Slattery wants to rubbish his ‘garbo’

Press, 21 November 1981, Page 64

Slattery wants to rubbish his ‘garbo’

NZPA-Reuter Dublin Tony Shaw’s Wallabies will take on 15 Irishmen in the first rugby test in Dublin tomorrow, but a sixteenth, a Dublin garbo, could have the greatest influence on the outcome. Ireland’s captain, Fergus Slattery, won’t be able to look his neighbourhood garbageman in the eye if he ushers a beaten side off the Lansdowne Road ground. Eyeball contact between them ceased one morning in March when the garbo delivered an outsized wooden spoon to Slattery’s home after Ireland had lost its fourth and final match of their 1980-81 season.

The spoon is a bitter reminder to Slattery of a disastrous season that began with Ireland everyone’s favourite to take the Five Nations’ championship. What concerns Slattery on the eve of this test is that Ireland are favourites to beat the Australians. “Irish rugby players,” he said, “are incapable of responding to the label of favourites. “We need to be suppressed before we can realy begin to produce our best. “International rugby has three main ingredients — natural ability, fitness, plus spirit and motivation,” he said.

“Irish teams are often a little short on the first two but can usually compensate with a lot of the rest — a combination of determination and passion.” Needless to say Slattery promised the traditional “fireworks” for the Wallabies tomorrow. However, a narrowly averted clash between two prop forwards at the final Wallaby training session indicated that the “nice guy” tourists are working themselves into a similar frame of mind. The Victorian prop, John Meadows, who will play tomorrow, and the Newcastle

prop, Declan Curran, who has missed out, had to be restrained by team-mates after they hauled themselves out of a practice scrum making headbutting gestures. The incident was quickly forgotten but it provided prima facie evidence of a combative spirit lamentably absent in the mid-week loss to Munster. Tony Shaw asserted yesterday that the defeat had strengthened team morale. “It was probably a good thing,” he said. “It has drawn us together.” It is to be hoped that such togetherness has provided an insight into the seeming inevitability of the opposition’s

tactics tomorrow. The Irishmen will play it tight, long before they crowd into the nearest bar after the match. Their five-eighth, Tony Ward, gave the game away when he masterminded Munster’s 15-6 win on Tuesday. He busied -himself for much of the afternoon either bombing the Wallabies with high kicks or sending them scurrying across the sidelines after touch finders. With the Munster forwards dominant in just about every phase it was simply a matter for the Wallabies to make mistakes and set Ward up for two penalties, a field goal and a conversion.