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

dub_skav

People are getting a bit too exercised by this.
To borrow a word from another forum I frequent - what a horrible winloss. People disgusted by guaranteeing ourselves a place in the 1/4 finals.

Sure, it was disappointing and I'd have liked us to look more dominant and people are entiteld to discuss deficiencies or "work ons". But this is tournament sport, the important thing is to keep your chances alive one match at a time, just ask France from 2011, or England this year.

.ak

the French will absolutely be worried about sob. Since when is getting over the gainline successfully not a good thing?

People seem to think unless you're making 20 yards and popping offloads then you're having a rubbish game.

rrpc

For a game that seemed to be setting up for the backs to play rugby, they got surprisingly little ball. I've broken it down into back three and centres compared with the total times we had the ball.

Position|Kick|Pass|Run|Total|Metres run
Back 3|4|9|19|32|86
Centres|3|12|17|32|73
Out Half|19|23|5|47|43
Total|43|154|126|323|431


So of the 323 times we had the ball, the backs had it 64 times (about 20%). Dave Kearney had his hands on it just 5 times,

rrpc

Amped wrote: »

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?

Well if you're going to point the finger in that regard, it shouldn't be pointed at Heaslip. Got the ball 14 times, beat 3 defenders and offloaded once. He completed exactly 50% of our offloads.

A number 8 is generally going to run into traffic. It's part of the job description.

sydthebeat

total former wrote: »

We should have thrashed Italy, if we had played to our potential. They are a poor team who have been playing poorly..

it was mentioned already but italy were playing for their RWC 2015 lives... win and the had a chance to go through to the QFs, loose and they were out.

they point seems to have been lost on a lot of people...

total former wrote: »

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.
.

while it wasnt comprehensive i wasnt at all worried at any stage that we were going to loose the game... even when there was only 7 between them.
we were hitting them behind the gain line all afternoon... the problem was they were hitting us fast too, and we werent set up properly to counteract that.. we never tested McClean once with a garryowen, which was a mistake imo. It was our passiveness in possession that let us down, in defense it was our discipline

total former wrote: »

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.

:rolleyes:

Tigerandahalf

Getting over the gainline is only good if it gives you quick ball to play with. In fairness Garces allowed Italy to slow Ire's ball and too often Ire players were stuck at the bottom of a ruck with Ire not clearing out effectively. It is very hard to change the intensity if you started slowly. Tommy Allan should have been yellow carded for Ire's penalty in the 2nd half. The commentators said he couldn't get out of the way but in the replays you can clearly see he tackles and then falls on the Irish side slowing down the ball. Garces only gave a penalty.

molloyjh

Amped wrote: »

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?

He is doing that to free up SOB and POM to play in the wider channels. We need a carrier in the tighter channels who will eke out yards and present good quality ball for next phase. Locky did exactly that for Leinster when Schmidt was there. It's pretty thankless work, but also pretty important work too.

gamma001

What we can learn from this fixture is just how important Payne is to our game. We can all agree that our backs never got into the game and that is exactly what Payne provides - great distribution, communication and a link between our backs and forwards.

In two out of the three games where we have played poorly (Wales and Italy) Panye hasn't been a starter. In all the games where we have had aesthetic and organised back play (bar vs Wales 2nd team in the warmup) including Scotland in the 6N, Payne has started at 13.

I don't think Earls is up to international standard 13. His attributes are much better suited to the wing, in my opinion.

Although there were many more issues at large during this test, this was one that particularly stood out for me.

sydthebeat

anyone else think garces was ridiculous at one calling "use it" at least 5 times at the back of a stationary italian scrum.

The law say its must be used IMMEDIATELY

molloyjh

sydthebeat wrote: »

while it wasnt comprehensive i wasnt at all worried at any stage that we were going to loose the game... even when there was only 7 between them.
we were hitting them behind the gain line all afternoon... the problem was they were hitting us fast too, and we werent set up properly to counteract that.. we never tested McClean once with a garryowen, which was a mistake imo. It was our passiveness in possession that let us down, in defense it was our discipline

You mean you weren't even worried when Furno was charging for the line that time!? Had he moved the ball into is right hand he probably would have scored that try and it was a poor mistake on his part not to do that.

I had hoped Joe was keeping thing hidden for the last few weeks and that we'd start to show our hand a bit against Italy. Going in with one hand tied behind our back against Canada and Romania was fine, but doing that against Italy would be massively risky. If that's what happened yesterday then I'd be worried that we took Italy far too lightly, and it nearly cost us the win. If we didn't, and in fact were starting to show our hand I'd be more worried. Because I'm not sure I could see what we were trying to do for most of it.

