Ireland Autumn Internationals 2022

[CiaranIrl]

26 tackles for Josh, 23 for Doris. Some effort from those two!

Yet O'Mahony only managed 4 tackles.

https://www.espn.com/rugby/playerstats? ... gue=289281

I just don't understand how he manages to have games like this so often. In fairness to him, 2022 was a much better year for him, but it's just absurd how he gets a pass for the games that just pass him by.

[naraic]

26 tackles for Josh, 23 for Doris. Some effort from those two!

Yet O'Mahony only managed 4 tackles.

https://www.espn.com/rugby/playerstats? ... gue=289281

I just don't understand how he manages to have games like this so often. In fairness to him, 2022 was a much better year for him, but it's just absurd how he gets a pass for the games that just pass him by.

Pretty much every Irish game we have 2 backrow forward with an insane tackle stat and one that doesn't.

Not sure why but it happens basically every game.

I'm not sure what the other backrow forward is doing but it's an almost constant thing with Ireland and its not always POM.

[MylesNaGapoleen]

Brilliant year for Irish rugby....nice to end it in a win, albeit fierce scrappy.

Possible farrell scaled back the game plan just before KO so crowley wouldn't be overwhelmed?

We looked really nervy and didn't really get into our groove at all. Simply slowing down our ball at rucks completely nullified our attack. reminded me of LAR in marseille. A major worry if there wasn't a logical reason for the performance. I guess we will find out in feb when the 6N kicks off.

[IanD]

Thinking about the game this morning and it crossed my mind that both teams played like they didn't want to win the match just not lose it.

Both sides made the game scrappy with little or no outstanding rugby skills on display. It reminded me of a tense nervous semi final.

[jezzer]

First 60 minutes i thought we were too deep in the little attack we had. Not fixing, not squaring up, just shipping it out. On top, the back three were all fairly iffy, Jimmy the best of the bunch. So the penetration was limited to grunt up the middle, where Doris was incredible and Sheehan v handy.

When we stopped kicking it away and attacked at the line more, we looked better.

Unusually for Ireland it was a dolly mixture of great performances, decent ones and underwhelming ones.

Henshaw was missed. McCarthy was s walking penalty when he came on. For a guy who's had his share of dumb plays in past games, he sure seems s slow learner. He got the run of the green off the ref a few times too, who told him to stop instead of blowing it up.

Crowley showed me more as a game orchestrator than Joey did in his early games at 10 for Ireland. It wasn't amazing but you could see he was planning ahead and executing decently. Needs to get a fair bit flatter though.

Doris vs Valentini was the clash of the game. 2 of the worlds best going at it.

Oz arent far off. White and Foley as a game-managing combo is ok, but with the horses Oz have outside (plus Koroibete to come back) they'd be better with at least one of those HBs to be more dynamic.

[Ruckedtobits]

First 60 minutes i thought we were too deep in the little attack we had. Not fixing, not squaring up, just shipping it out. On top, the back three were all fairly iffy, Jimmy the best of the bunch. So the penetration was limited to grunt up the middle, where Doris was incredible and Sheehan v handy.

Oz arent far off. White and Foley as a game-managing combo is ok, but with the horses Oz have outside (plus Koroibete to come back) they'd be better with at least one of those HBs to be more dynamic.

+1
Largely agree but Jimmy used up a lot of pitch width on at least two occasions in 2nd half. I felt that Ireland were not allowed to straighten the line by the power of Oz defence which constantly pushed them wide - possibly because Aussie defence didn't believe we had pace on outside. Straight running with cut-backs or inside passes is the normal tactic to beat such defence but we missed Henshaw & Sexton in this respect.

Totally agree that Oz aren't far away and I'd love to swop Pool places with Italy.

[Cheeses of Nazareth]

Positives: Our defence was very good. Ryan, Doris and Sheehan were excellent. Crowley did ok for a first start. No worse than Carbery would have done which is a good starting point for a rookie. Byrne showed great character demanding a shot at goal at the end. Excellent kick. Great to dig out a win against good opposition when we were very very average.

Work ons: I thought our exit kicking was poor. Line kicking was mainly conservative although Crowley did have a couple of decent ones once he slotted his first 3. We struggled to really get out of our 22 in the first half with JGP, Crowley and JOB not really getting much distance. Furlong probably had the biggest boot of them all. We badly missed Lowe in this regard. The Aussies had the edge in the air and from the boot.

Decision making was questionable at times. The kick to the corner just before half-time when we were a man up with their sub hooker in the bin was the wrong the decision. I suspect Sexton would have been calling for the scrum and Aussies down to 13 for the remainder of sin bin.

In second half twice we went blind from set-pieces when they were down to 13. Surely you put the ball through the hands and use your basic skills and take advantage of the overlap.

We look a bit suspect when receiving restarts. That’s not the first time this autumn where a player has gotten up in the air and the ball has sailed over his head. Need to tighten up that aspect of our game and not give teams easy access to our territory.

