looked like they were ever going to win, game finished 38-22.

It was a pretty disappointing feeling after the game, I decided I would look at the highlights later to get a better perspective of the game, my findings were as follows, Mitchell and Van Rensburg are very fine players, more so Mitchell, the first yellow card, (for me a big turning point in the match) it was still unclear what foul play had been committed, Luke Peace talked about contact to head and upright body position, he seemed to be looking at the screen?

The other two yellows were definitely warranted, Irish have got to stop this collective sulking and reset themselves better after any set backs, they need to pick themselves up and learn from this match. If they can survive with 12 players for 6 minutes they can surely do better with 15, that said the list of injuries also took its toll on the team in the game.