IRB World Rankings

[Oldschool]

Hhhmmmmmm

A couple of wins for SA vs NZ in the next few weeks will knock us off our perch! Fingers Crossed!

I know it's tongue in cheek but we don't need to fear being number one or assume it means we're going to somehow underperform through over-confidence.

It's time we feel comfortable, coaches, players and supporters (and above all the Ger Gilroys) that we're an elite world side.

They say that staying on top is even harder than getting there, so i doubt we lack motivation to keep our noses to the grindstone.

Or put another way, being favourites brings its own pressures.

[jezzer]

A couple of wins for SA vs NZ in the next few weeks will knock us off our perch! Fingers Crossed!

I know it's tongue in cheek but we don't need to fear being number one or assume it means we're going to somehow underperform through over-confidence.

It's time we feel comfortable, coaches, players and supporters (and above all the Ger Gilroys) that we're an elite world side.

They say that staying on top is even harder than getting there, so i doubt we lack motivation to keep our noses to the grindstone.

Or put another way, being favourites brings its own pressures.

Its own pressures and its own privileges. First, to be considered the best on the planet at rugby which is basically what all these guys and girls are slaving away for. But second, so that teams completely shït their pants when they know they have to face Ireland. The ABs aura was worth 12-15 points. The threat of the Boks power and the need to specifically game plan for their physical factor is worth points too.

Ireland are.now at the level where teams will properly fear playing us. And we need to play on that. Double down on it and not run from the focus because we prefer being underdogs. This group is going to embrace being number 1.

[desperado]

I know it's tongue in cheek but we don't need to fear being number one or assume it means we're going to somehow underperform through over-confidence.

It's time we feel comfortable, coaches, players and supporters (and above all the Ger Gilroys) that we're an elite world side.

They say that staying on top is even harder than getting there, so i doubt we lack motivation to keep our noses to the grindstone.

Or put another way, being favourites brings its own pressures.

Its own pressures and its own privileges. First, to be considered the best on the planet at rugby which is basically what all these guys and girls are slaving away for. But second, so that teams completely shït their pants when they know they have to face Ireland. The ABs aura was worth 12-15 points. The threat of the Boks power and the need to specifically game plan for their physical factor is worth points too.

Ireland are.now at the level where teams will properly fear playing us. And we need to play on that. Double down on it and not run from the focus because we prefer being underdogs. This group is going to embrace being number 1.

That's the really big work-on, and have an effective gameplan to deal with. The ABs are one thing, but Ireland (and Leinster) have struggled with the power game.

[jezzer]

Or put another way, being favourites brings its own pressures.

Its own pressures and its own privileges. First, to be considered the best on the planet at rugby which is basically what all these guys and girls are slaving away for. But second, so that teams completely shït their pants when they know they have to face Ireland. The ABs aura was worth 12-15 points. The threat of the Boks power and the need to specifically game plan for their physical factor is worth points too.

Ireland are.now at the level where teams will properly fear playing us. And we need to play on that. Double down on it and not run from the focus because we prefer being underdogs. This group is going to embrace being number 1.

That's the really big work-on, and have an effective gameplan to deal with. The ABs are one thing, but Ireland (and Leinster) have struggled with the power game.

Definitely, but our game - when it's humming - is the biggest work on for the power teams too.

[Oldschool]

Its own pressures and its own privileges. First, to be considered the best on the planet at rugby which is basically what all these guys and girls are slaving away for. But second, so that teams completely shït their pants when they know they have to face Ireland. The ABs aura was worth 12-15 points. The threat of the Boks power and the need to specifically game plan for their physical factor is worth points too.

Ireland are.now at the level where teams will properly fear playing us. And we need to play on that. Double down on it and not run from the focus because we prefer being underdogs. This group is going to embrace being number 1.

That's the really big work-on, and have an effective gameplan to deal with. The ABs are one thing, but Ireland (and Leinster) have struggled with the power game.

Definitely, but our game - when it's humming - is the biggest work on for the power teams too.

And you can be sure that they are working on our game.
It took them less than a year to come up with a solution the last time we got to number 1.
The power game or possession game has caused NZ a lot of problems and it causes us problems.
Specifically a defensive power game as applied by France, in particular, seems to be our biggest problem.

[jezzer]

My biggest bugbear about Irish pro rugby over the years is that we never develop a plan b for when plan a doesn't work. That's been even more obvious at world cups.

