Ruthless Ireland take no time to quash talk of a Welsh restoration
Wales ……………………………. 10pts
Tries: Williams 46
Conversions: Biggar 46
Penalties: Biggar 14
Ireland…………………………. 34pts
Tries: Doris 2, Ryan 9, Lowe 21, van der Flier 73
Conversions: Sexton 3, 10, 22; Byrne 73
Penalties: Sexton 19, 28
All week the WRU's chastened hierarchy had taken a double-knee, praying for deliverance from their scandalous winter of discontent, a little manna from heaven for their troubles.
When they got back to their feet and looked down at what was happening below, they found another distressing sight; a Welsh team disarmed so far inside the distance that had the Marquis of Queensberry's rules applied, the referee would have stopped it after 20 minutes.
As the faithful filed in, fuelled by their enduring belief in Warren Gatland's revivalist power, those at the sharp end of a Welsh game mired in misogyny and sexism clung to the fanciful notion that the returning New Zealander would start as he finished, presiding over a Grand Slam against the same opposition at the same venue four years ago.
So much for the fairytale. The more realistic Welsh supporters hoped for nothing more than seeing the world's No. 1 team given a run for their money, a notion which had vanished with three-quarters of the match still to play.
Rarely can any contender have been counted out of the Triple Crown equation, let alone the Grand Slam, in such indecent haste. The beating did nothing to ease the apprehension of those doubtful about coaches-cum-managers returning to familiar stamping grounds and re-creating earlier success.
Second comings didn't work for Dalglish at Liverpool, nor Keegan at Newcastle and Zidane at Real Madrid. Whether Gatland bucks the trend with too many old players, time alone will tell.
In the end, Wales did manage to deny a vastly superior force a record win, albeit by the skin of their teeth. The irony of such an insignificant consolation can be found in the fact that Gatland's Ireland set the all-time high in Cardiff, 36-6 a few weeks before the IRFU showed their gratitude by sacking him.
Never can so many of the home faithful have arrived at their revered rugby chapel with so much hope only to have the stuffing knocked out of them before most in the world's biggest public house had time to finish their first beer of what rapidly descended into a mismatch.
Ireland's technical precision, applied with ruthless immediacy, reduced the hopeful to hopeless with a speed as devastating as its effect; changing a home crowd from noisy exuberance to a silence broken only by a strange hissing sound.
It could be heard after the two minutes it took Ireland to score their first try and by the time they scored their second six minutes later, the hissing had all but stopped. Lead balloons, even those puffed up by tens of thousands of home fans, can only hiss for so long.
It rather made a mockery of all that fighting pre-match talk about the home underdog standing ‘toe to toe' with the supposed best team in the world. Ireland, of course, had dismantled New Zealand in Dunedin and Wellington on successive Saturdays last summer and hadn't those same All Blacks overpowered Wales in Cardiff before Christmas?
Since then nothing much had changed beyond a new head coach and two specialists. Given a largely unchanged squad, why would anyone have been surprised at the Irish inflicting structural damage on a similar scale from the word go?
They did it, what's more, without Europe's supreme tighthead, Tadhg Furlong, and the fulcrum of their high-tempo machine, scrum-half Jamison Gibson-Park. His 11th-hour withdrawal reunited the world's oldest half back partners, Conor Murray and Johnny Sexton with a combined age of 71.
It made not a blind bit of difference. The unlikely challengers were first undone not by the magical but the mundane, James
Lowe's speculative punt along the left touchline which Wales somehow turned into a perfect setpiece for the Irish maul to grind into over-drive.
The consequent try might easily have arrived in the first minute, instead of being delayed until the second when Caelan Doris tore through a gaping hole. James Ryan tore through another, propelled by fellow lock Tadhg Beirne, and Wales were on the ropes, 14 points down in the ninth minute.
Any realistic hope of a recovery disappeared when Dan Biggar flung out a pass intended for full back Liam Williams on the right wing. Its telegraphic nature invited an intercept which the alert Lowe duly accepted. With nobody at home, all Leinster's Kiwi had to do was make a passable impersonation of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. Far from realising that they had already given Ireland a start of Himalayan magnitude, Wales rarely wasted a chance to make the deficit still more mountainous.
Their indiscipline proved so contagious that even Taulupe Faletau caught it. A needless penalty duly punished by Sexton on a day when he never came remotely close to missing put Ireland out of sight at 27-3, their points accumulated at the rate of one every minute.
Apart from a few sparks of midfield invention from Joe Hawkins and a flash of footballing skill from Rio Dyer snuffed out by Hugo Keenan's all-round excellence, Wales failed to raise a serious threat until the second half.
By then, the game had been lost. A fizzing Liam Williams try raised fleeting hope, prompting the Irish to lose their composure which left Iain Henderson fortunate to dodge a yellow card within barely a minute of replacing Beirne.
They conceded enough penalties to give Wales the platform for a series of line-out mauls. A recurring inability of both hookers, Ken Owens and Scott Baldwin, to find their jumpers meant that none got off the ground.
When Baldwin's last such throw homed in on the target, the prodigious Ryan soared highest, like a thief specialising at altitude. As time ran out, Ireland responded as if someone had suddenly reminded them they were still one try short of a bonus point.
Josh van der Flier duly secured it and the trickle of Welsh fans shuffling off towards the exits turned into a flood. While they can only wonder where it will all end, Ireland headed home acutely aware that France in Dublin next Saturday will pose problems far beyond Wales' capability.
As for the WRU, the failure of an ageing team offered a grim reminder that their problems are not confined to those off the pitch.
