RWC'15 Pool D: Ireland vs Italy, RWC. KO Sunday 4:45PM TV3/ITV1

Ardillaun

Several of our short kicks were unsucessful. The Italians seemed to have our game well sussed, like the Welsh.

.ak

In fairness I think they put good pressure on our kickers.

subfreq

Hendo has been the only consistent and effective ball carrier since Wales II in the warm up games.

From here on in Ireland need to structure multiple phases of tight play around O'Brien, Heaslip, Healy(or other loose prop), Best and Hendo to draw in the defence.

Without it you get today. A passive setup of deep lying players who aren't working in pods or to an effective structure to draw in defences before using a flat attacking backline.

Ireland's line speed in defence was also passive today but something much more easily addressed this week.

Although I didn't enjoy watching the second half I must admire Sexton for grabbing the situation and taking responsibility for it, ensuring an ugly win.

It is not doom and gloom or panic stations for me, just a clear sense that the forwards must step up now. Stats can be misleading as I think often individuals can come out with a great tackle numbers but not have really made the impression on the game they should. Forwards work in groups to be effective and dominate.

fitz

They were getting away with being offside a fair bit too I thought, which helped that pressure, but I think Murray having a poor game had more of an impact. Everything seemed slowed down due to his service. His worst performance in a while imo.

phog

Ireland played a conservative game today, there was no need for a BP win and we showed nothing to France to analyse for next week.

I thought POM was tied with Henderson for the MotM award until his yellow card.

I'd have SOB as our worst back row player today, he was below his best and has been since we went into this tournament including the warm ups.

Talk of dropping Best is just simply mad, he's without doubt they best hooker in Ireland right now.

I thought Earls was good today with limited ball, if Payne is injured Earls starts at 13 again, if not then Earls back to his wing position.

Murray was the poorest player out there but Joe never seemed to want to give Reddan a run, is there an injury concern or lack of trust in him or saving him for France.

Why are some posters talking of Henderson starting at 6? Joe hasn't started him there in any of our games, why try it against France?

Muahahaha

Bridge93 wrote: »

I would be very confident that Ireland were hiding certain things until they were absolutely needed. No other reason explains why they kept using the same patterns that weren't working too well (we know it isn't a lack of prep under Schmidt).

actually I think we might have tried a short line out in the Italian 22 during the last 10 minutes. iirc it was thrown to the first man but the Italians copped the move and turned over the ball. Anyone else remember it? I thought it might have been a cheeky move from the training ground but it got rumbled

bleg wrote: »

Our game vs Scotland in the 6 nations was the last time we played with such intensity.

You're actually right, we haven't played with that same level of intensity since then. It'll come again Vs France but our decision making needs to be better than today. We looked very predictable at times and the Italians seemed well able to anticipate what we would do next.

Flipper22

That's a bit harsh on Murray Phog.

I'm not sure what to make of that really, disappointing overall but I don't think we unveiled the full bag of tricks. Maybe a bit of complacency too. Agree that we kept the ball too much in the middle third until the last 10/15 mins.

Zebo and Earls weren't great. DK didn't do anything wrong but we didn't see a whole lot of him. Henshaw and Bowe had their moments, possibly the pick of the backs. We don't know exactly what the halfbacks were told to do but I don't know why we kept the ball so much when we were generally running into brick wall italian tackles. Why were so passive in defense?

Henderson was my MOTM, the rest of the tight 5 were pretty average. Lineout was good. Theirs was awful, we could definitely have got more change out of it than we did. POM was the most eyecatching backrow for both good and bad reasons. As usual his workrate is a notch below the other two but he was the only one of the three who came up with a few big plays; great steal for the try and a couple of big carries when we needed them as well as the try saving tackle. Two daft pens including the YC in their red zone though. SOB and Heaslip got through their work as usual. SOB in particular looks a bit heavy legged at the moment. Maybe it was just the ferocity of the italian tackling.