This coaching ticket is different. We'll be prepared and this team's strategy is going to evolve

[Ruckedtobits]

My biggest bugbear about Irish pro rugby over the years is that we never develop a plan b for when plan a doesn't work. That's been even more obvious at world cups.

This coaching ticket is different. We'll be prepared and this team's strategy is going to evolve

The biggest problem with developing a radically different Plan B, is our depth. If we need to bulk up our front five to survive a really big SA team, we just don't have the playing options - Eng & Fr do. Historically, NZ scrums were strong enough to survive and the rest of their game was too quick for the 'fatties' to survive.

We need a direct set of alternative front five forwards.

[hugonaut]

My biggest bugbear about Irish pro rugby over the years is that we never develop a plan b for when plan a doesn't work. That's been even more obvious at world cups.

This coaching ticket is different. We'll be prepared and this team's strategy is going to evolve

I think the 'Plan A' and 'Plan B' discussion is reductive to the point of pointlessness [if that is not an oxymoron].

When you're leaving Lansdowne Road after a win, have you ever heard fans around you saying, "Plan A worked a f*cking treat again, didn't it? What a good plan that was"? No, you've never heard it. People don't say it, because the majority of people going to matches wouldn't recognise a nominal 'Plan A' if it was explained to them with diagrams. On the other hand, you'll hear a lot of people complaining about there being "no Plan B" when we lose.

I have to admit that I am genuinely confused by the premise – do people think that there really is a gameplan [our 'Plan A'], that the coaches believe every part of it will be 100% successful, that they have no preparations made if parts of it don't function optimally, and that they won't allow the players to deviate from it in one instance over 80 mins? Because that is clearly an absolutely batsh*t belief to hold.

Or do 'Plan A' and 'Plan B' only have conceptual meanings, i.e. 'Plan A' is how we want to play, 'Plan B' is how we have to alter our game to win when faced with difficulties in executing 'Plan A'?

That means that every time we lose, we had 'no Plan B' – it wouldn't matter if we put the backs into the scrum, played with a rover and had the forwards foot-rushing the ball in the backline, i.e. it wouldn't matter if we made strategic, tactical and personnel changes, they don't count as 'Plan B' if you lose.

Again, have you ever heard somebody coming out of Lansdowne Road after a loss saying, "even when we went to Plan B, it didn't work"?

Say we get two rucks roughly in the same area of the pitch, 15 mins apart – in the first one, the scrum-half box kicks, and in the second one, he passes open to his outhalf ... which one is Plan A? And if one of them is Plan A, is the other option Plan B? Does one plan accommodate a scenario where kicking a contestable to the blindside is the same as passing to the No10 on the openside? Because that's a p-r-e-t-t-y loose plan. It's not a plan at all.

Players are making loads of decisions out there and attacking in different ways. If you have seen Sexton in an attacking position go out the back to another back, is that 'Plan A'? And if he goes out the front to a forward, is that 'Plan B'? And if he goes out the front to a forward and takes a loop, is that 'Plan C'? Or do you say, no, that's a shape set up to attack off No10, they're all 'Plan A'.

But if he instead hoists a bomb from the same position is that 'Plan D'? Or if he cross-kicks to an openside winger, is that 'Plan E'? If he chips one over the top, is that 'Plan F'? Or is kicking 'Plan B', and passing 'Plan A'? Because clearly we have a 'Plan A' and a 'Plan B'.

And then if he breaks himself, is that 'Plan G', or is it 'Plan C', i.e. neither passing nor kicking. You get where I'm going with this.

The whole premise is foolish, falls apart when you try to understand it and is essentially meaningless. Instead of saying "there was no Plan B", people should just say what they actually feel, i.e. "I am frustrated that we lost, and I can't quite figure out exactly why we lost."

[jezzer]

Wow Hugo.

Was that post your plan A or plan B?

[hugonaut]

Wow Hugo.

Was that post your plan A or plan B?

My post encompasses all named plans from the Latin, Cyrillic, Phoenician, Proto-Canaanite, Greek, Hebrew, and Hieroglyphic alphabets.

[pangurban1]

For all the talk about the power game it was a badly fielded dg that was our undoing in the final, also the ball barely touching Jimmy O'Brien's leg before going dead.

[jezzer]

Wow Hugo.

Was that post your plan A or plan B?

