Will Ireland open up

[All Blacks nil]

Will Ireland (Joe) allow the ball go wide?

Wales made over 210 tackles last week - their back three, North, Cuthberr and Kalfpenny made three between them!!!

Was Gatland right when he said Ireland played to narrow?

What has Joe up his sleeve after 8 weeks in camp?

Will we have to wait for the French match for definitive answers?

[johng]

Will Ireland (Joe) allow the ball go wide? Yes

Wales made over 210 tackles last week - their back three, North, Cuthberr and Kalfpenny made three between them!!!

Was Gatland right when he said Ireland played to narrow? Yes

What has Joe up his sleeve after 8 weeks in camp? Something that will make you spill your pint.

Will we have to wait for the French match for definitive answers? Yes

[simonokeeffe]

Will the weather be better in September than February and March?

How many qualification points do we get for the warm ups?

Has VHS technology reached France and Argentina yet?

Have the players been training in training camp?

[Logorrhea]

If Ireland get fast ball yes ............ if Ireland get slow ball they wont take the risk. They will do what every other team is doing and kick to compete or play field position. The same tactics that have won us back to back 6 nations titles.

Will people still blame Joe for not taking stupid risks and running into a prepared defense off slow ball? ......... yes probably.

[Oldschool]

Will Ireland (Joe) allow the ball go wide?

Wales made over 210 tackles last week - their back three, North, Cuthberr and Kalfpenny made three between them!!!

Was Gatland right when he said Ireland played to narrow?

What has Joe up his sleeve after 8 weeks in camp?

Will we have to wait for the French match for definitive answers?

No.
No.
Ask Joe.
Only if we need to, there are bigger fish to fry.

[Oldschool]

If Ireland get fast ball yes ............ if Ireland get slow ball they wont take the risk. They will do what every other team is doing and kick to compete or play field position. The same tactics that have won us back to back 6 nations titles.

Will people still blame Joe for not taking stupid risks and running into a prepared defense off slow ball? ......... yes probably.

Well we saw what happened to Leinster trying to slow ball all last season, it doesn't work.

[Oldschool]

Will the weather be better in September than February and March?

How many qualification points do we get for the warm ups?

Has VHS technology reached France and Argentina yet?

Have the players been training in training camp?

Usually!
None
Yes
Yes
http://blogs.theprovince.com/2015/09/05 ... -streamed/

[All Blacks nil]

Can Ireland open up?

Beginning to feel like RWC07

[Golf Man]

My gut feeling is that we wont - to do so we need the players to do it

Bold decisions would be to have Henderson over Toner, drop Bowe for Earls and have Ryan and Zebo on the bench - ultimately I don't think that Schmidt will make these decisions

Tere might be an intention and I would definitely expect our pack to front up a lot more

Have to bear in mind that by the time we kick off v Italy England will have already played Fiji, Wales and Australia - they should be further along than us

[OTT]

Can Ireland open up?

Beginning to feel like RWC07

That is a pretty arrogant and dismissive comment. We played two very good teams in Wales and England both playing pretty much their first choice teams, along with us they have been the dominant teams in the Northern Hemisphere over the last number of years. We played poorly in both matches yet still nearly won both games. Were you expecting a rout?

In 2007 we played two friendlies one away to a poor Scotland team which we lost and the second up in Ravenhill which we would have lost but for the referee robbing Italy in the last play of the game. We then played Namibia in the World Cup and were pretty lifeless and followed up that with the Georgia game which we were lucky to win, we were sh!t against France and brutal against Argentina losing both.

Can you expand more on how this is feeling like RWC07, are we gonna scrape by Romania and Canada and then lose to Italy and France? Any chance you could put a bit of substance to your posts? Cheers.

[Oldschool]

Can Ireland open up?

Beginning to feel like RWC07

It's good that Joe has managed successfully to dampen down expectations already.
This will relieve the type of pressure that got to the players in RWC07.

[simonokeeffe]

the backs and the backrow all have the skills to open up, so we will a bit, front five dont

but again theres no point giving France (and touch wood Argentina) 4 or 5 games of our gameplan against them to analyse

[All Blacks nil]

Can Ireland open up?

Beginning to feel like RWC07

It's good that Joe has managed successfully to dampen down expectations already.
This will relieve the type of pressure that got to the players in RWC07.

Very similar pattern of results leading into the 2007 RWC.
Back to back 4 wins out of five in Six Nations. unbeaten in previous Autumn season, unconvincing below par warm up matches

EOS obviously tried the same tactic in 2007 as they lost to Scot and had an unconvincing 23-20 home victory v Italy.

Possibly the only consolation is that at least Joe will have the courage to pick players on form and not on previous reputation

[curates_egg]

Can Ireland open up?

Beginning to feel like RWC07

It's good that Joe has managed successfully to dampen down expectations already.
This will relieve the type of pressure that got to the players in RWC07.