Garces pissed me off at times. Let them away with a lot defending mauls, didn't reward our scrum a couple of times, missed a clear high tackle on earls just before halftime which denied us a shot at three points.

Lucy8080

Job done today. Knockout rugby was the order of the day, Italy are out , we have secured a q/f spot.

Same again next week ...both teams will look for a win to avoid N.Z. (any kind of a win).

We went down to fourteen men on 70 mins and were the only team who had a scoring opportunity.

It wasn't a pretty game to watch but I always had the impression that we were in control.

I think, game by game, J.S. has his homework done to give us every chance (if we are good enough) of a victory. I wouldn't place to much store by the warm up friendly results.

Brewster

phog wrote: »

Ireland played a conservative game today, there was no need for a BP win and we showed nothing to France to analyse for next week.

I thought POM was tied with Henderson for the MotM award until his yellow card.

I'd have SOB as our worst back row player today, he was below his best and has been since we went into this tournament including the warm ups.

Talk of dropping Best is just simply mad, he's without doubt they best hooker in Ireland right now.

I thought Earls was good today with limited ball, if Payne is injured Earls starts at 13 again, if not then Earls back to his wing position.

Murray was the poorest player out there but Joe never seemed to want to give Reddan a run, is there an injury concern or lack of trust in him or saving him for France.

Why are some posters talking of Henderson starting at 6? Joe hasn't started him there in any of our games, why try it against France?

Nobody with any ounce of credibility would drop Best. To even be discussing it a bit surreal for me!! There may be one or two issues with the team, but the bigman was outstanding today. He is not the reason we stuttered a bit today. Cronin is a great impact sub, we are blessed to have him but he is no Rory Best yet. He Rivalled Hendo for MOTM. Well on his way to 100 caps. I've seen Best hammered and criticised when the line out doesn't function but as I've pointed out so many times, the guy had played so many games where we have secured 100% of our lineout ball. Simon Easterby, a fantastic line out player himself has got them going well. Next week is another step up but lineout is purring nicely. It just wouldn't make any sense to bring Toner back. There is an argument for Chris Henry type player in Backrow but who do you drop?? As I said earlier on thread, players are targeting this game next Sunday. They have been targeting it for months. Today was a distraction, our WC begins next weekend, it's gonna be an exciting ride!!! I firmly believe that. Are we guaranteed to beat France? No, but performance next week will be night and day from today. Wait and see.

galwaylad14

I'm going to start by saying that I'd normally be positive enough on the whole and usually find myself laughing at people over reacting to defeats, in fact one of my favourite things do on this site is to go into the Man United or Liverpool threads after a defeat and just laugh at the melt downs.

But I thought we were absolutely brutal today. I thought we were dreadful. Italy played alright but they're limited, if they had anything about them at all they'd have beaten us today, make no mistake about that.

Do we have any plan at all apart from kick the ball as high into the air as possible? Or to throw the ball to a player standing still (usually Sean O'Brien) and expect them to make a couple of yards, why can't the players come on to the ball at pace? why do they always have to take it from a standing start?

Does Schmidt have no faith in these guys or what? The style of play is just to chase garryowen after garryowen and then when we do try run it we just chuck the ball to a big lad and expect him to make yards. There's no creativity and what's worse there isn't even any attempt at creativity. We are just so limited, whether that's through lack of talent at our disposal or too conservative of a game plan is hard to say.

I know Murray is told to kick the ball as often as possible so it's harsh to blame him but those constant box kicks just aren't working. I thought he was terrible today, his kicking wasn't actually too bad but he takes the pace out of every attack, just too slow to whip a pass away when we really need it.

To look at the Aussies last night and how they passed the ball at pace and created and exploited the space and then to compare them with our hoofball tactics today is like comparing night with day.

I struggle to see what positive could possibly be taken from today's game other than the fact we won.

