Ireland - Player Ratings

bugler

Going to go for a rational, cold analysis here rather than go nuts and give everyone 0.

Girvan Dempsey - 6. Solid as ever. But is that enough?

Shane Horgan - 4. Has had a curious dip in form since the end of the 6N. Nothing much to report here.

Brian O'Driscoll - 5. It's ironic that the groundhog work he gets through is now seen as his flaw. No doubting his appetite and commitment. But where are the line breaks?

Gordon D'Arcy - 5. Some hard yards made, like we have become accustomed to. Something of a minor return to form in that regard. But is still part of a lethargic looking back line that once looked super smooth.

Andrew Trimble - 3. Trimble has some good qualities. But the wing isn't the place for them. The experiment is a failure.

Ronan O'Gara - 3. How ironic that we were all worried that he might get injured and it would mean disaster for the Irish side. He is physically well, but mentally who knows where he is? Bertie, can you get your mates to give him a dig-out?

Eoin Reddan - 8. Needs to be given time to become our regular SH. He is a better player than Boss. Munster should swallow their pride and bring him home. The performance was all the better for the pressure he was under.

Denis Leamy - 6. Worked hard as you'd expect, with some good carries.

David Wallace - 4. I'm a big fan of his, but still struggling to find form after his lay-off. Criminal stupidity with the stamp on Chabal. If you're going to stamp, do it properly. Where were the carries?

Simon Easterby - 7. Ireland's most impressive forward in the loose, but paired this with some appalling stupidity in giving away penalties.

POC - 5. Works very hard in the loose, if not always intelligently. But why is our most athletic line-out jumper calling so little ball to himself? Is a fine player no doubt, but can have no serious claims to a world XV spot on current form.

DOC - 4. Is he a lock? Why is he not used in the line-out? Should have been called ashore early for the washed-up MOK, who at least could secure lineout possession.

John Hayes - 7. Scrummaged manfully against a prop who has caused him trouble in the past. Consistently got a good hit on engagement. He even carried some ball! We will miss this man more than most people realise.

Jerry Flannery - 5. Was spooked badly by Ireland's line-out troubles. Not convinced it was the hookers fault. Not as exuberant in the loose, but injects some heat into the pack at least, as we could hear through the refs mic.

Marcus Horan - 4. Needs to take some credit for what has been a good Irish scrum to date in the competition. Had a couple of high profile knock-ons, one of which wasn't his fault. Would be better served by following Hayes example and hitting rucks rather than loitering on the wing.


EDIT: For my sins I'm watching the match again. I bumped Hayes up to 7, because (ignoring the few 7 man scrums) this was arguably our best scrummaging performance in memory and Hayes takes the credit, against a team that bested the Pumas in this regard.

Stev_o

Id rate Horan's off scrum work as 2 he thinks he's a winger

Darcy=1 Sorry but he's a shadow of himself it seems like Lions 2005 for him all over again i think he's lost all of his confidence.

Other then that id agree with you. Dark days loom ahead

jayteecork

Trimble deserves a big fat one. He was overpowered by the smallest man on the pitch for the 2nd try, and dissapeared for the first. That Vincent Clerc is haunting us. And Clerc is actually the Irish name Cleary, he's got plenty of Paddy in him.

bugler

Christ the WC brings all the muppets out, the BBC ratings give Reddan a 4. The sooner these D-Grade hacks piss off back to covering cricket the better.

funky penguin

Link?

jayteecork

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/rugbyworldcup/2007/09/ireland_ratings_v_france.html

funky penguin

What match was he watching? He gave shane horgan more points that reddan..

Hugh_C

bugler wrote:

Criminal stupidity with the stamp on Chabal. If you're going to stamp, do it properly.

he wasn't the only one, Leamy did too

Hugh_C

jayteecork wrote:

Trimble deserves a big fat one. He was overpowered by the smallest man on the pitch for the 2nd try, and dissapeared for the first. That Vincent Clerc is haunting us. And Clerc is actually the Irish name Cleary, he's got plenty of Paddy in him.

