Tom Savage: “Schmidt’s Ireland Comfortable With Favourites Tag”

IF GOLIATH wiped David out with a meaty swipe of his right hand, it wouldn’t be remarkable enough to pass into myth, it would merely be the world acting like it should.

Let’s be honest here – Goliath should have wiped the floor with David. He was 6’9”, he was jacked, he was covered in armour and David had a sling.

David’s victory over Goliath is seen as a grand example of divine intervention but take the divine out of the equation and Goliath wins that fight 99 times out of 100.

Maybe the pressure got to him. That’s what happens when you’re the top dog. Everyone’s coming for you, everyone knows you (and think they know your weakness) and you’re the biggest target in everyone’s season.

Being an underdog is easy. Well, easier. Nobody really expects you to win. You’re more of a long shot, a hail Mary, a “wouldn’t it be great if they won” type of team. Everyone loves an underdog because they represent a classic narrative in action. The top dog getting the win – Goliath – is expected and, with expectation comes boredom. The underdog winning? Now that’s exciting. It’s new!

Ireland used to be the underdog and the dark horse. I think it suited us as a nation and maybe it still does in a lot of ways, but beating the All Blacks in a contest billed in advance as an unofficial “Best In The World” winner take all contest removes any of the last vestiges of underdog sensibility. It just isn’t credible to believe that Ireland are not the favourite to retain the Six Nations and do it with a Slam this Spring.

It isn’t credible to believe that Ireland are not the favoured side in every game they’ll play this year up until the semi-final or final of the World Cup. That might be a bit strange to read about the Irish rugby team but that’s where we are in 2019 and we’d better get used to it because everyone else is thinking it.

When you beat the All Blacks as Ireland did, you take a little bit of their aura. And other sides want that aura for themselves. Beating Ireland is now a Thing, and if any of the Six Nations sides can do it this Spring it’ll be a massive boost for their squad, coaches and fans. Ireland are Goliath. That doesn’t mean everyone else is David in a loincloth swinging a slingshot but it does mean that we’ll have to get used to playing with the same kind of pressure that the All Blacks have been working with for the last 8 years in particular.

Leinster are seeing some of that this season with the renewed intensity that every game takes on. Now you’re not just beating Leinster, you’re beating the Best Team In Europe and any side worthy of competing in the same circles as them will want to knock them off their perch and Ireland are in the same place. The All Black Killers. The Unofficial Best Team In The World. The Nominal World Cup Favourites. Who wouldn’t want to stick one on that crowd? It’s just unusual for that crowd to be Ireland.

It’s not all pressure, though. You don’t beat the All Blacks without being a phenomenal side. Neither do you win a Grand Slam in the manner that Ireland did last year – away in France and England – without being a side that’s worthy of the lofty billing. Other sides want what Ireland have but getting to where Ireland are isn’t easy.

England will try this weekend and they’ll be confident, with a chip on their shoulders from the last two years to boot. But they’re reaching. They’re the underdogs. They’re going to be hoping their sling can catch Goliath on the temple but, to paraphrase another work of narrative fiction, when you come at the King, you best not miss.