Christy42

Hmmm will have to watch it again. I felt the fact that so much of the ball was of poor slowing it down. We were going backwards a lot of the time. Murray wasn't great but didn't think he was close to the worst player on our side. Get him better ruck ball and he will give better ball to the backs. Plus his kicking near the end helped seal the win. As I said though I could have just not noticed things first time around.

PTH2009

noway12345 wrote: »

Yes, that and the whole list of other similarities.

tv3 broadcasted both.

galwaylad14

Christy42 wrote: »

Hmmm will have to watch it again. I felt the fact that so much of the ball was of poor slowing it down. We were going backwards a lot of the time. Murray wasn't great but didn't think he was close to the worst player on our side. Get him better ruck ball and he will give better ball to the backs. Plus his kicking near the end helped seal the win. As I said though I could have just not noticed things first time around.

In fairness that is true, I thought he was cat but in fairness he did get very bad ball and he did put in some clever kicks in the last few minutes.

I just thought overall he was just so pondorous and indecisive with what he wanted to do with the ball and I thought he contributed fairly substantially towards such a bad performance.

But anyway we're through and that's the main thing, onwards and upwards to France

shuffol

I think we saw the effect of playing our two easiest games first, we seemed to go out intent on throwing the ball around without putting in the work up front first, we were so loose in the first half. Murray spent half the game on his knees trying to dig the ball out of rucks.

I would be a bit concerned that we're going into the 'France game without a clear mindset on how we want to play, we relied on our kicking game in the 6N to good success but we've gone away from that in the last 2 months and bar against hopeless opposition the results haven't been good. Will we try revert to our kicking game against France and will it be successful with our maul underperforming as it is. I feel some worrying similarities with England who also strayed from their natural game of the last 2 years in this WC.

I'm unconvinced about the balance of our backrow, I feel we could do with a bigger physical presence in there to get through some dirtier work. POM had some great moments but I'm still concerned by his physicality in games like this. His tackle count is consistently very low for a 6 which is fine if your regularly turning over ball but he's not. There was an incident midway through the 2nd half where he carried around the corner into Sarto and got driven back 3/4 metres which led to us getting turned over. Is imperious at the front of the lineout though and his tackle on Furno was a huge moment.

sydthebeat

I think some "Fans" here are suffering major pmt, they're so changeable.
On Saturday it was all, 'we should thrash Italy' and today its all 'we're boring and predictable'.

What we need from yesterday was a win with no serious injuries. And guess what, we got that. We played a brand new centre partnership in an important game, with our 12 making his rwc debut. So those boxes were ticked as successful (I though henshaw was massive in defense). If any part of our team let us down yesterday it was our front row who were too quite in open play for my liking. Yes they took a few crash balls, but it appeared like they just walked from aet piece to set piece. I didn't see enough screening or business from them.

Coming up to the france game it well be all "france are clueless, no structure, dead man walking coach" etc.... But we KNOW from recent history the game will be nailbitingly close. We know they will bash baseraud up the centre, we know freddy will stand off deeper under pressure. We know they are immensely powerful up front. So we actually know how they are going to play.
We need to stay very disciplined and allow them to self implode. When they start making silly errors they turn on each other and that's what we need. So I'm expecting almost the antithesis of yesterday's game next weekend. I expect a lot more tactical kicking (nagatachi the target), a lot better line rushes and chop tackles.

The one big worry I have though is that gnawing doubt that sexton can kick that decisive penalty when it's needed. He showed again yesterday that that singular pressure penalty is something he struggles with, and its happening too often in big games for my liking.

djmc

Fealt one of the biggest mistakes made watching yesterday's game was they kept kicking the ball away when they were not winning the high ball in the middle of the field.
Feel if they had kept a pick and go game they would have held more possession and got more break's
Italy were strong defensively though but the kicking game was not working for Ireland .

munsterlegend

The Rape of Lucretia wrote: »

Pretty much a perfect game from Ireland today. One more penalty would have been nice just to stretch the margin beyond the converted try, but that is nit-picking a little.

