Cleancut, you never know how things can change.
For many many years the pysche of Irish rugby was the plucky underdog, destined to eternally lose but show some heart while doing so. While lacking skill we would put up a fight, then come the 60 minute mark we run out of steam and collapse to massive defeats, time after time. That was our place.
While we had a small amount of success on tours to Australia, when we went on tour to New Zealand or South Africa the thought process for the fans was please don't embarrass us lads and try and keep the score under 70. The players at the time thought so too.
5 Nations goal. Simple, try to avoid the wooden spoon. England are coming to town, prepared to get smashed up front and walked all over. The French OMG we have to play the French, if its a sunny spring day in Paris they will run riot. French rugby was so sexy back then it was almost X-rated.
We were so bad at the end of the 90's that Italy beat us 3 times in a row.
The provinces at the time? Well I remember reading a Munster players (his name eludes me) comments on what things use to be like, he was trying to give a pep talk to the team a half time during a European Heineken Cup (now Champions Cup) game. He was telling the players they could go on to win the cup. The entire dressing burst out laughing at him. Munster an Irish province can win the Heineken Cup when the French and English teams are competing in it....don't be daft!
Then the professional era came along and the IRFU low and behold got their house in order and much more than the other nations in the north did. It took a while but everything was aligned to improving the national team. Now when we go Australia or South Africa we expect to win. Its not because Aus and SA have declined as a rugby powerhouses (they may have) but because we now believe we are good enough and can beat anyone including New Zealand.
Meanwhile France's national team is a complete shambles. The mega rich clubs have complete control of the players, won't regularly release them for the national team, play foreign players in all the key positions and won't develop French talent, flog all their players to death and won't hire a non French coach, and all the French coaches are nuts. France play a fantastic game, best game in years and win comfortable, whats the French coach do....he drops 11 of them for the next game and never picks them again....why? because they are French...no one will ever know why.
I think Rassie Erasmus, having worked in the Pro 14 and having seen the Irish duel contract and player welfare systems might try something similar in South Africa. I see he also joined the board of directors for the Pro 14 and might potentially nudge the SR South African teams towards it. Basically trying to align everything to the benefit of the national team.
As for the quota's I personally have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I can understand its simply not fair for a better player to lose out on making the team because of the color of his skin. On the other hand some are of the view whether the player is the best or not doesn't matter as long as it encourages others to join in the long term and for short-medium term pain the skill gap will disappear as positions are more commonly filled by peoples who never had that opportunity before. Not to the same extent but I've seen something like happen in the work place here regarding gender equality. Over here I hear it being labelled as positive discrimination. That's what one of our pundits said when talking about Allister Coetzee when he was South African coaches. Only there because of positive discrimination.
You never know what the future brings. Nearly every team has there ups and down. Liverpool football club dominated the English football league for decades but haven't won it in 29 years, but may finally do so again this year. Change can take decades. The Springboks could very well rise again. But as an Irishman I'll just have you know the psyche has changed, we have no intention of going back to being the plucky underdogs and we will be there to challenge you