Obviously we won and guaranteed our progression to the knock-outs which is positive. And it's likely that we just had an off day where we couldn't get our intensity levels rights and everything flowed from there. But we need to turn that around now and ensure that yesterday was just a blip. In some ways maybe it was a good thing that it happened when it did and it gives us something to address with zeal ahead of the game this weekend. But at this stage we've seen Australia lay down a very big marker, South Africa have started to turn their poor form of late around and are beginning to look like contenders again and NZ have shown that even playing badly they can still turn it on. I'm not sure we've seen Ireland make a similar kind of statement. Which means very little in some respects (you have to time your run), but also means that we don't have much in the way of momentum either.

sydthebeat

molloyjh wrote: »

You mean you weren't even worried when Furno was charging for the line that time!? Had he moved the ball into is right hand he probably would have scored that try and it was a poor mistake on his part not to do that.

you mean did the incident in the 48th minute worry me that we were going to loose the game?...

no is the answer.

awec

People are talking as if the only two options were to win really ugly or not win at all.

Why can't we just win convincingly? We are a much better team than Italy.

If we are totally honest with ourselves we look miles off being capable of beating any of the big sides. I don't believe we are avoiding giving anything away, I think we're just playing badly.

awec

Amped wrote: »

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?

Heaslip never offloads. He just carries and makes a few yards and places the ball nicely. He's not going to truck the ball any distance but he rarely gets turned over.

The Rape of Lucretia

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.

I assume this is an attempt at humour, but calling Schmidt an Aussie is where I draw the line.

molloyjh

We played badly yesterday, and probably because we simply didn't get up for the game properly. I don't think we expected Italy to be as good as they were and when we got that first try I reckon the lads got complacent. Lets not forget that the first 15 mins were actually pretty good. 2 visits to the Italian 22 and we scored twice, including the Earls try. It was only after that it went downhill.

We played very well against a Canadian team that has caused everyone else real problems and were never under any real pressure against Romania either, who made the French really work hard for their result. So let's not panic just yet. We're through to the QFs and this weekends game will tell us far more about where we are than any other game so far.

.ak

rrpc wrote: »

For a game that seemed to be setting up for the backs to play rugby, they got surprisingly little ball. I've broken it down into back three and centres compared with the total times we had the ball.

Position|Kick|Pass|Run|Total|Metres run
Back 3|4|9|19|32|86
Centres|3|12|17|32|73
Out Half|19|23|5|47|43
Total|43|154|126|323|431


So of the 323 times we had the ball, the backs had it 64 times (about 20%). Dave Kearney had his hands on it just 5 times,

Yeah I noticed that. We were getting over the gainline easily. In that regards we should've been releasing the backs more. I guess the issue is was Sexton had a rusty Henshaw outside him and Earls who hasn't played with henshaw yet. The other side of the coin is we may have been getting easy gainline success because of the lack of numbers Italy were putting into the rucks. Then that means it can be suicide to use back ball.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

I wonder if O'Mahoney will be cited given Hooper has been? I suppose Hooper's was completely ignored on the night and PoM was carded but he could still be in trouble.

rrpc

.ak wrote: »

Yeah I noticed that. We were getting over the gainline easily. In that regards we should've been releasing the backs more. I guess the issue is was Sexton had a rusty Henshaw outside him and Earls who hasn't played with henshaw yet. The other side of the coin is we may have been getting easy gainline success because of the lack of numbers Italy were putting into the rucks. Then that means it can be suicide to use back ball.

Part of the problem was Italy rushing up in defence and blocking off the pass outside. A couple of times we tried the grubber through, but it was blocked. The dink over the top might have worked but it's giving up possession when it doesn't work.

Our options were quite limited. We weren't getting anything out of our maul and our counter maul was poor which meant kicking the corners was dependant on us turning over their lineout. The problem with that is the possibility of giving up a penalty as POM did in the first half.

The Italians were offside at rucks all day long, ridiculously so at times. There were two rucks leading up to Earls try and the offside line was well broken at both of them.

pickarooney

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

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.

Japan are living on the edge though and always close to conceding an intercept try.

pickarooney

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

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.

Japan are living on the edge though and always close to conceding an intercept try.

pickarooney

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

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.

Japan are living on the edge though and always close to conceding an intercept try.

phog

.ak wrote: »

the French will absolutely be worried about sob. Since when is getting over the gainline successfully not a good thing?

People seem to think unless you're making 20 yards and popping offloads then you're having a rubbish game.

No they're not, he's been below par and was poor by his own standards yesterday. Was he not knocked back on his butt yesterday and he was stopped dead in a few carries. This may well have to do where he received the ball but he wasn't getting over the gain line with all his carries.

I wouldn't be advocating dropping him, he'd be a dead cert to start but I seriously doubt the French are shaking in their boots about him either.

Snickers Man

Bridge93 wrote: »

One game and we're now boring, predictable, useless and going to lose to France (who have been average too). How quickly people turn their opinions upside down.

No actually. Some have been pointing to our attacking sterility for some time now. And have been castigated for it.

