Irl v Sco 6Ns 2020

[dropkick]

I thought there were some good signs in attack. The players looked a bit freer and could express themselves a bit. Good mixed in with dour play.


The problem is for various reasons they couldn't get into a rhythm. And since they couldn't pull away on the scoreboard they got nervous and went into their shell more.


I'd like to see Addison at fullback next week. Larmour had a load of possessions but just ran to the nearest defender. No different to Kearney. I thought the scots didn't mind kicking it back to him.

[Dave Cahill]

He didn't run to the nearest defender, he ran to the nearest Irish pod - which is what Irish full backs do when playing for Ireland. If Will Addison starts the next day, he'll do the same thing and people w'll be calling for Tiernan O'Halloran to be picked. Then when he does the same thing, they'll be looking for Mike Haley.

An Irish full backs primary responsibility when running the ball back is to not put themselves in a position where the opposition can turn the ball over with the backfield exposed.

[LeRouxIsPHat]

I thought Larmour always looked to counter, thought it was very different to Rob running straight into contact/towards support.

It was a serious mixed bag of a performance. The most glaring things for me were that we still weren't running onto the ball and that we kept resorting to the box kick at bizarre times. Forwards were standing off Murray and then Sexton often just shipped the ball on without adding any value. Combine that with Scotland being really aggressive and not afraid of coming in from the side or lying on the ball (because Raynal let them most of the time) and we just struggled for go forward and to get any kind of rhythm going.

The lack of line speed was obviously a big issue as well. I would have thought that all of these issues would have been top priorities for the coaches and wouldn't be overly difficult to improve (of course I didn't expect them to be perfect) so to be so poor was really disappointing for me.

Against that, I thought we did look creative at times. Certainly think our counter attack looked better and Larmour seemed to have some freedom to roam around/connect with Sexton. We got a good few excellent steals on the deck, Henderson had two brilliant ones at lineout time, and our scramble defence was really good.

I'm not worried about the scrum or the maul, Raynal (who I usually really like) had a shocker today. Scotland were stepping across in the scrum and entering the maul from all sorts of weird and wonderful angles. I wish I could say the same about the breakdown but Wales did the exact same as Scotland today and will be even worse at killing the ball next week if they're allowed to get away with it again.

Although I did like our attack at times, we didn't seem to have a plan to get Stockdale (who looked very lively when he did get the ball) or Conway involved. We need to get the backs more involved close in, they aren't just there to call something when there's space, they can do more of the dirty carrying as well. It felt like we gave Larmour permission to do what he pleased but then forgot about everyone else.

I was very much in the drop CJ camp but he was phenomenal today, really don't think we'd have won without him. I'm not one of those who thought he was too limited for us but I did think that the last few years had taken its toll and that he'd lost his explosiveness. Hopefully he can keep it up.

As much as I was frustrated while watching it, there are a lot of mitigating factors - first game together, the coaches haven't had much time to change things, Johnny (who was still pretty good) hadn't played for a couple of months, one of the new players went off really early and another of our most creative players was gone at half time, Kilcoyne's injury meant that we lost his impact and had to flog Healy and Furlong, and the ref made things really difficult for us.

It's far too early to come to any conclusions but I can't shake the idea that Lancaster would have improved all of the issues I've mentioned and that we'll be looking to bring him on board next year.

[hugonaut]

I have to say that I thought we were very ordinary and that it was a discouraging performance.

It reminded me distinctly of watching Matt O'Connor era Leinster: a lot of players we know to be talented and capable of quality play working hard but with little sense of them thinking strategically about how to break down the defensive problems posed, and no sense of ever combining to be greater than the sum of their parts. I thought we looked disorganised at times and lacked cohesion in terms of our attack.

We beat these lads 27-3 [+24pts|4 tries] on neutral ground five months ago, 22-13 [+9pts|3 tries] on their home patch a year ago and 28-8 [+20pts|4 tries]* in the equivalent fixture two years ago. A 7pt|1 try win on home ground is a mediocre result.