If Joe is reading were reading this thread he no doubt would be chuckling to himself with amusement. Instead he is sitting back tonight enjoying his mug of Vegemite, a satisfied grin on his face on a job well done.

All 15 played well. The player-by-player scorers could just give them all sevens. Nobody let the side down, or made stupid mistakes (well, apart from Mahones "note to self, maybe worth moving Henders there for France?"). All executed his plan. And the plan worked.

Who needs a plan B ? That just means plan A isnt good enough to do the job. So shouldnt be plan A in the first place. Joe goes with the best judged strategy - and sticks with it because it is the best one. Plan Bs are for unsure ditherers. Not Joe.

Big kick contestibles were carefully held back for a game when they might be needed more - no need to use them today to get the necessary win: they are a higher injury risk anyway, and with second stringers Zeebs and Earlsie not really strong in that area, no need to risk them.

Ireland coming to the boil nicely. The only dilemma is whether a tactical result should be played for next weekend and the chances of ambushing the AB's are stronger in a quarter final rather than the final. Its a toughie.

Interesting take on things! while i never felt italy would win bar some interception or sending off it was a bit too close for comfort. i think the players felt a lot of pressure today acknowledged by Schmidt and performed below par. hopefully now with a q/f assured they will up their levels. still think our back play looks very pedestrian and easy to read.

rrpc

djmc wrote: »

Fealt one of the biggest mistakes made watching yesterday's game was they kept kicking the ball away when they were not winning the high ball in the middle of the field.
Feel if they had kept a pick and go game they would have held more possession and got more break's
Italy were strong defensively though but the kicking game was not working for Ireland .

You don't have to win the ball for that play to be effective. Just make sure you smother the opposition player that does field it and you've gained some territory. We were actually unusually poor at fielding the high ball. A lot of the time we were tapping it back only for an Italian player to gather it. I think we badly missed Rob Kearney in that respect as he's usually very secure catching in the air.

There is some bizarre finger pointing going on here. Sean O'Brien is getting criticised even though he was our most effective ball carrier with 10 carries across the gainline. Murray seems to be getting criticism even though we under-resourced rucks and Italy put him under a lot of pressure when we only had one forward protecting the ball.

We hardly used our front row (other than Rory Best) to carry the ball. Mike Ross got the ball once and Jack McGrath got it four times! Cian Healy didn't get his hands on the ball at all and Nathan White just once with Sean Cronin getting it a massive twice.

Most effective player? Luke FitzGerald got the ball twice and made one clean break.

awec

Christy42 wrote: »

Christ I know we had a bad game but how quickly people are turning against Joe and the team is impressive. One bad game that we still won. Get over it. The man has won a trophy every season he has been on the Island whether it was with Ireland or Leinster. We have also hung with the best in the world with Schmidt-ball so let us see how far it gets us.

I for one still stand by them and feel they have the skills and the coach to do well.

People have said the same thing for a while now in fairness. Our tactics are pretty boring to watch, but when we win people tend not to mind so much.

Akrasia

Lads, the thing that was missing last night was intensity. Italy were fighting for their lives and they played better than they have played in years, and Parisse was on fire (one or two mistakes aside, he was like a one man rugby team) and despite this, Ireland was able to win the game without conceding any tries or really breaking into second gear.

Against France, Ireland will not be holding anything back. The intensity will be there, the guys won't be strolling to the breakdown, they'll be running.

Next week we have Nigel Owens as referee. We know how to play with him, he won't get in the way of our free flowing style of rugby.

Last night they were clearly playing just for the victory, they played a narrow channel defensive style of rugby. It worked most of the time and when we needed to secure the lead towards the end, we were able to do so comfortably even down to 14 men.

The game last night was really good preparation for next Sunday, and I don't see any reason to worry about how good our team really is.

awec

That might be true if this was our first game we've looked poor in.

