IRFU has to share blame for women’s tearful exit

Ruaidhri O'Connor

Missing out on World Cup spot should be unacceptable for an Ireland senior team

Dejected Ireland players console each other after the World Cup Europe qualifying tournament defeat to Scotland at Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi in Parma, Italy. Photo: Roberto Bregani/Sportsfile

IRFU Performance Director David Nucifora

Ireland players dejected after the game Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Matteo Ciambelli

Dejected Ireland players console each other after the World Cup Europe qualifying tournament defeat to Scotland at Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi in Parma, Italy. Photo: Roberto Bregani/Sportsfile

IRFU Performance Director David Nucifora

Ireland players dejected after the game Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Matteo Ciambelli

Dejected Ireland players console each other after the World Cup Europe qualifying tournament defeat to Scotland at Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi in Parma, Italy. Photo: Roberto Bregani/Sportsfile

September 27 2021 02:30 AM

For the players, the hurt was etched on to every haunted face as the cruellest of realities dawned.

They watched their World Cup disappear as Sarah Law’s injury-time kick sailed over the crossbar, a conversion that ensured that a team that reached the quarter-final in 2014 and hosted the tournament in 2017 will not be in New Zealand next year.

It was a conversion that will end careers and a moment that will never leave the women who put so much into qualifying and didn’t deliver over the course of a devastating three weeks in Italy.

As the Ireland team, they know they will deserve criticism for their own role in this disaster and they will take it on the chin.

Losing to Scotland and Spain falls below the standards they expect of themselves and for all that there will be major talk of structural reform at a union level in the coming days, the women who wore green on Saturday know ultimately that they were in control of their own destiny and let it slip through their own fingers.

That is their cross to bear and anyone who watched the remarkable pictures at the full-time whistle will know that they won’t wear it lightly.

It was an incredible scene, set against the soundtrack of former captain Fiona Coghlan choking back tears on commentary as she processed what had become of the team she helped build.

The players held each other because there was nothing else to cling to. They’ll need help to process it all.

So, you know that they will delve deep to try and figure out how it all went wrong as they return to their day jobs and their clubs to begin to pick up the pieces.

Some of them will carry on and try and find the positives, to build something from the ashes of Parma.

When they all tune in to watch the World Cup next year, these amateur players who have given up countless weekends in pursuit of a goal will be fully aware of the price they’ve paid for missing their target.

What must the two men in charge of the IRFU’s high-performance department have made of it all.

Neither performance director David Nucifora nor the director of women’s rugby and sevens Anthony Eddy were in Parma for this pivotal game, but no doubt they tuned in.

Were the Australians embarrassed to have missed their stated target of qualifying for the World Cup and finishing in the top six by so much or have they simply become used to missing their goals by now?

After all, they’re behind on the vast majority of the metrics they laid out in their own strategic plan from 2018-2023.

In June, Nucifora was asked about how he is held to account for missing so many of his high-level targets.

“Strategic plans are great but you’ve got to put something down on paper as to what you want to achieve and to strive towards it,” he said.

“Sure, last time we put down – I see it noted often that we didn’t make a semi-final in the (Men’s) World Cup – fine. That’s really disappointing that we didn’t do it, didn’t achieve it and you accept that but you have to have something to aim for.

“When you’re an elite sporting team, you’re trying to win all the time.”

There are not many walks of life where you can fail to hit so many Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and shrug it off, but under the current structure, there does not appear to be a whole lot of accountability for the man hired to hold others to account.

The union is in for a period of huge change in the next couple of months with long-term chief executive Philip Browne retiring in December, while Nucifora’s current deal expires next year.

The new CEO will barely have their feet beneath the table before making a pivotal rugby decision.

Browne has negotiated the union through the pandemic, but his successor will have a hefty in-tray to fill the financial holes left by Covid-19.

At the same time, the expansion and development of the women’s game must be front and centre of their remit and it is up to them to challenge the performance director’s assertions around that part of the game.

Nucifora will no doubt launch a report into what went wrong as he does when the men go out in a quarter-final. Normally, he keeps the report to himself citing confidentiality and speaks publicly about his own interpretation of the findings.

In his first year in charge, Ireland’s women beat New Zealand at the World Cup and reached the semi-final. In his second, they won the Six Nations.

Since, it’s been a dramatic fall from grace littered with own goals like the fiasco involving the Connacht team changing beside the bins at Donnybrook a few weeks ago.

The women and men who built that successful team in the early 2010s are kept on the outside looking in; female representation at committee level remains startlingly low and while the best nations in the world move towards professionalism the Irish players remain firmly in the amateur box.

So, the union are facilitating moves abroad for players like Linda Djougang, who moves to Clermont this week. It’s the right move for her, but her presence will be missed in an already imbalanced All-Ireland League.

The men’s team, as we are repeatedly told, delivers most of the union’s income and that full-time professional arm of the organisation is well-resourced and thoroughly supported.

On Saturday, Seán O’Brien called for more to be done for these players. Now at London Irish, the legendary flanker is no longer part of the system here and that gives him greater freedom but perhaps some of his illustrious former team-mates could follow his lead and apply pressure on the union through Rugby Players Ireland.

After all, they just need to think about what their compatriots are going through? It’s unconscionable that the men would miss out on a World Cup, so the same should surely go for the women.

All of this will come too late for Adam Griggs’ side. Some will retire, others will decide the commitment is too much and the rest will soldier on. The coach himself said he’ll consider his options.

They were given plenty of resources to succeed at this tournament and they went to Italy as favourites. You can be sure they’ll take responsibility for their own failings.

At union level, however, this can’t be dismissed as a bad few weeks at the office.

Missing out on a World Cup is unacceptable.