How to break a curse: Ireland must take inspiration to end quarter-final jinx

By now, the hoodoo is well known. It follows the team around every four years. As a Rugby World Cup comes into view, the whispers start: ‘is this the time that they finally do it?’ The confidence builds during the group stage, fans dare to dream but then the quarter-final arrives and the result is always the same.

Seven Rugby World Cup quarter-finals for Ireland’s men’s team, seven defeats. Throw in a quarter-final play-off defeat in 1999 and their record reads: eight knockout games, eight losses. For a team that has won Six Nations grand slams, secured autumn and summer tour wins over all the southern hemisphere giants and been ranked No 1 in the world, it’s an inexplicable jinx.

But this year feels different (where have we heard that before…) They head into Saturday’s last-eight clash with New Zealand, the mighty All Blacks, as deserved favourites. They’re the undisputed best team in the world, on a 17-Test winning streak and have a ruthless winning mentality honed under head coach Andy Farrell.

Those eight previous losses don’t matter, even the 46-14 humbling to these very same All Blacks at this very stage in Japan four years. This is Ireland’s time, right?

The players certainly think so. There is a genuine, not-manufactured belief that they are good enough to overcome this obstacle and will do so. Even the burden of history is no longer seen as a burden.

“We have worked on our mental game for the last four years and put ourselves in different scenarios to prepare for this,” explained captain Johnny Sexton.

“Each quarter-final, or where we haven’t got through our pool, have all been different, and it’s a different group again. Each of those groups lost once. It wasn’t the same group losing quarter-finals year and year. If it was club rugby it might be different but I don’t think we are carrying much baggage.”

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Veteran scrum half Conor Murray was there when Ireland lost 22-10 to Wales at the 2011 World Cup, started the harrowing 43-20 defeat to Argentina four years later and witnessed first-hand the 2019 thrashing by New Zealand. Yet he echoes Sexton’s view.

“On the outside, that has been a talking point that we have never got there [to a semi-final],” he said. “But within the group, this is a different team and our capabilities are different.

“To get to that point would be everything. This weekend is the biggest game I have ever played, and it is the same for everyone in the group. To get through that would be a huge moment, a huge milestone.”

They are focusing on what they can control but Ireland may still need further inspiration – and luckily sport has a slew of historic curses that have been broken to provide them with hope.

Since the turn of the millennium, perhaps sport’s two most famous jinxes, both from the world of baseball, have been broken.

The ‘Curse of the Billy Goat’ saw the Chicago Cubs jinxed in 1945 by William Sianis after he and his pet goat Murphy were kicked out of the Cubs’s home stadium Wrigley Field during that year’s World Series for disrupting other spectators. An angry Sianis allegedly declared “Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more” and the team went on to lose the series to the Detroit Tigers.

The Cubs did not reach another World Series for the next 71 years, suffering a succession of spectacularly unlucky near-misses along the way, until they finally broke the curse in 2016 – on the 46^th anniversary of Sianis’s death – by reaching, and winning, baseball’s biggest prize, ending a 108-year drought since their last win.

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In similar fashion, the Boston Red Sox finally broke the ‘Curse of the Bambino’ in 2004 when they won their first World Series crown for 86 years. Prior to that drought, the Red Sox had been one of baseball’s most successful franchises, winning five of the first 15 World Series titles. However, in 1920 they controversially sold Babe Ruth – nicknamed ‘the Bambino’ and arguably baseball’s greatest ever player – to their rivals, the New York Yankees, in questionable circumstances and brought almost nine decades of misfortune on themselves.

Some sportspeople just need a change in mindset to reverse the curse, as tennis star Andy Murray found. Having lost the first four grand slam finals of his career, Murray brought Ivan Lendl – who himself had lost his first four grand slam finals in the 1980s before going on to win eight majors – as a coach and got over the hump at the 2012 US Open.

"He [Lendl] obviously lost his first four grand slam finals, I lost my first grand slam finals and felt like I was a loser, a choker," Murray later admitted in an interview. "Speaking to him made me feel more normal. He went on to become a great tennis player, one of the best of all time. Being able to speak to him on an emotional level really helped.”

Ireland have also tried to change their mindset in this last World Cup cycle, bringing in Gary Keegan, who has previously guided athletes to Olympic and All-Ireland hurling glory, as a mental skills coach to shift their mentality. The work appears to be paying off, with even head coach Farrell using his teachings.

“I’m constantly locking myself in a room and giving myself a good dressing down!” smiled Farrell. “Obviously Gary gets us as mentally fit as we can be. But myself, Gary and the rest of coaches do everything together and work out what’s needed for the team.”

So, the men in green finally have the skills and the inspiration to end the quarter-final curse once and for all – the only thing left is to execute on Saturday evening at the Stade de France.