I think we may have a more sparkling attacking performance than that in us. But I'm not sure that we could replicate such a performance in consecutive weeks which is what it will take to get any further than the quarters.

Here's hoping, but here's not holding breath.

stadedublinois

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

Getting over the gainline is only good if it gives you quick ball to play with. In fairness Garces allowed Italy to slow Ire's ball and too often Ire players were stuck at the bottom of a ruck with Ire not clearing out effectively. It is very hard to change the intensity if you started slowly. Tommy Allan should have been yellow carded for Ire's penalty in the 2nd half. The commentators said he couldn't get out of the way but in the replays you can clearly see he tackles and then falls on the Irish side slowing down the ball. Garces only gave a penalty.

The time Heaslip was on top of him? Never a yellow, Heaslip was over him just as Earls went to ground.

Neil3030

Credit where it is due, Italy played very well yesterday. They defended like animals.

I thought their 7, Favaro, in particular, had a great game. He completely neutralised SOB by shooting out of the line to tackle him early on pretty much all of his carries (more often from an offside position but sure there you go).

But the Italian team as a whole had terrific linespeed and really gave us a handful. If anything, we showed them a lack of respect, thinking that we would eventually play through them. I think against England or France, shooting at us with the same intensity, you see Johnny drop back more often into the pocket and dink it over them for territory.

I also thought Campagnaro was very good yesterday.

rrpc

Neil3030 wrote: »

Credit where it is due, Italy played very well yesterday. They defended like animals.

I thought their 7, Favaro, in particular, had a great game. He completely neutralised SOB by shooting out of the line to tackle him early on pretty much all of his carries (more often from an offside position but sure there you go).

But the Italian team as a whole had terrific linespeed and really gave us a handful. If anything, we showed them a lack of respect, thinking that we would eventually play through them. I think against England or France, shooting at us with the same intensity, you see Johnny drop back more often into the pocket and dink it over them for territory.

I also thought Campagnaro was very good yesterday.

Absolutely. Italy played a very effective game against us. They blocked off the wide channels (being offside helped ) forcing us to carry in traffic and Favaro and others were quick to the breakdown and slow us up.

The problem for them was that it offered nothing in terms of score (Furno's break aside) bar the odd penalty in the red zone. The really annoying thing for me was how much we soaked tackles. We were giving up yard after yard in defence and depended on indiscipline and turnovers to relieve the pressure.

MJohnston

sydthebeat wrote: »

anyone else think garces was ridiculous at one calling "use it" at least 5 times at the back of a stationary italian scrum.

The law say its must be used IMMEDIATELY

There was one particular moment where he said it about 5 times because Parisse couldn't hear him! Heaslip should feign deafness next time.


Garces in general though I thought was good and very consistent.

total former

Yeah, Garces was excellent

techdiver

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

Getting over the gainline is only good if it gives you quick ball to play with. In fairness Garces allowed Italy to slow Ire's ball and too often Ire players were stuck at the bottom of a ruck with Ire not clearing out effectively. It is very hard to change the intensity if you started slowly. Tommy Allan should have been yellow carded for Ire's penalty in the 2nd half. The commentators said he couldn't get out of the way but in the replays you can clearly see he tackles and then falls on the Irish side slowing down the ball. Garces only gave a penalty.

sydthebeat wrote: »

anyone else think garces was ridiculous at one calling "use it" at least 5 times at the back of a stationary italian scrum.

The law say its must be used IMMEDIATELY

I thought some of his reffing was terrible.

In one instance in the first half there was a ruck formed and you can clearly see an Italian hand holding onto to the ball on the ground stopping Murray getting quick ball. This happened a number of times without being penalised!

My worry is, that the Ireland team went out with a game plan that wasn't working. Deep/passive defensive line, ref not calling certain infringements, etc and the leaders on the pitch were not able to adapt to the changed circumstances. If we are to progress we need more in the locker and have to be able to produce it on the fly as the game progresses.

Another thing that is driving me bat **** crazy is the amount of passing deep to a guy and taking it from a standing start. If you did that in J4 you'd be ripped apart by the coach! Why is it that we consistently give away yards behind the gainline in possession and passively take it into contact and then lose ground??

We will need to attack the line against the French and if we are as passive and deep they will kill us!

Neil3030

rrpc wrote: »

Absolutely. Italy played a very effective game against us. They blocked off the wide channels (being offside helped ) forcing us to carry in traffic and Favaro and others were quick to the breakdown and slow us up.

The problem for them was that it offered nothing in terms of score (Furno's break aside) bar the odd penalty in the red zone. The really annoying thing for me was how much we soaked tackles. We were giving up yard after yard in defence and depended on indiscipline and turnovers to relieve the pressure.

Nothing wrong with a bit of good old fashioned catenaccio! How many World Cups have they won playing soccer like this! :pac: