One of the saddest sights was to see the Irish players line up sheepishly to collect their World Cup memento medals after the game from a crestfallen Sid Miller.

Video analysis has been taken to a fine art in this World Cup and Argentina knew that if they kept Ireland down to the minimum amount of lineouts they would go a long way to winning the game.

Ireland go for their main attacking ploys off good lineout ball, so Argentina kicked the ball downfield, not looking for touch, just distance, and then they came up quickly to close the player down.

The second try was again in Argentina’s 22, and, again, there was good passing from O’Gara to O’Driscoll, with David Wallace providing the scoring pass for Geordan Murphy’s try.

We could never pull away from Argentina, though, and once we scored they replied almost immediately.

They played a clever game, as Scottish television commentator Bill McClaren used to say, ‘of aerial bombardment’.

Their outhalf and blind-side winger would drop back to help their fullback and when Ireland kicked long, one of the back three Argentina players would blast the ball 40 or 50 metres back down field.

The rest of their team, who were ahead of the kicker, but were not within 10 metres of him, moved forward and once Geordan Murphy, or any of the other Irish players, moved forward five metres, or passed the ball, the Pumas were on side and just came up in line to tackle. Ireland had nowhere to go.

Back in the Seventies, Shannon played a second fullback, Eddie Price, in an effort to outfox Tony Ward and Garryowen.
The bitter pill that the Irish team will have to swallow, though, is that they never got to fire on all cylinders in their four games.