Should change their approach and focus on Japan 2019?

Podge_irl

clear thinking wrote: »

Yeah, and if you want to give a team with poor depth, as stated by other posters here and not just me, the target of winning the tournament, the best way to do it is to play the second string against France. Of course you tell them to win the game.

But whatever result we would have had a starting 15 in the playoff stage fitter and with less suspensions than we did end up with.

Injuries and suspensions can happen in any game. Our depth is not stellar, but it just so happened most of the injuries/suspensions were exactly where we could not afford them. These things happen. NZ played basically their entire first choice backline against Tonga, having qualified.

The problem against Argentina wasn't "tiredness" anyway. Could we have done without the injuries? Sure, but that is frankly absurd levels of hindsight there - it was an incredibly unfortunate and unusual set of circumstances.

Resting our first choice players in the French game will always remain a completely stupid idea.

clear thinking

I can understand you might want to keep momentum and so on, but the way we approached the tournament obviously didn't work. Critical review should be applied to what happened and comparisons should be made with how other teams in other sports maximise performance in playoffs and we should be applying lessons already learned.

Many teams in other elite sports win championships losing along the way, with the exception of the knock out phase. So saying winning the group is necessary is spurious, 4 teams in RWC won their groups, 3/4 of them subsequently lost. In football only 6 World cup winners won all their games.

You can call the idea stupid all you want, but we had a head coach quoted saying he wanted to avoid NZ, to me that is defeatist from the outset. It also say a lot about the coaches thoughts on his 16 spare players if he felt that some or all were not an option against France.

I have seen no critical analysis of the coaching decisons, no review or post mortem by independent analysts or in the media (this is about the only decent cut at the questions to ask http://www.the42.ie/ireland-rugby-world-cup-review-schmidt-2401464-Oct2015/ ) and the IRFU's own review is no seeking input from external sources and will not be made public.

Podge_irl

clear thinking wrote: »

I can understand you might want to keep momentum and so on, but the way we approached the tournament obviously didn't work. Critical review should be applied to what happened and comparisons should be made with how other teams in other sports maximise performance in playoffs and we should be applying lessons already learned.

Sure, critical thinking is important. But why not equally (or more importantly) make comparisons to what successful teams in the same sport do and realise none of them do what you are advocating.

clear thinking wrote: »

You can call the idea stupid all you want, but we had a head coach quoted saying he wanted to avoid NZ, to me that is defeatist from the outset. It also say a lot about the coaches thoughts on his 16 spare players if he felt that some or all were not an option against France.

To me its just sensible. Why on earth would you not want to play an eminently beatable team rather than the undisputed best team in the world who you've never beaten.

Besides, had NZ somehow managed to come second in their group, I guarantee you Ireland would not have gone into that France game trying to lose. One of the "rewards" for winning the group was avoiding NZ, but the goal was winning the group.

That was our best result against France since 1975 ffs. The matches have historically been very, very close. Putting out a second team would have been the height of arrogance.

And ultimately, I would like to know what difference you think going into a NZ QF with a slightly more rested team would have made? You are acting is if that is obviously the better option and I don't even agree with that premise.

We lost a rugby match - it happens. The biggest problem we had was leaving too much space outside and defending too narrow - a problem massively exacerbated by missing Payne, Sexton and O'Brien. It's just one of those things - wildly disappoining of course but so be it. I, at least, do not think its comparable to the previous few world cups which had more obvious structural failings.

The Golden Miller

The Lost Sheep wrote: »

We cant compare our depth to NZs though. We would need a complete overhaul to get depth like that. NZ had 6 of 31 play all games we cant....

I don't think our media is like that. Its poor and are we really "average"? Its ridiculous to say we won by "default". Our playing population isn't too small compared to Wales and we can do well even with the resources in England, France

Ah seriously. It's a national sport in Wales effectively, it's played in pockets here. In the mid to long term they will always win far more 6 nations than us, as will England and France. Traditionally weak teams like ourselves need to strike when they have a good squad together as they don't have the consistency of quality players coming through like Australia, Wales, England, France, New Zealand and South Africa. It's no coincidence we are normally ranked 7th in the world until recently. We'll be heading back there soon enough as every rugby fan knows but wouldn't admit to themselves

nice_guy80

Send more promising young players abroad to England, Wales and France and even Japan to develop

Some will develop, some won't.
Some will come back better players, some might never come back.
Hopefully some will return with skills and stuff they'd never have learned in Ireland
Too many players with not enough teams and chances for them here in Ireland