I thought JVDF struggled out there today - I've the feeling he played on quite a long while carrying an injury and not sure he'll be fit for next week. Stander very brave and combative as always, a strong performance from him and a deserved MOTM. Nothing different from what he has done for us thirty times before – always puts his shoulder to the wheel. I thought that Hendo showed up and put in hard work, especially in the first half.

Murray was one-paced [and that one pace was slow] and is crying out for the sweet release of being dropped, getting the worse part over with so he can give himself a positive goal and start trying to play well to get his place back. He is playing turgid rugby and his body language is entirely negative.

* Check out the spooky similarity between Rob Kearney's numbers in the 2018 game [source: https://www.espn.co.uk/rugby/playerstat ... gue=180659 ] and Jordan Larmour's in the recent game [source: https://www.espn.co.uk/rugby/playerstat ... gue=180659 ]

[sunshiner1]

by LeRouxIsPHat

As much as I was frustrated while watching it, there are a lot of mitigating factors - first game together, the coaches haven't had much time to change things, Johnny (who was still pretty good) hadn't played for a couple of months, one of the new players went off really early and another of our most creative players was gone at half time, Kilcoyne's injury meant that we lost his impact and had to flog Healy and Furlong, and the ref made things really difficult for us.

Agree with this. I understand the doom and gloom but lets give it a few games before we decide to get rid of the entire management team!

[Experimental]

Cooney has to start now against Wales, he looked much much sharper when he came on. Murray was appauling. We made very hard work of that, not helped by some poor refereeing in the first half. Assuming Doris is now gone for 3 weeks Deegan should get his shot at 8. CJ had a great game and I have always said his best position is 6. Gutted for Doris, but he has to just put it out of his head, was cruel. Conway and Stockdale need to work harder to get more involved. Scotland looked much improved, if they had Finn Russell, they would have beaten us. Aki was lively but rusty. Much improvement needed before Wales arrive in Dublin.

[Blueberry]

Great to win but pretty poor game all round, Scots their own worst enemy with constant stupid penalties and Hogg will be having nightmares for sometime !! That was a big moment. The ref was utterly clueless at scrum time which didn't help us and I think the TMO must have got stuck on the Dart as he didn't appear to want to review anything !!

Murray atrocious for most of his time on the pitch, he has been a great player for Ireland but it's over, time to move onto Cooney and McGrath. How long can one player keep getting selected cause he was good a long time ago. As usual Ringrose and Larmour the sparks but not much else going on in terms of game changing moments and with Ringrose out now our backline is gonna be a weaker place. Bundee gives it all but is limited, big strong lump but that is it really. Pack struggled all day with the Scottish messy breakdown play, endless hands and off feet nonsense but it wasn't being reffed and we didn't really like it. Furlong looked to be in good form, Ryan his usual self, Herring did ok and Henderson, Stander and VDF emptied their tanks. POM did his usual but for me Ruddock is the man for that slot with VDF at 7 and Stander and Doris and Conan scrapping for 8. Stander had a good game and gave everything but for me is still a guy whose sole intent is to run over people rather than to move the ball, v the best teams he struggles as he makes no yards and its something ingrained into his way of play. I wish he could move on as his heart is in the right place. The entire 15 need to play a faster game all the time. Get rid of Murray, increase ruck ball speed ruthlessly and encourage more offloading and we get closer. Blue glasses I know but Leinster would have won that game by more today. A better coached and more coherent outfit and Farrell has his work cut out to emulate that. Strange place to be.

[Ruckedtobits]

Not convinced our backrow will have the ability to win the battle for ball at the breakdown. We've definitely improved the ball-carrying capacity but that's only one side of the game.

Scottish scrum will be solid. .............We bullied their pack totally at RWC19 and many forget the quality of that performance under Schmidt in what we thought was going to be the key Pool game in the World Cup. But Townsend is no fool and is capable of springing a surprise.

This is a game with high expectations of being a comfortable win for Ireland, with the sole media focus being on the quality and variety of our attack. For me the major focus should be on our defence and how we are going to pressure their half-backs in order to control the game.

