The Ireland spoke in an interview in the current edition of Sport magazine
The Rugby World Cup’s great
underachievers: Ireland. Never once in the tournament’s history,
stretching back seven renewals across 28 years, have the men in green
reached the semi-finals. For every glorious failure – taking eventual
winners Australia to the very wire in their 1991 quarter-final – there
has been ignominious defeat. A supposedly golden generation failed to
even make it out of an admittedly nightmare group in 2007, victims to
hosts France and history making Argentina; four years later, in Brian
O’Driscoll’s final World Cup, they beat Australia in the group stages
but were dismantled by Wales in the last eight.
