There was, to be honest, a certain amount of relief when Katy McLean hoofed that kick-off in the England v Spain game to get the World Cup under way, the build-up to our hosting of the tournament having begun to take on an interminable feel, with an over-generous helping of overkill.
It didn’t quite fall in to, say, Lions Tour territory, but it was intense enough, to the point where you’d be half expecting Will Greenwood and Scott Quinnell to pop up on our screens before the opening game in Belfield to tell us ‘THIS IS THE MOMENT YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR ALL YOUR LIVES!’
Fiona Steed and Lynne Cantwell brought a welcome and measured calm to it all when they turned up for punditry duty on RTÉ ahead of Ireland’s tournament bow against Australia later in the evening, both women, while thrilled to have the World Cup on home soil, viewing it more as a step in a lengthy journey rather than some class of arrival at the promised land.
Daire O’Brien asked Fiona if a single member of the Irish team made her living from rugby.
“No, none,” she replied, which, added to the fact that England’s players will have their professional contracts terminated at the end of the tournament, even if they retain their world crown, was a reminder than this train has barely left the station.
And as pioneering warriors of Irish women’s rugby, both Fiona and Lynne lamented the lack of analysis in the media of the team’s performances, the tendency to hail their heart and effort, even if they performed abysmally, leaving them both wanting to extract each hair on their respective heads strand by strand.
Like the current crop of Irish players, they set higher standards for themselves.
Lynne, for example, recalled that desperately poor display in their hammering by England in the semi-finals of the last World Cup, but because they’d had that earlier historic pool victory over New Zealand the attitude, as Daire put it, was ‘yerra, what harm, they beat the All-Blacks’.
So, Fiona and Lynne’s deepest desire for this World Cup trip is that the team be judged by the performances and results it produces, rather than the focus remaining on what wonderful role models they are, what kind of lifestyles they lead, and how they can inspire the youth of Ireland to get up off the couch and lower their obesity levels.
Obesity levels
If they can succeed in the latter, excellent, but the day Jonny Sexton is also asked to lower obesity levels is the day the sisters will rejoice. Until they, they’re busy trying to win tackles and get over the tryline.
A fair old way to go, then.
And no more than the earlier days of the boys’ World Cup, there’s a distance to be travelled before the women’s game finds 12 competitive international teams, judging by Canada, England, New Zealand and France’s mullering of Hong Kong, Spain, Wales and Japan on Day One.
Seat-filling remains a challenge too. If you tuned in to eir Sport for the tournament opener, you’d have been confronted with banks of empty ones in what was already a modest venue, when some of us were led to believe there wasn’t a ticket left to be bought. That’s when the hype, no matter how well intentioned, backfires; it wasn’t a good look.
“What was on the clock, 90 seconds,” asked Lynne, wearing her eir Sport co-commentary hat, after England scored their opening try against the Spanish. It was actually 53 seconds, Spain’s afternoon going decidedly downhill after that.
The curmudgeons would argue that a lower point was reached in the build-up to Ireland's game with a version of Ireland's Call so chilling that Donald Trump could use it to subdue Kim Jong-un without any need for fire or fury.
Think back to your days when you stood in front of your bedroom mirror playing your little Casio, tapping along to a Salsa beat, doing your very best impression of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s Paul Humphreys, all the time sounding like the keyboard wizard from Big Tom and the Mainliners. It sounded like that.
But Ireland recovered, as did their opponents who failed to stifle their giggles on hearing an express version of Advance Australia Fair.
The game? It may not solve our obesity levels, but, 19-17, a win’s a win.
“They found a way to get it done,” said Ryle Nugent, points on the board.
And then Lynne, Fiona and Rosie Foley analysed the performance. We could get used to this.