Scotland played well and the arrival of new Coaches in Tandy (Defence) and de Villers (Scrum) improved their performance to the sort of level we expected in October. I don't buy the view that Russell would have capitalised more than Hastings, he would also have been more flaky in defence.

Hamish Watson was the best back-row on the pitch, despite the excellent defensive performance from Stander. However, the refereeing of the breakdown and mid-field offside was poor and Scotland cheated very successfully in both areas. Fagerson deserves to be cited for two no arms hits on Irish players in rucks and he was constantly looking for Irish targets.

Scotland will be more satisfied with their performance than Ireland, but Ireland are still in this Championship. We made line-breaks but don't have anything like the pace on our wings that Wales do. Bundee and Ringrose both made line-breaks that really quick wingers might have capitalised on, but we don't have that luxury.

We'll miss Ringrose and, to a lesser extent, Doris. Farrell won't put Deegan into the team against Wales, nor will he start with Cooney. Healy & Furlong had hard workouts and Porter's stint at LHP may be an indication of what may be to come. Hendo and Ryan also put in big shifts but our front-five will not be the vehicle by which we can win this competition.

An acceptable start but two really tough games coming up and no certain indications from this as to how we can match the Welsh or stand up to the English power. An Irish performance more reminiscent of Kidney than Schmidt and this is going to be a hard 6Ns with the only certainty that Italy will claim a deserved Wooden Spoon.

[Hippo]

Agree 100% with Hugo, this was very discouraging stuff. The comparison with MOCball is unfortunately highly appropriate.

[LeRouxIsPHat]

The thing that reminded me of MOC was when Murray would get to a ruck and not really know what he was doing next. It happened a good few times where he'd either look the wrong way or it just took too long for everyone to be in place and the ball to be passed from the deck. We've a long way to go before we get to MOC levels of not even knowing what we were doing off first phase set piece ball though.

What I really didn't get was how we had the freedom to try things and did look good at times in attack yet didn't back ourselves to hold onto the ball at times when it was obvious that we should. Okay we hadn't shown that we could play at this stage but it was just utterly bizarre to defend for the opening couple of minutes and then kick the ball away off good lineout ball after Doris' steal. We just ended up defending for another few minutes. It's been a bugbear of mine that we didn't give ourselves a break at times last year and yet again we just kept inviting pressure on ourselves. I can't remember which Leinster game it was recently where we seemed to treat the last quarter as a defensive session where we backed ourselves to smother the opposition but that wasn't happening yesterday, we were on the back foot and struggling when Scotland had the ball.

Things can change very quickly, I had meant to mention that Joe had plenty of games like this (Australia 2013 and Argentina 2018) where we played terribly but were a different beast against New Zealand the following week so fingers crossed we get an improvement after getting some rust out of the way and relieving some pressure with the first win.

[LeRouxIsPHat]

Is there any hard and fast rule about time off having had two concussions close together? Two fairly nasty ones for Doris, hope he's alright this morning.

[Logorrhea]

I think we still have issues in the pack that haven't been addressed. For all our complaints about our style of play, we found it really hard to get any kind of go forward ball.

Furlong was the only member of the front five that actually played particularly well today. The scrum was a mess (referee?), the lineout was really good but our mall just isn't working. I think if we can address that, the rest of the boys will look and play a lot better. The back row (Stander aside and Doris absent) looked impotent. VdF looks a little lightweight for me. Hes not a threat at the breakdown, doesn't carry and isn't really a lineout option. We don't really push in defense so I'm not sure what he does apart from tackle everything that moves. If that's all we are looking for, why not look at Connors who is taller, heavier and hits just as hard.

If the pack continues to offer sh!t and slow ball in our own half, of course they will kick it.

