Over-Reaction to the 'Poor' Performance?

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Stev_o

Ah im kinda torn half way to be honest. Part of me is saying "Sure we have done worse before and still the media would be behind us" and the other says "How in Gods name are we supposed to be real contenders of RWC when we cant brush a Italian side that dumped its bench and changed midfield completely"

We all know that rugby here has exploded that most people couldnt have seen 8 years back. And i think now more then even we [the fans] have become the most demanding nation bar New Zealand and on certain days we fans even surpass them. Most people are going to say that "Ireland cannot loose any matches ever cause we have the best team every and BOD is the greatest player ever so loosing isnt a option" Then for those people to witness 3 successive defeats of Irish squad one win and a fairly flukey win they scream MUTINY!

In credit to Italy they have come so far from the 6N and good luck to them in the RWC and the future.

But it doesnt explain why we struggled against them. On paper most people would agree we shouldnt have a problem bar that we avoid mass forward brawls and get quick ball to the backs. On the day the forwards gotten into a brawl and then decided to half a$$ do it. Now im not saying they are all crap and should be immediately removed but we have come against bigger packs and matched them why not last night [Hook would insert a no7 comment here]

Now for the life of me i cant understand this. Italy near the end made 3 changes. They moved in a new no 9 moved the other to 10 and then a out half to center. And we still couldnt get any breaks bar the last minute which was a sloppy one?


In conclusion we need to actually go and play some rugby. Scotland match and the Italy match the forwards nor the backs were up to getting to heavily involved. They might want to start or it ll be like playing france 2003 all over again

Irish Wolf

Yeah - no doubt there's been the typical knee-jerk reaction, and because Hook has so much air-time and spouts the loudest then that's where all the focus has been..

But.. Italy are not France, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, or even Argentina.. IF we seriously think that there's a chance of us progressing past the group stages, then teams like Italy and indeed Scotland should be put to the sword.. And as has been said in other threads - what exactly were the team doing during the training camps?

I'm reasonably confident that the Irish team will up their game come September.. but I've got a very bad feeling that Argentina will pull off a victory in the opener against France - something which the Irish team may not have planned on - and because of that - a sudden shift in focus for the team could throw things into a bit of a tissy..

davyjose

I think the worry is that if we have any chance of progressing to the knock-out stages, we need to beat one of either France (who have beaten us recently) and Argentina (who have beaten us recently). We will not beat NZ, so in order to progree further, we need to beat both of those teams.
Then we will most likely face either Scotland (who have beaten us recently) Or Italy (who almost beat us recently*). So I think in terms of certainty, well, there isn't any, and this isn't really befitting of a team with the quality that ours has.

*Incidentally, I don't buy into all this BS that the Italians really bet us. Our 2nd try was equally as valid as theirs, if not more so. Murphy, had he not been tackled off the ball would certainly have sent it into touch. It's funny how that went so unnoticed by those paragons of fair play - the italians!!!

quagmire69

Agree with your thoughts on the journalists mostly. Hook should stick to the dancing show, whatever its called. i like thornley too. Don't read the indo so don't know who writes in their.

I am puzzled too by some peoples praise of the team over the past year. The 6N was a failure IMO.
Most of my grievances at the moment are a result of Eddie. He has made some very strange (Bad IMO) decisions over the last year or so. I have lost a lot of confidence in him.
The mess of the warm up games is just making it worse. I do think that things may still turn around. I have no doubt we will beat the argies. We could take france too although their squad has no obvious weakness'.

is_that_so

Agreed on the soundbyte mentality and Hook , but I still couldn't help wondering on Friday if this was a team with genuine title pretensions. I have no doubt that they will get better but I don't have the same confidence of some of the other posters. Having seen Wales, England, Scotland, SA, France, Argentina and Italy play in recent weeks we are a long way off them in so many areas. Now it could be argued that the others might have got it wrong but can all of them have got it so wrong?

For me there has been an over-reaction but some of that has been brought about by the team talking itself up. As EOS observed himself it is now time for a reality check. Like everyone else I want them to do well, but I'd be feeling better if was an Argentina or France fan. For now I am hopeful rather than confident.

JC 2K3

I think it's worth keeping in mind that we essentially have two more "warm-up" games before we have to face decent opposition.

Granted we will need at least 4 tries in both these first two games, but I don't see it being a problem, even going on current form, and it might be the confidence boost we need to up our game against France and Argentina.

