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Destiny unclaimed:
The 2011 World Cup

To a degree, I suppose we have failed to do ourselves justice but you're not promised anything. Just because in the four games we have played, we've produced two decent performances and two okay performances, you're not owed anything. You have to go and earn everything you get in Test rugby.

Today we were off the pace and we go home as a result of that. That's the bitter disappointment of it but you have to suck it up. We haven't performed on the big stage and it's very, very disappointing. Collectively [with Ireland] and personally, I won't get the opportunity again and that really sucks but, you know, life goes on.

Brian O'Driscoll, 8 October 2011 (following Ireland's World Cup exit)

Beating Australia at Eden Park during the 2011 World Cup had changed everything for the Irish team. Their troubles - underwhelming Six Nations, devastating injuries to David Wallace and Felix Jones, four warm-up losses on the bounce - were washed clear with a 15-6 victory over a talented Wallabies team in Auckland, New Zealand.

The Irish back row of Stephen Ferris, Sean O'Brien and Jamie Heaslip were embraced in turn by Paul O'Connell - a gumshield grin from a man who had inspired their rugby journeys and was now their teammate on a momentous night. Veteran out-half Ronan O'Gara, and Johnny Sexton, his rival for the No. 10 jersey, had finished the game side by side, in the 10-12 axis. The exhausted, beaming face of Cian Healy was broadcast on giant screens as he accepted the man-of-the-match award. Brian O'Driscoll, Ireland's captain and backline talisman, sought out midfield partner Gordon D'Arcy for a hug.

It was the fourth World Cup of the professional era (the seventh since 1987's inaugural World Cup tournament), yet the win over Australia had been Ireland's first against a southern-hemisphere powerhouse. For all the advances the country had made since its reluctant entry into the world of professional rugby in 1995, Ireland had failed to fire at the highest level. There had been humiliating exits in the pool stages in the 1999 and 2007 World Cups, and meek surrenders in 2003's last eight encounter with France.

Declan Kidney, Ireland's coach at the World Cup, was in the process of transforming the team from one-off heroes to consistent challengers and champions. Three players epitomised the team's winning mentality and growing sense of justified entitlement - O'Connell, O'Driscoll and O'Gara. Each man had played a key role in slaying the Aussies. That night, in an Eden Park bedecked in green, each man took the acclaim.

Up in the stands, at the media tribune, an Irish supporter stood on a vacated table for a better view and clearer photos. Clambering down a minute later, he muttered 'Fucking hell. Fucking hell' to no one in particular. His team were on the brink of something special.

***

My journey with the team had begun eight days earlier, on 9 September 2011, at New Plymouth Boys High School. I was living in Vancouver, Canada, when Inside Rugby magazine editor Mark Cashman offered me work on the tournament's official match programmes. Upon learning the Irish Mirror needed a World Cup correspondent, I arranged a freelancing fee and booked my ticket for the host country.

Arriving into New Plymouth via Los Angeles, Auckland and Highways 1 and 3, I had already missed the week of team bonding and white-water rapids in the South Island's adventure capital, Queenstown. The squad had decamped to the North Island for their World Cup opener against the United States Eagles, team of former Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan. I had chugged up and parked, two streets away, in a borrowed Nissan hatchback that had had a former life as a New Zealand Postal Service rural delivery vehicle. The car comfortably took a single mattress, yet had a nasty habit of picking up zero radio signals for large stretches on the road.

Declan Kidney was three years into his tenure as Ireland's head coach and would be facing off against his former superior in the national set-up. Both men said all the right words and delivered the appropriate platitudes, but O'Sullivan had a score to settle. He would have his team wound up to spring at the Irish from the start. Battle commenced at 6 p.m. at Stadium Taranaki, with the US team determined to do their country proud on the tenth anniversary of the 11 September terrorist attacks in New York.