Sad to say but I just won a few bob on PaddyPowers by Clerc scoring the 1st try.

tolosenc

Can we use minus numbers?

dantes74

reddan was definately our man of the match, pity he wasn't on against georgia. trimble should never have started.... i do believe he started only because we had to have at least 1 ulster representitive on the team, if that's the case it should be simon best.

philstar

jayteecork wrote:

Trimble deserves a big fat one. He was overpowered by the smallest man on the pitch for the 2nd try

id blame o'gara more than trimble for that second try, he failed to push clerc into touch.

RugBeir

bugler wrote:

Going to go for a rational, cold analysis here rather than go nuts and give everyone 0.

Girvan Dempsey - 6. Solid as ever. But is that enough?

No, but it says it all, if people think this guy is good. Ireland have no chance of winning anything. But to be honest on the night he was one of Irelands better performers, which just about sums it up and EOS' strategy.

Mediocrity cubed!

Grant you he is a good catcher and kicker - wow! Zero for inspiration!

As for the second try, he caught air while Clerc caught the ball. He bottled it!
Any second rate GAA player would have caught that ball. But, then again, at least he was in the ballpark this time, whereas in Croke Park in Feb, he was nowhere to be seen, when Clerc won that match with his last min try!

I see Trimble getting the blame for being AWOL on the first try - but where was the no. 15 ?

hollywoodhoppy

Hi all, i appreciate what everyone is saying and here is my 2 pence worth...

I think Trimble is getting a bit extra criticicism than is required really. Granted he wasnt that good but i'm pretty sure that Clerc's first try was NOT his fault. That is a defensive system that is called by the outhalf/scrum half bringing the blind winger into the open to rush the defense, works very well most times but it was a moment of pure genius by Michalak more than anything else. If you rewatch the video he also signals to easterby the blind is all his. And saying that Trimble was overpowered by smallest man on the pitch, he's 90kg, 5ft 11, he's pretty much like a young bull. I've seen him playing a lot this season and it was dempsey that should have ploughed him!!

The long and short is that they were a class above us and better to watch with ball in hand than Ireland, Damian Traille is awesome. I hope we recover enough to beat them in 6N, we havent been near world cup contention since we played england at Croke Park, its been mediocre since.

But fair play to the effort put in fo the most part, its encouraging to see. We will win the six nations because there's enough time to turn things around

nacho libre

France, although people will dispute this, were playing at a greater level than in the Six Nations. you can cite players not performing, O Gara's psyche and EOS selection errorS, but the fact remains, even if he satisfied the criteria of every poster here, Ireland would have still lost because France were the much better team. They always have been. This team beat understrength southern hemispheres last autumn and suddenly they were world beaters. I know people like to look for excuses but repeating myself the stats don't mislead in this case: one win in 30 odd years in Paris.

bugler

nacho, no one is disputing the French were better. However the hope was that Ireland were getting better over the past couple of years, and they were about to peak.

Your assertion that France are simply better seems to suggest we shouldn't bother playing at all. Why don't we just decide the matches on paper? If you compared the Munster and Biarritz teams in the HC 2 years ago you could have awarded the cup to Biarritz before the game was played.

The current crop of players we have shouldn't be 20/25 points worse than France. I betted that they werent 20 points worse than NZ last summer in both games and was proven right. What has the previous 30 years to do with this team? Were they playing back in the 80s?

The side has under-performed this world cup, they aren't playing to their abilities. We've been better than Wales, Scotland and England for the past couple of years. But in this form I suspect we'd lose to them now.