My post encompasses all named plans from the Latin, Cyrillic, Phoenician, Proto-Canaanite, Greek, Hebrew, and Hieroglyphic alphabets.

I'll bite to a small degree.

Ireland doesn't peak mid RWC cycle. Not at least in terms of their own performances.

What happens is that Ireland gets figured out ahead of RWCs. Months prior, coaches will already be scouting their pool and QF opponents. In the runup, teams have a decent time together in camp to prepare specifically for the two/three key games that will spring them into a SF.

Ireland, I'm sure, scout the oppo too. But in successive world cups, Ireland has waltzed in sporting the same attacking costume that they wore to the 10 previous parties. We make it sooooo easy for teams to figure out a couple of countermeasures to easily get past us and on to the next game. Think Wales chop-tackling us to death as a simple but terminal example. It's happened every time.

Ireland have to come into the RWC with

a) new tricks in the bag that nobody has scouted. This world cup is perfect, because we don't have to show our hand until the comp starts, as we have the minnows up front to hone the plan

b) countermeasures. When we see that the oppo have identified a weakness and are nullifying us, by halftime at the absolute latest we need to have a workaround in place.

What makes me much more confident about this time around is that we have the coaches who understand that and clearly make midgame adjustments, plus an attacking structure that allows so much variation that it's a lot harder (but def not impossible) to shut down. To Hugo's own point, you can shut door A but JS will just open door B. There are still fundamentals of our style (ruck speed for example) that can be attacked to take the house of cards down but we're miles better at problem solving than we were, so I'm less worried.

That's a marked difference to squads gone by, where we were maddeningly vanilla in-comp and just tried to out-execute opponents with what they knew was coming.

[ronk]

Great point Hugo. When fans talk about it it might be worth considering as tactical inflexibility. Can you adapt to what the opposition brings to you (or the ref lets go).

It's the Bill Belichick idea of take what they give you. If the defence line is coming up fast without cover: chip in behind. If they're finding ground with kicks: move a player back, at least situationally. If they send more people to contest rucks, so will you.

Leinster are able to play a power game against Scarlets and try and move around Toulouse. Our problem is infrequently that we struggle to adapt to changes. Occasionally we get caught out at scrum or lineout, but most teams do too and we don't live and die by it. Dropping the ball is never in plan A or plan B, it happens. When we're playing well we execute in bad weather.

Most fans don't spot the details on what's not working, but they know that it's not working and that adjustments should be made. What they don't realise is that sometimes the best adjustment is to not panic and trust the system and patterns.

[Xanthippe]

As far as I know, this morning’s win by Australia means that, when we play South Africa in November we will play as the world number 1

[Ruckedtobits]

As far as I know, this morning’s win by Australia means that, when we play South Africa in November we will play as the world number 1

But what about after we play them @Xan?

[Xanthippe]

As far as I know, this morning’s win by Australia means that, when we play South Africa in November we will play as the world number 1

But what about after we play them @Xan?

Ah that’s easy - we ‘just’ need to beat them

[Oldschool]

Trivia questions.
How long have Ireland been ranked no. 1.
What is the longest duration for any NH team to be at no. 1.
What is the longest duration for any SH team to be at no. 1

[Schumi]

All answered here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Rugby_Rankings.

34 weeks.
This is the longest a northern hemisphere team has been number 1.
New Zealand (shocking I know) had 509 consecutive weeks.

[Xanthippe]

Our rankings progression from the start of the 6 Nations last year to the end this year



We beat New Zealand twice to attain the number 1 ranking and have since defended it for 35 weeks/8 matches

[hugonaut]

Our rankings progression from the start of the 6 Nations last year to the end this year



We beat New Zealand twice to attain the number 1 ranking and have since defended it for 35 weeks/8 matches

Longest stint at No1 for a NH team, as I think was mentioned previously.

There are no test matches affecting us until the Rugby Championship [8/9 July kickoff], so we will pass
• South Africa [October 2007 - July 2008] - 37 weeks
• South Africa [October 2021 - July 2022] - 40 weeks

to move into the fifth longest reign in the history of the rankings, behind

• New Zealand [August 2008 - July 2009] – 49 weeks
• South Africa [November 2019 - September 2021] - 98 weeks
• New Zealand [June 2004 - October 2007] - 175 weeks
• New Zealand [November 2009 - August 2019] - 509 weeks