Very similar pattern of results leading into the 2007 RWC.
Back to back 4 wins out of five in Six Nations. unbeaten in previous Autumn season, unconvincing below par warm up matches

EOS obviously tried the same tactic in 2007 as they lost to Scot and had an unconvincing 23-20 home victory v Italy.

Possibly the only consolation is that at least Joe will have the courage to pick players on form and not on previous reputation

It's not as bad as the 2011 warm ups though. So the lesson you could take is: don't pay a fiddlers to the results in the warm-ups.
Does Wales upturn curve results-wise mean they are now better placed for the world cup? Or do other things that happened in their last match have more relevance?
Answers on a postcard.

[simonokeeffe]

As ever Murray Kinsella with brilliant article on our attack v England
Short version is we went with the Bath/Rugby league shape a lot but kept dropping the ball

http://www.the42.ie/analysis-ireland-at ... 4-Sep2015/

[dropkick]

As ever Murray Kinsella with brilliant article on our attack v England
Short version is we went with the Bath/Rugby league shape a lot but kept dropping the ball

http://www.the42.ie/analysis-ireland-at ... 4-Sep2015/

Good to see they're trying something different. They did create chances against England which is encouraging.

[Golf Man]

I wouldn't pay a huge amount of attention to the warm up results - particularly the England game. WE are 4.5 weeks away from our first meaningful test - their fate in the group will essentially be sealed at that point (Fiji, Wales, Australia first). There has obviously been a lot of chooping and changing as well so you are going to get inconsistencies there

Think we have started 35 players and only Strauss and Reddan have been involved in all 4 games, only Ross, McGrath and Heaslip have started 3

21 of the 31 man squad have played have either 2 starts or 1 start and 2 sub appearances - ie very little rugby - you can say this about the rest of the teanms as well but as I said all on different timelines

I'm not sure how the Romania and Canada ames will go - I has kind of assumed we would see a first choice team v Canada with second choice v Romania - there may be still some further experimentation, game time, auditions to go in those games. Its obviously important that som eof the bg players and big partnerships have really only been introduced in the last two games

I'm still confident that we will show up and will reach the level of the 6Ns of the last two years - that's not the question though. I don't think we should cut loose but we nedto add more to the arsenal - its allwell and good to say we are not showing ourt hand (and as others have pointed out giving the opposition information to study) - but we essentially have two years iof games that the opposition can study ad if we come in with a gameplan as limited we can be found out. ssuming that the big plays will work when we get there (having not been tried or worked in the warm ups is risky. The players need to be able to stray from the system a little bit if it is on - v England in particular we looked like slaves to the system.

I think we will stilbe hard to beat but if we don't add a bitgoing forward we could be setting ourselves up - we have barely beaten France the last two years - I would expect them to be better in the WC than they have been the last two years - we need to be as well, but if we don't show a bit more attacking intent and execution then we won't be - we'll e =diifuclt still but more predicatbkle

[fourthirtythree]

To be fair our defence opened up spectacularly against Wales.

Another great article from Murray Kinsella. I will be watching the WC on Irish television this year, which I don't normally (nor the 6N though I turned it on for O'Gara in particular recently).

I thought he was a touch unfair on the flankers in his scrum one from the English game.

[Ruckedtobits]

Review of what happened in 2007 or 2011 is irrelevant. Joe is neither Eddie or Deccie. Review how JS prepared team between end of ERC Pool games in 2011 & 2012, and Q/F, and again between Q/F and Semi.

Am absolutely convinced he has not shown any new cards in Warm-ups, but has prepared full hands for Italy, France and q/f. Schools rugby parallel is how Clongowes regularly ambush fancied teams in knock-out games.

Motivation is huge factor in Irish rugby. None available for warm up games, but none spared when the real thing rolls around.

Irish players gagging to get down to real thing and throw-off the handcuffs

[Golf Man]

Review of what happened in 2007 or 2011 is irrelevant. Joe is neither Eddie or Deccie. Review how JS prepared team between end of ERC Pool games in 2011 & 2012, and Q/F, and again between Q/F and Semi.

Am absolutely convinced he has not shown any new cards in Warm-ups, but has prepared full hands for Italy, France and q/f. Schools rugby parallel is how Clongowes regularly ambush fancied teams in knock-out games.

Motivation is huge factor in Irish rugby. None available for warm up games, but none spared when the real thing rolls around.

Irish players gagging to get down to real thing and throw-off the handcuffs

Just to play devils advocate you could have said the same about Kidney in 2006 and 2008 - made big changes at important stages during both those campaigns

He may have prepared full hands for Italy and France - I suppose the question is what these hands are - I don't see us all of a sudden playing free flowing running rugby. I would expect some more incision, tstrike moves etc ( I reckon we will try to utilise Payne a bit more - I like him more the more I see) - but we are then depending on this al clicking into action together all of a sudden