When we faced opposition in the warm ups that were of a similar or higher standard than us we looked very ordinary.

Any point in watching this?

captbarnacles

Ardillaun wrote: »

Best is an oddly evasive runner. Most games he gets a chance to play the matador and just swerve around somebody rushing at him.

He really is. Remember the try vs NZ when he dummied and then crashed over. Hope we use him more when we are close to opposition line.

djmc

Rob Kearney was defiantly missed but thought they would have done better kicking to touch a bit more as they were good enough winning line outs even good at holding possession bar one or two knock on s
But almost every time they kicked the ball up the field they lost possession even though they gained territory they were on the defensive again
Trying to turn the ball over and losing ground

Tigerandahalf

The vast majority of games Ire play in are poor to watch. The neutral supporter would be bored watching our games. When you look at the attacking creativity that sides like Japan have had, it is clear something is missing from a coaching point of view. I believe Schmidt coaches Ire's backs. Perhaps it would have been better to bring in a dedicated backs coach with Joe overseeing the whole thing. I am sure one or two set piece moves are being kept up the sleeve but it won't change the lack of creativity in the backline.
Japan's backline played well because they played on the gainline and passed across the line quickly with players coming onto the ball at pace. The same with Oz.
It was inteteresting to read Eddie Jones talk about their intensity in training and how he demands everything to be done 20/30% faster than game pace.
When I watch Ire we are really slow at the ruck. Murray instead of getting the ball out quickly ponders at the ruck and waves players around to one side. Of course the opposition defence has had time to rearrange and you can predict the turnover coming.
I just hope we can up the intensity as when we do we can be quite effective.

total former

sydthebeat wrote: »

I think some "Fans" here are suffering major pmt, they're so changeable.
On Saturday it was all, 'we should thrash Italy' and today its all 'we're boring and predictable'.

These two viewpoints are not mutually exclusive.

We should have thrashed Italy, if we had played to our potential. They are a poor team who have been playing poorly. They had Parisse back which was a massive boost, but they also lost Ghiraldini and with him, they lost any hope of gaining a platform from their lineout. They were also forced into a backline reshuffle after three minutes.

We didn't thrash Italy because we couldn't seem to figure out a way to break down a very limited side. Predictable is exactly what it was.

Maybe Joe has a whole heap of stuff in the locker, maybe when Henshaw and Payne are reunited we'll see what we're capable of, but yesterday's performance was a lot worse than it should have been.

BTW, if we don't all sit around saying how wonderful everything is when it clearly isn't, does that mean we're not fans, but "fans"? FFS.

captbarnacles

The attacking play of most of the teams has been great to watch. Ireland and England not so much. We look ponderous.

There are huge warning signs here for Ireland because we haven't performed well in maybe last 5 matches. It's not going to be as easy as some here think to just flick a switch and play our best against France. The Irish players and coaches wanted a win yesterday and they got that but they also wanted a performance and until you replicate your form in training in a high pressure match it really means nothing.

Obviously, I hope this is wrong and we have the players and coaches to go deep in the tournament but it's still really worrying that we haven't performed yet.

sydthebeat

yes absolutely

Amped

WarZ wrote: »

But, but I though Heaslip and SOB had poor games???

So basically POM carried the least successfully of any of the back row, put in the least amount of tackles of any of the back row, made the most infringements of any of the back row and was the only back row player to be yellow carded but he was magnificent according to Keith Wood and our best player according to some posters here???

England dominated Australia if you go by stats. Heaslip carried this many times for this many yards... Tells us nothing. Using our eyes tells us he's continuing to run in to traffic, making 2 yards at best and never looking an offloading threat. Can you honestly say the French will be losing sleep over Heaslip & SOB?

accidentprone1

Deleted User wrote: »

Any point in watching this?

I can't imagine it being too exciting when you know the result - it was only the tension that made it interesting, tbh.


If you are going to, then maybe watch it with a critical view of tactics, etc., rather than for the entertainment value!