Kidney had made the decision to go with Sexton and twenty-two-year-old Munster scrum half Conor Murray as his halfback pairing. Ireland's World Cup opener would be Murray's third cap, but his first start. It was the sort of selection gamble that defined Kidney's latter years as Ireland coach, but an aspect of his management for which he was rarely credited. On that wretched, rainy evening in New Plymouth, Ireland laboured for fifty-five minutes before a two-try burst - from Rory Best and Tommy Bowe - made the game safe. They pressed for a bonus-point score in the closing stages, but Paul Emerick picked up an intercept try in the final minutes before saluting the rain-sodden US fans in the south terrace. That score, a demented 'Captain America' display from Todd Clever, and a banner that told Russian rugby fans just who won the space race would be the United States' tournament highlights as they packed for home. I arrived at my car shortly before midnight and found both wing mirrors had been kicked off. They would not be travelling back to Auckland. A shaky start all round.

With this win, Ireland had ended a four-game losing run that had started at Murrayfield on 6 August. But as much as the Irish players sought to accentuate the positives in the post-match mixed (interview) zone, fears of a 2007 World Cup repeat (bad to worse) were hard to shake. 'Given the day that was in it,' Geordan Murphy mused, 'we knew they were going to hit us all day long. And they did. Smash us and smash us.' The fullback insisted Ireland could step up a level to beat Australia, but added it would do the squad 'the world of good' if people begged to differ.

The Australian media were in no doubt that Ireland possessed another level but felt the Wallabies were penthouse dwellers. The consensus was for a tight first half before Quade Cooper, Will Genia and their like would run roughshod over a tiring Irish team. The Sydney Morning Herald declared Kidney's charges were looking forward to the game as much as an irregular brusher would a trip to the dentist's chair.

There was a snap to the Irish press briefings in the lead-up to the Wallabies match. Gordon D'Arcy shut down questions with brio and one-word answers, while Sean O'Brien bristled at suggestions that Rocky Elsom had greatly influenced his career during the Australian's stint at Leinster. Team captain Brian O'Driscoll held his tongue when asked by an American rugby journalist where he kept each of his 120 Test caps. The centre explained that his cap collection was much, much smaller than the journalist might think, and consoled the apologetic writer afterwards: 'No, no. You'd be surprised how often I'm asked that question.'

Kidney brought in Healy, O'Brien, Rob Kearney and Eoin Reddan for the Saturday-evening clash with Australia. Robbie Deans' men had beaten Italy 32-6 in their tournament opener, and had scrubbed New Zealand 25-20 in Brisbane in their final match before the tournament. Nine of the match-day twenty-two had featured in the Queensland Reds' Super Rugby victory over Canterbury Crusaders, including captain James Horwill and laid-back No. 8 Radike Samo. Samo had made an amiable interviewee in the lead-up to the game, but provided a newspaper cutting for the Irish dressing room by admitting he had never heard of O'Brien, who at the time was the European player of the year.

Kidney had a much greater motivational stroke, and it was very much a case of making the best out of a bad situation. The World Cup had been the carrot for hooker Jerry Flannery to chase as he strove to regain fitness following ongoing issues with his calf muscles. A hugely popular character within the squad, Flannery had been out of Test rugby for eighteen months before returning in time for Ireland's warm-ups. He made three appearances off the bench and started in the home defeat to England to prove his fitness ahead of the final squad selection. He was a second-half replacement in the US game, but he broke down in the team's Tuesday training session before the Australia match. His World Cup was over; he would be flying home after the Eden Park game. The coach had one final task for Flannery and it would prove to be emotional. 'I didn't say, "I think I should present the jerseys with a bit of a waterfall going on,"' Flannery recalls. 'Deccie just said it to me - that he'd like for me to give out the jerseys. There was no planning put into it, I didn't give it a second thought at all. I had just thought it was a pretty cool thing to have been asked. Deccie had tried to make clear how important and how special it was to play for Ireland in a World Cup and for me to give those jerseys out the day before the game.

'I was injured at the time, when he asked, and said, "Yeah, yeah, of course." I didn't think too much about it at the time and didn't realise the magnitude. When I got injured, we were playing Australia that weekend so you don't want to be that mopey bastard walking around and feeling sorry for yourself. You know that everyone has spent so long training for this thing, this one game. You try to put a brave face on it. I remember the lads that weren't involved in the Australia game said, "We're...