Stev_o

JC 2K3 wrote:

I think it's worth keeping in mind that we essentially have two more "warm-up" games before we have to face decent opposition.

Granted we will need at least 4 tries in both these first two games, but I don't see it being a problem, even going on current form, and it might be the confidence boost we need to up our game against France and Argentina.

People keep saying that but i disagree if anything EOS will put out his 2nd team against them and then Horgan and BOD when they come back for one of the matches. You wouldnt risk your first team against the likes of Georgia the pack would end up shattered before we even take on the Pumas!

kevmy

There was a bit of an overreaction to the Italy game. But it still was a poor performance.
I still think we'll beat Argentina but France is the main one. While we weren't super at times in the 6N last year I think France were no better really so 6 months ago there was nothing between us. Of course they have home advantage for this WC but still...

As for Hook would he ever shut up about the scrum. We've had a crap scrum for the last 5 years we know it, everybody in the world knows it but it rarely bites us in the ass. In a game there is prob only 2 or 3 scrums where it is vital not to concede ball or give up penalties. I think we can survive that against every team if we play it smart.

The performance against Italy was most reminiscent of our first half performance against France a couple of years back. We came out after that and played some of our best rugby. This team needs a kick up the arse every now and again and we need BOD (for leadership if nothing else), we should have both of those before France and the Argies roll around.

The only area that really worried me against Italy was the back-row, virtually non-existent. Of course Best was playing out of position and Easterby has these games every now and again but I expected more out of Leamy. Hope he gets his form back and Wallace returns from injury before France

Tori Tanaka

Hmmm, Prophets of Doom are at it again...

Sure, Ireland played crap against a lesser side, but Italy are not the useless side they once were. Why people think these "warm up" games are important is beyond me. Fair enough, some of the players need game time but to say that we're completely incapable of anything worthwhile ever again is ridiculous.

We played rubbish in a game that means nothing, a game two weeks before actual important matches, God knows who could have been injured and that's the last thing we need. It was a meaningless game, it doesn't matter, and just coz we played like that in that game, doesn't mean we're completely rubbish.

Marshy

JC 2K3 wrote:

I think it's worth keeping in mind that we essentially have two more "warm-up" games before we have to face decent opposition.

Granted we will need at least 4 tries in both these first two games, but I don't see it being a problem, even going on current form, and it might be the confidence boost we need to up our game against France and Argentina.

I agree that its not all doom and gloom but the games against Namibia and Georgia can't really be considered warm up games IMO. We'll be playing bits and pieces sides in both games I'd imagine so our best 15 won't be playing together competetively till the France match.

Sabre0001

Another thing to remember is that Ireland played a different system in the game against Italy - we played it to be a bruising encounter to toughen for the WC it seems - there wasn't a lot of rolling mauls, or kicking for touch. O'Gara seemed to rarely play the line and instead, people ran it...

Eddie said that we would not see the same moves as would be used at the WC - Who would have thought it would apply all over the park?! Out of this we have to look at the positives and we could have scored a couple more - think Hickie tried to go himself when there was a 2-1 overlap and Trimble should have backed himself at one point when he broke the line.....

What good is peaking now - we need some shocks and tough games to make sure that we aren't complacent in a couple of weeks! The best is yet to come (I really hope )

AlphaMale 3OO

Friday was all part of the plan. Ireland never wanted to show their hand and they didnt. Come the World Cup, the scrum will be solid, as it usually is, the backs will be electric and the real professionalism of this team will come to the fore. We still have a good chance of topping the group. We wont come up against a better front row than one with Castrogiovanni, Ongaro and Perugini. Castro is the best scrummaging tighthead in the world and the much vaunted Argie scrum is often on the backfoot for two reasons. (a) They think they are better than they are and (b) Their stand in tighthead Bonorino is nowhere near the required standard which dosen't say much for their strength in depth. Yes I am saying it: The current Argie scrum is the most overated bag of hot air in World Rugby because its being based on their traditional strength there as opposed to their current prowess. Italy, France, NZ, SA and possibly England are all stronger in this area and would not experience major problems against them. The real danger with the Argies is other teams stupidness in underestimating what at full strength is a scintillating back division (Corletto, Hernandez, Contepomi, Pichot). These guys are top class and often overlooked and if there is to be any threat from the Argies it will be from their backs and not their forwards. Controversial that.