[naraic]

In second half twice we went blind from set-pieces when they were down to 13. Surely you put the ball through the hands and use your basic skills and take advantage of the overlap.

I can understand going blindside once. The Australian backs were split 4 on the openside and 0 on the blindside.

Go blindside once. See if they can scramble across. Maybe you can get a try. If not you have warned them and they need to respect the blindside threat which will open up more space on the openside.

So yes I agree with going blindside the first time. Going blindside the second time was just craziness.

We look a bit suspect when receiving restarts. That’s not the first time this autumn where a player has gotten up in the air and the ball has sailed over his head. Need to tighten up that aspect of our game and not give teams easy access to our territory.

Agreed. I feel that it happened a couple of times in the New Zealand tour too but I can't recall specific moments.

[wixfjord]

We look a bit suspect when receiving restarts. That’s not the first time this autumn where a player has gotten up in the air and the ball has sailed over his head. Need to tighten up that aspect of our game and not give teams easy access to our territory.

For some reason this is a massive issue in both blue and green.

The amount of restarts that are knocked on or go over the receivers head is mad.

While it's not as static as a lineout or scrum, it's surely coachable.

[Twist]

First 60 minutes i thought we were too deep in the little attack we had. Not fixing, not squaring up, just shipping it out. On top, the back three were all fairly iffy, Jimmy the best of the bunch. So the penetration was limited to grunt up the middle, where Doris was incredible and Sheehan v handy.

Oz arent far off. White and Foley as a game-managing combo is ok, but with the horses Oz have outside (plus Koroibete to come back) they'd be better with at least one of those HBs to be more dynamic.

+1
Largely agree but Jimmy used up a lot of pitch width on at least two occasions in 2nd half. I felt that Ireland were not allowed to straighten the line by the power of Oz defence which constantly pushed them wide - possibly because Aussie defence didn't believe we had pace on outside. Straight running with cut-backs or inside passes is the normal tactic to beat such defence but we missed Henshaw & Sexton in this respect.

Totally agree that Oz aren't far away and I'd love to swop Pool places with Italy.

Why Italy?

[Experimental]

Great year for us. One thing that was a bit of a thorn in our sides were the restarts (pretty much all of November), I think we could have made our lives a hell of a lot easier if were more solid in that area. Thought the lineout and the defense this November was outstanding. Oz will definitely be a big force come world cup. Nawaqanitawase looks some player

[hugonaut]

Great year for us. One thing that was a bit of a thorn in our sides were the restarts (pretty much all of November), I think we could have made our lives a hell of a lot easier if were more solid in that area. Thought the lineout and the defense this November was outstanding. Oz will definitely be a big force come world cup. Nawaqanitawase looks some player

He could light up the World Cup. Seriously impressive athlete and rugby player. If Australia can get Nawaqanitawase, Petaia, Kerevi and Koroibete into a three-quarterline together, they'd be absolutely frightening. All of them are huge individual threats.

That was a hell of a close game. While it is very unusual for the better side to lose in rugby, saying Ireland were the better side at the weekend wouldn't be the hill I'd die on. I thought Australia deserved it as much as we did and got in their own way a bit in terms of some very sloppy discipline. They also shipped a lot of injuries.

I think Dave Rennie is a very good coach, but he could take a leaf from ROG's book with regards to his use of Skelton, i.e. give that big ogre starts and minutes. ROG has given Skelton seven starts and left him on the pitch for 80 minutes in five of them this season [source: https://www.itsrugby.co.uk/player-zoom- ... arter.html ]. Playing matches is the best way to keep very big players in shape.

Skelton makes a pack big on his own; he is the rock that Australia should be building their pack around. Valentini also impressed the hell out of me, and obviously getting Michael Hooper back into the team made it better.

I have rarely been as out of touch with Aussie rugby at any time in the last thirty years as I have been this year. However, seeing this group live has got me interested in them again.

[wixfjord]

Valentini looks like a real player. Had a good battle with Doris when he was on the pitch.

Aus have so many big injuries that if they can clear that up before the RWC they'll be contenders. They'll walk the group and should be playing Argentina or Japan in a quarter final.

[cormac]

Ulster reporting that Baloucoune has a hamstring injury

[hugonaut]

Valentini looks like a real player. Had a good battle with Doris when he was on the pitch.

That was easily the best part of the match, Doris vs Valentini. If the rest of the one-on-ones had been up to that standard, it would have been an absolute blinder.

[hugonaut]

Brilliant year for Irish rugby....nice to end it in a win, albeit fierce scrappy.

Possible farrell scaled back the game plan just before KO so crowley wouldn't be overwhelmed?

We looked really nervy and didn't really get into our groove at all. Simply slowing down our ball at rucks completely nullified our attack. reminded me of LAR in marseille. A major worry if there wasn't a logical reason for the performance. I guess we will find out in feb when the 6N kicks off.

It looked quite obvious to me that we were playing around Crowley in the first half, which I totally understand. He wasn't supposed to be starting and has played very little first grade rugby at No10 [just one start for Munster there this season]. He hasn't spent a long time in the training squad and he doesn't train on a daily basis with most of the other players, as Frawley and Ross Byrne do at Leinster.