The rotten lack of form and malaise around the team is the coaching teams fault. Whatever way you cut it, the preparation is not there. There are coaches who could have got more out of this team. Maybe Loffreda for one.

razorblunt

Right here are my ratings:

Dempsey - 7 probably our most consistent player through the 3 games so far hasn't done anything wrong

Horgan - 4 hasn't recovered his form shouldn't have been picked

D'Arcy - 3 no breaks at all, lets the player go past him before he tackles

O'Driscoll - 6 think they should take the captaicy off him to free up his game again

Trimble - 4 wing isn't his place at all should be moved to the center alongside O'Driscoll to watch and learn

O'Gara - 2 terrible all form and confidence is gone the sooner he gets back into the Munster camp the better it will be for himself, could also do with a second kicker in the team a la Traille

Reddan - 6 tried to keep the french on the backfoot (who were offside in the middle alot) good upper body strength on a few occasions as well

Leamy - 4 put your bloody head in the scrum and push or Christ sake, doesn't keep the leg drive going in the tackle

Wallace - 4inconspicuos, hasn't recovered his form either

Easterby- 5 some good runs and turned over a few balls on the floor but surely his time at international level is over

DOC - 3 don't think I heard his name mentioned all game

POC - 5 better than recent games not good enough, needs to get the ball in hand more

Horan - 2 terrible game, solid scrum but maybe he's not international standard

Flannery - 5 some dodgy throws but was good in the loose especially in midfield

Hayes - 3 very solid in the scrum, but if any other team in the world had a guy his size they would be used alot more in the loose he had two carries all game and it took 3 french forwards to take him down each time

Best and O'Kelly looked up for it when they came up but once again EOS left it too late with the changes.

Even though those ratings are bad the ratings for the French would be similar with the exception of maybe Bonnaire and Traille.

nacho libre

bugler wrote:

nacho, no one is disputing the French were better. However the hope was that Ireland were getting better over the past couple of years, and they were about to peak.

Your assertion that France are simply better seems to suggest we shouldn't bother playing at all. Why don't we just decide the matches on paper? If you compared the Munster and Biarritz teams in the HC 2 years ago you could have awarded the cup to Biarritz before the game was played.

The current crop of players we have shouldn't be 20/25 points worse than France. I betted that they werent 20 points worse than NZ last summer in both games and was proven right. What has the previous 30 years to do with this team? Were they playing back in the 80s?

The side has under-performed this world cup, they aren't playing to their abilities. We've been better than Wales, Scotland and England for the past couple of years. But in this form I suspect we'd lose to them now.

The rotten lack of form and malaise around the team is the coaching teams fault. Whatever way you cut it, the preparation is not there. There are coaches who could have got more out of this team. Maybe Loffreda for one.

Even allowing for the absence of form and coaching errors. France would have won that game last night in my opinion

the reference to 30 years is that France have been consistently better over the years and were again last night. Though, you have acknowledged the latter point in your post.
I'm disappointed they lost but more so at the margin of the loss. The French were the better team but as you said yourself Ireland are capable of more than the final scoreline indicates.

Hugh_C

razorblunt wrote:

Hayes - 3 very solid in the scrum, but if any other team in the world had a guy his size they would be used alot more in the loose he had two carries all game and it took 3 french forwards to take him down each time

Jaysus you're hard to please, Hayes had a great 60 minutes. You're not a back by any chance?

razorblunt

hughchal wrote:

Jaysus you're hard to please, Hayes had a great 60 minutes. You're not a back by any chance?

Nope I've played every position in the scrum except hooker, I just can't understand why he doesn't present himself for attacking the fringes, for a man of he's size like, good to see Tony Buckley getting a bit of aggression in his game and if you saw the Maoris in the Churchill Cup their prop was about 20 stone Ben May I think was always carrying the ball.

Linford

Just saw the player ratings the Independent gave after the France match http://www.independent.ie/sport/rugby/ireland-team-ratings-1085448.html?r=RSS . I wonder what game he was watching that resulted in Simon Easterby being Ireland's lowest rated player and DOC being rated 8 out 10?

bugler

Those Independent ratings are surreal. If you just went by them you'd think we had a narrow loss with a decent performance.