Writing in the Irish Independent, Tony Ward refuses to be too downcast on Ireland's Rugby World Cup chances.
"By any standard, it's been a bad four weeks for Declan Kidney. Yes, there are extenuating circumstances and, yes, we now have a fair whack of players with game-time in the tank, but in contrast to that there's a squad with confidence and collective morale diminishing more and more with each successive defeat.
"Ignore all that guff that says winning in August doesn't matter. In the opening two games, selection was such that winning on the road was as unlikely as it would've been expected. Coming second at Murrayfield and Bordeaux could be conceded to the bigger picture. And like almost everybody else, I bought into that. But the last fortnight has seen us drop to levels of performance unacceptable for a team with semi-final aspirations.
"We have gone from fourth to eighth in world rankings and from top team in the northern hemisphere to fifth now, with only Italy of the Six Nations teams below us. Don't tell me that a sudden dip of that magnitude doesn't impact on the overall psyche -- of course it does."
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