Ireland vs Australia- Sat 11am

nacho libre

feck sake Flannery!

steelbar

a lineout take!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

steelbar

F88k sake POC

nacho libre

forward pass:(

Fozzie Bear

Goddam it POC what the hell is up with ya?

Sherifu

3 minutes, come on.

trout

POC is having a 'mare ... Flannery looks dazed

Only consolation is Australia haven't scored either ... Kearney is still up for it.

Last few minutes, Ireland must get something for this!

/EDIT - Wow ... we got a good lineout there.

copacetic

We should have won it but you can't if you just keep giving your own ball away again and again and again.

steelbar

ah balls...............

Fozzie Bear

W@nk. That it is all.

Sherifu

Great effort. Didn't do enough in the end.

Taquiri clearly MOTM...

No green goggles here, Kearney did excellently but Taquiri must've been playing 4 positions...

He was incredible

jank

Ref was a disgrace!!

nacho libre

Great defense from Australia at the end but we had chances before that in Australia's 22 to win it.

marco_polo

Bradley just has to go after that performance.

nacho libre

Flannery's ribs must be killing him after that tackle from Taquiri . He was outstanding for Australia in defence but so was George Smith. Kearney and Heaslip were the two best players for Ireland today.

steelbar

marco_polo wrote: »

Bradley just has to go after that performance.

Bradley is only an interm manager, he's gone after the tour anyway.,

Inquitus

Kearney was outstanding, heaslip was soso at best

marco_polo

steelbar wrote: »

Bradley is only an interm manager, he's gone after the tour anyway.,

I know, I was debating whether to put a smiley in there or not. Guess I should have

[Jackass]

Pfft...Australia were excellent in defence, but again you have to feel that if we were performing this is a game we could have won.

Flannery has put to bed any notion that he is an international hooker at this stage.
I really hope Buckley develops very quickly as neither of our props can hack it at this level.
O'Connell lost form for Ireland before the world cup and never really got it back. I'd be interested to see how much ball he turned over in the lose, could be close to double digits, let alone his missed lineouts (but that's between himself, Flannery and lifters)

O'Callaghan did reasonably well, as did Lemay, Heaslip was good at the tail of the lineout.
Didn't think Stringer or Reddan had great games, O'Gara was decent.

Actually felt Bowe had a very good game, Horgan wasn't great, Wallace did ok, BO'D just doesn't look fit and should never have been on this tour imo, and Kearney, absolutley brilliant again, he's already excellent, but is going to be a world class full back.

nacho libre

Inquitus wrote: »

Kearney was outstanding, heaslip was soso at best

I thought Heaslip's performance was much better than his showing last week. No question though that Kearney was the star player today.

jayteecork

Kearney and Leamy were immense. Bowe played well. Horgan, Wallace, and O'Driscoll were poor. Stringer was back to his s hite decision making best. O'Gara was ok.
Second row was good. Line out was absolutely s hite again.

Again, some poor decisions and unforced errors cost us the game

Rattlehead_ie

Well the only thing I can say is after these 2 tests, we didnt win and didnt take our chances, but what we can take is that our performance and play is a HUGE improvement from that of the WC and 6N. Something that we can build can on BUT we need to build on it quickly.

On BOD, I am a fan and I wont say his best days are behind him as Im sure he can go back to his best but Im still sticking to my guns in saying take the captaincy off him, I think all he needs to do is concentrate on his rugby and not have the presure of being captain. EOS inability to keep presure away from his players and his captain while he was manager has taken his toll on BOD, hopefully not permantently. Who you give it to I dont care.

dc69

Rattlehead_ie wrote: »

On BOD, Im still sticking to my guns in saying take the captaincy off him, I think all he needs to do is concentrate on his rugby and not have the presure of being captain. EOS inability to keep presure away from his players and his captain while he was manager has taken his toll on BOD, hopefully not permantently. Who you give it to I dont care.

That lad is ****ed,if he wants to play the game till around 33 or so he needs a year off,his body is just ruined and he needs some specialist surgery on that hamstring.

irishbucsfan

I think some of the comments here are pretty inaccurate.
Ireland weren't "woeful," I dont see too many amazing improvements we could have made.

The lineout, now that was woeful, let down the entire team. Best and Flannery both need to improve and O'Donovan needs to seriously work on it (if O'Donovan is the Ireland forwards coach going forward? Im not entirely sure).

The Australians were fantastic today, especially earlier on, the speed that they ran the ball at was amazing, yet they managed to keep it alive and offload it all the time, that seemed to really catch our defense out. Also, the power that they ran the ball with meant they were always moving forward with the ball. If we had that kind of power in the last 5 minutes the score might have been different.

I think our centers are a weak link, Reddan and Stringer were getting good ball to O'Gara, but Paddy Wallace and an underfit O'Driscoll just aren't international-standard attacking options. The sooner we can get D'Arcy back the better as far as I'm concerned. I think Paddy Wallace needs to be slowly pushed out of the squad, in favour of D'Arcy, Fitzgerald and maybe Keith Earls with time.

I think a player who really deserves to be mentioned here is Rob Kearney. At 22 years of age he was arguably the best player on the pitch (behind Tuqiri, maybe Smith). He's cemented his place at Fullback on this tour, and probably ended Geordan Murphy's international career as a starter in the process (too bad, it was nice having a Newbridge guy like Murphy there, roll on Fionn Carr!).

Paul O'Connell wasn't much worse today than he is normally. I don't think he played poorly, he's never been a great player with ball-in-hand, he's always been a knock-on candidate, he's always lost the ball in contact. None of those skills take away from what he contributes on the pitch, his leadership and desire render all of his inadequacies irrelevant.

Of the other players, Heaslip returned to form, Stringer played well, Scrum held up, Tony Buckley came in once again and absolutely destroyed anyone he wanted to. Tommy Bowe was very exciting, Horgan was strong as always, and he didn't knock the ball on as much as he usually does.


Anyways, just my €0.02. Didnt see any of the analysis so I dont know if any of this is the consensus.

themont85

Ireland shouldn't have lost, a few key moments of losing the head lost it for us. Stringer at the end of the first half, stupid play. O'Connell, another game where he doesn't use the head. Lineouts at various stages, what the hell is going on there. Heaslip was good around the park and Kearney was good too. Jennings was a big loss I felt for the pack, Leamy played alright in the loose.

Gelio

That preformance brings some great posatives.

Kearny (what can I say)
We could have won just unlucky at the last moment. Ref, knock on, etc.
We now know why our line outs were bad v all blacks. Jerry Flannery
The pack were very strong

The negatives are

BoD is finished
We still lost
Players are getting old

ironingbored

jayteecork wrote: »

Second row was good. Line out was absolutely s hite again.

Sorry but what the hell is the second row for if not winning lineouts??????

Lack of leadership is down to POC.

Gelio

themont85 wrote: »

Lineouts at various stages, what the hell is going on there.

Flannery is the problem he kept miss-timeing his throws

copacetic

ajeffares wrote: »

Flannery is the problem he kept miss-timeing his throws

was he the problem even when not on the pitch