Ireland v Italy, 4/10/2015

[Oldschool]

The biggest worry tomorrow is injuries.
Earls has been in great try scoring form.
Has he managed to finally add the passing ability, that is a hallmark of JS' coaching ability?
A run at 13 will give us some idea.
Neither SOB or POM have shown the same form as pre injury but they are still formidable players.
Henry is going to be JS' toughest decision. He's a super player and he has to be in the 23.
Joe may ultimately decide that Hendo and Henry give him the flexibiliy on the bench that he wants.
That would work in Dev's favour especially against France.
Today is the end of the beginning of our RWC.

[Donny B.]

I don't think that you should need to whisper that Sean O'Brien should be the back rower feeling hot breath on his heels. He escapes criticism for ordinary performances due to being a fan favourite I think. He's one of ours and the other provinces patronisingly see him as being other than a Leinster player.

Bitch please!!!

[fourthirtythree]

I always do.

[Donny B.]

I always do.

[simonokeeffe]

Parisse quoted as saying he's nowhere near fit but will play but will be nowhere near his best

Stephen Ferris is doing the rounds promoting his book and his answers to Matt Williams (going after Payne) are great, short version is Matt is really, really nice and they got on great but he was a rubbish coach who knew f all

[LeRouxIsPHat]

Matt Williams' use of nicknames gets me every time, acts like he's best mates with people he's probably never met. I know he'd have met him but my favourite is "Girvy Dempsey". I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him but he's good value and would say he's a good man to have a pint with.

[simonokeeffe]

Matt Williams' use of nicknames gets me every time, acts like he's best mates with people he's probably never met. I know he'd have met him but my favourite is "Girvy Dempsey". I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him but he's good value and would say he's a good man to have a pint with.

Shag Horgan for me

[LeRouxIsPHat]

Matt Williams' use of nicknames gets me every time, acts like he's best mates with people he's probably never met. I know he'd have met him but my favourite is "Girvy Dempsey". I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him but he's good value and would say he's a good man to have a pint with.

Shag Horgan for me

He's not my type but if you really want me to then...

[FLIP]

Farces is letting Italy away with murder. I've lost count of the number of Italian players holding on for 5 seconds plus and getting away with it, and Italy are on their knees in the scrum before driving up and getting away with it. Why is a Frenchman officiating a game which has a direct effect on France?

[Oldschool]

Farces is letting Italy away with murder. I've lost count of the number of Italian players holding on for 5 seconds plus and getting away with it, and Italy are on their knees in the scrum before driving up and getting away with it. Why is a Frenchman officiating a game which has a direct effect on France?

More to the point, why aren't we kicking our points.
That's a golden rule being broken.

[Oldschoolsocks]

Fcmn Keith Earls, Italy almost score n the corner because he's forcing an offload he doesn't have the competence for.

He's not, nor will he ever be good enough to play in the centre for ireland.

I'm flagging this as a game changing moment.

Just pick Darren cave there ffs Joe, please

[FLIP]

POM has made some utterly stupid moves today and that one is the cherry on top. Pure thickness

[LeRouxIsPHat]

Thank god Italy didn't have Ghiraldini or we would really have been in trouble.

Henderson the only real positive. POM was excellent before that moment of madness.

[Oldschoolsocks]

Ian Henderson was a hero.

Underwhelmed by POM

[blockhead]

Awful performance, simply awful. Every part of that was terrible. We looked mentally just not up for it. If there isn't a massive, massive improvement next week then France will win and then we will be wiped out by NZ. Nobody will be scared of us after that.

[Golf Man]

about as bad as we could have been - set piece was good but no cohesion from forwards and nothing from the backs - a lot of our performance has to go on schmidt - we didn't attempt to really play in the first half and defence was hugely passive. Henderson comes out with credit as does best and bowe - pom was best player by a mile in the second half but stupid yellow card

[LeRouxIsPHat]

about as bad as we could have been - set piece was good but no cohesion from forwards and nothing from the backs - a lot of our performance has to go on schmidt - we didn't attempt to really play in the first half and defence was hugely passive. Henderson comes out with credit as does best and bowe - pom was best player by a mile in the second half but stupid yellow card

Agree with all that except for not playing in the first half. Thought we did but just kept choosing the wrong option. Similar to last week we kept giving passes to guys who just ran into walls of defenders who were going forward.

Don't really know how that happened given the platform we had. Italy got away with being offside a lot but it was more than that. Dropped a lot of balls that we should have just held on to. Earls losing the ball instead of putting Kearney away and a couple of the no look inside passes around the ruck were infuriating.

[FLIP]

Pom played a game for the highlight reel, mixing the awesome with the brain dead in equal amounts, with nothing in between.

He should be dropped for the yellow card alone, an utterly moronic piece of play with nothing to be gained by doing it.

[CiaranIrl]

Pom played a game for the highlight reel, mixing the awesome with the brain dead in equal amounts, with nothing in between.

He should be dropped for the yellow card alone, an utterly moronic piece of play with nothing to be gained by doing it.

Nearly as moronic was the lineout in their 22 when he tackled the Italy player in the air, but half the pack gave dumb penalties away in fairness. Only Henderson and McGrath looked good from the pack. Of the backs, Murray was superb. Henshaw was good.

[LeRouxIsPHat]

TV3 are talking about Heaslip and SOB being poor and I agree. I defended SOB in this thread but don't think he had much of an impact. He was unlucky with a couple of turnovers that should have resulted in penalties for us but he seemed a bit heavy legged or something. Still did some good things but just lacked impact.

The penalty Heaslip gave away was so unlike him and I really didn't notice him much at all in a positive way, did notice other mistakes though.