The long and the short of it was that he wasn't capable of running the sophisticated attack that Sexton makes look easy, his kicking was very mixed, he gave a couple of hospital passes and he conceded a lot of yards defending. The positives were that he didn't make any bad errors [no unforced knock-ons, no kicks or restarts straight out, no shanks, no horrible missed tackles for scores] and he came through the 70 minutes with us level on the board. That's not a bad result from him at all.

I remember Joey Carbery's first start for Ireland. It was against the US on tour in June 2017, the game in which Keith Earls ran for 220m and made 9 clean breaks [source: https://www.espn.com/rugby/playerstats? ... gue=289234 ]. Carbery had an absolute f*cking mare. He had two kicks blocked down for tries, had a couple of other shanks and then went off injured. He was about a year younger than Crowley and we were missing players because it was on at the same time as the Lions tour, but the US Eagles can't compare to the Wallabies. They're easy-beats, and the Wallabies are two-time World Cup winners.

To get a win with a complete rookie outhalf against a pretty decent Australia team is a good result. It was a tough game to watch with a lot of breaks in play, a lot of injuries and a lot of penalties, so to come out with a win is sort of the only positive we can really take from it ... but it's a big positive.

[riocard911]

Yip. It's huge. And then for Ross, after not playing in green in two years, to come off the bench anc bang over the winning peno cool as you like was the icing on the cáca milis!!!

[Flash Gordon]

First 60 minutes i thought we were too deep in the little attack we had. Not fixing, not squaring up, just shipping it out. On top, the back three were all fairly iffy, Jimmy the best of the bunch. So the penetration was limited to grunt up the middle, where Doris was incredible and Sheehan v handy.

When we stopped kicking it away and attacked at the line more, we looked better.

Unusually for Ireland it was a dolly mixture of great performances, decent ones and underwhelming ones.

Henshaw was missed. McCarthy was s walking penalty when he came on. For a guy who's had his share of dumb plays in past games, he sure seems s slow learner. He got the run of the green off the ref a few times too, who told him to stop instead of blowing it up.

Crowley showed me more as a game orchestrator than Joey did in his early games at 10 for Ireland. It wasn't amazing but you could see he was planning ahead and executing decently. Needs to get a fair bit flatter though.

Doris vs Valentini was the clash of the game. 2 of the worlds best going at it.

Oz arent far off. White and Foley as a game-managing combo is ok, but with the horses Oz have outside (plus Koroibete to come back) they'd be better with at least one of those HBs to be more dynamic.

Fair assessment, thought we were pretty average at 9-10-12. Crowley is a kid who hasn't played 30 times for Munster and in those circumstances he did ok but he was nowhere near international standard. As you say he was deep and his kicking from hand was pretty poor. But for a lad with his level of experience that was a remarkable and extremely gutsy performance particularly as JGP didn't play particularly well. The kids definitely has potential but he needs to play.

Big difference when Aki arrived too. Otherwise, the pack were decent, Doris was different level, Josh as always up to standard and POM had a poor game. I wish people wouldn't jump on POM's selection when he has a poor game, you do need to look at it in the whole and I think he's had a good year. He's also had a good year in a year when Conan has hasn't so needs to be seen in that context too.

What can you say about Ross? We wanted him to ask a question and he came on and showed balls of steel to win the game. Maybe not enough to convince the coaches but definitely enough to sow a seed of doubt.

[ronk]

What can you say about Ross? We wanted him to ask a question and he came on and showed balls of steel to win the game. Maybe not enough to convince the coaches but definitely enough to sow a seed of doubt.

Faz (& most people) know he's going to get with Ross Byrne and the others too, and what he's not.

I expect Faz will continue to use the 3rd outhalf slot to try to develop someone until the warm up games. Then at some point he'll make a decision on an upstart: Harry Byrne, Frawley, Crowley or one of the experienced provincial players Ross Byrne, Carty, Burns.

There isn't a lot that Ross can do to change that outside of the type of spike in form that would get him ahead of Carbery.

[Ruckedtobits]

Lots of almost throwaway comments, mainly as counter-balance to assessment of Crowley, that JGP didn't play well. That comment is accurate, largely because our pack rarely produced quick, well-presented, ball which he thrives on. In such circumstances, no scrum-half can serve up good quality ball to his half-back partner.

"JGP played badly" was also a summary of some commentators. He didn't, but it says something about our expectations of him that he received criticism for being stymied by the quality of the ball presented.

Very few players in international rugby play almost flawlessly week-in, week-out. One of the few exempted from this generalisation is JVdF who appears to be capable of replication of excellence week in, week out. However, JGP played well last weekend, despite the quality of ball available to him.

A small part of this was ball presentation. Only Furlong, Ryan & JVdF can be exempted from criticism in this regard. Every other forward got sloppy as the game progressed. This is a flaw capable of immediate improvement. Certainly against Hooper, it becomes a big flaw and he capitalised on a number of occasions.