[Gearzbox2]

Very poor outing yesterday after such a “positive” vibe coming from the Irish camp last couple of weeks
Still seems to me that this team has the hall marks of joe Schmidt era all over it still...incredibly ponderous in attack, no real defensive structure that sticks out and if anything our mail and scrum has went backwards at an alarming rate

Healy had an awful time at scrum and did very little around the park, his place is in jeopardy imo...herring was ok, hit his men but did little else...furlong exploded into the game from 50 on but pretty anonymous before that
Ryan was decent and Henderson hufffed and puffed (is bring Dev in for him)
JVDF had 3 carries, I know he makes 15+ carries and great at the breakdown but we need more carrying from him to take pressure off the others

Doris was incredibly unlucky, I had a feeling he was gonna have a big one
Pom was ok, of course the pashun brigade are racing about him but I’m not convinced
Stander was superb

I actually thought Murray was ok, not appalling like a lot of people are saying but you can see the tempo change with Cooney
J10 was rusty but ok

Larmour was very good but like someone else said here our wingers need to be more productive and I don’t rate Conway, I’ll get slated for this but he’s turned into a box chase specialist and offers little else

Wales next week will take their chances and I’d be worried, very worried if we don’t improve

[FLIP]

The scrum was a mess (referee?)

Absolutely the referee. When a player can bind below the shoulder and pull a player down in front of the referee you know the referee is clueless.

Our more stable scrums were where our LH side was near enough to touch that the linesman could see well enough to make calls about the scrum.

[Gearzbox2]

The scrum was a mess (referee?)

Absolutely the referee. When a player can bind below the shoulder and pull a player down in front of the referee you know the referee is clueless.

Our more stable scrums were where our LH side was near enough to touch that the linesman could see well enough to make calls about the scrum.

Healy didn’t play the ref though, yes the scrum was going down but when the loose heads elbow is first to hit the ground and its collapsing it’s a easy decision for the ref

[Dave Cahill]

If only we had a scrum half who was a fixture for one of Europes top three or four teams. Imagine that. That would be mad, especially if the same guy was a regular partner of the Irish outhalf - crazy stuff. We obviously haven't though, otherwise the entire narrative in the media and online wouldn't be focussing on the choice between the worlds shortest giant and the worlds tallest dwarf

[Blueberry]

Watched it back again...Murray was pants and the other thing that stood out was Scotland totally took the p**s at the breakdown......Murray spent half the game moaning at the ref about the breakdown whereas when Cooney came on he simply pulled the ball out and got on with it. The scrum was a mess and the Ireland pack bemused at many of the decisions but as per the breakdown we need to be a bit more savvy when the ref hasn't a rashers and react.

Farrell should split gametime between McGrath and Cooney and see who works out. McGrath for me with blue tinged specs offers more than Cooney but either will be a step up on Murray. It Farrell doesn't change for the next game I will be wondering....

[hugonaut]

Is there any hard and fast rule about time off having had two concussions close together? Two fairly nasty ones for Doris, hope he's alright this morning.

I don't think there is, but Farrell et al would have to be nuts to take any risk. He was removed from play against Treviso 11 weeks ago after a HIA and it's not something we can afford to take any chances with, both in terms of his long term and immediate health.

[FLIP]

The scrum was a mess (referee?)

Absolutely the referee. When a player can bind below the shoulder and pull a player down in front of the referee you know the referee is clueless.

Our more stable scrums were where our LH side was near enough to touch that the linesman could see well enough to make calls about the scrum.

Healy didn’t play the ref though, yes the scrum was going down but when the loose heads elbow is first to hit the ground and its collapsing it’s a easy decision for the ref

If the elbow is hitting the ground first and the THs hand is below the shoulder joint, yes it should be a very easy decision for a ref. To penalise the TH.

Not sure what more Healy could have done - Raynal was not interested in anyone else's point of view.

[fourthirtythree]

I was hoping for a new coach bounce rather than a major tactical renewal. The comparisons with other coaches are interesting, Kidney took a demoralised squad after a world cup and decline and gave them back their condidence and motivation. Then his tactical and coaching limitations showed in the lackluster performances after his first season.

Problem is, we don't have a new coach to get the bounce, nor do we have the new broom of coaching innovation. It's a bit like FFFG's inability to connect with voters at the moment. As Pappy put it:
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/5358e674-c ... mYLeV.copy