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Ireland Team Talk XI: Team of nervoUS MOD warning Post 1

[Deleted User]

Continued from here
https://touch.boards.ie/thread/2057953711/251
All Ireland Senior XV related talk here.

MOD: Bear in mind this thread is starting during the World Cup window and the zero tolerance policy is in force. Trolling will be rewarded with an instant ban. For the duration of the tournament any mention of Zebo in this thread will not be permitted, it is just dragging current Ireland squad talk off topic.

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irishbucsfan

Enquiring wrote: »

I have. It's a sport with only about 10 teams competing seriously, we've never reached the last 4 in the major tournament. That shows that we are punching below our weight.

No, it doesn’t. The fact there’s only 10 teams does not automatically mean we should be the best one.

Enquiring wrote: »

You have issues with the figures taken from worldrugby.org but you put your faith into the world ranking system! :pac: Remember when we were number 1 in the world?

Well firstly I have no issue with their figures. I just understand they don’t say what you think they say. You never answered my question about whether you genuinely believe there are 800 senior adult players in average at ever my adult rugby club in Ireland. You’re living in a fantasy world.

Also I don’t trust the world rankings. I literally just said I DONT think we’re as good as our ranking. Rankings are about aggregated past performances. They’re probably the best way to quantify a teams quality but it’s effectively impossible to do that accurately. The fact we were number one in the world and then proceeded to play as badly as we did throughout 2019 shows that.

Enquiring wrote: »

Facts are that we don't have a valid population excuse, we don't have a valid playing numbers excuse and we don't have a valid resources excuse. Basically, the excuses have all been used up.

I don’t think we need to make any excuse in the first place. But I don’t think you’ve really shown the capacity to be able to understand if one exists anyway.

Niallof9

Enquiring wrote: »

Yeah, I think I'm wasting my time. Stats, facts everything doesn't seem to be enough as you say. The myths will live on, unfortunately. It's probably why we never perform at the world cup. Too many are happy to cling unto the plucky underdog's tag, saying we punch above our weight despite it not being the case at all.

You are. some of the same posters have been going around for years ignoring whats in front of them all the way back to the EOS and Kidney years. attack any counter points and rule the roost with dogged determination. go back a bit to around Japan and you'll see. We have been awful for some time now, yet people convince themselves sure, its grand. new style of rugby my arse. same laborious style needed to score and 3 offloads, countless missed opportunities. headless mind boggling decisions like the kick from own half but not in front of posts. just awful stuff and infuriating. I guarantee we will see the same thing in november, same old reliables too, and then the six nations. unfortunately AF is tied to the performances in Japan and himself and Catt are unlikely to be the guys to turn things around. we need a full clearout in November and we need to be bold in our selections. there's going to be carnage come contract renewals anyway, might as well start it now.

Burkie1203

[Deleted User] wrote: »

POM is leaving Ireland apparently

Any rumours to where

Enquiring

irishbucsfan wrote: »

No, it doesn’t. The fact there’s only 10 teams does not automatically mean we should be the best one.

Well firstly I have no issue with their figures. I just understand they don’t say what you think they say. You never answered my question about whether you genuinely believe there are 800 senior adult players in average at ever my adult rugby club in Ireland. You’re living in a fantasy world.

Also I don’t trust the world rankings. I literally just said I DONT think we’re as good as our ranking. Rankings are about aggregated past performances. They’re probably the best way to quantify a teams quality but it’s effectively impossible to do that accurately. The fact we were number one in the world and then proceeded to play as badly as we did throughout 2019 shows that.

I don’t think we need to make any excuse in the first place. But I don’t think you’ve really shown the capacity to be able to understand if one exists anyway.

Only 10 teams and we haven't reached a world cup semi final. I'm not saying we should be winning the thing. To flop so often proves we are punching below our weight.

The claim was that Ireland's population was too small, when this was shown to be nonsense, the claim was that it's because there are other sports in Ireland. The playing numbers stats shows that this can't be used as an excuse.

All myths and excuses have been busted. In a sport that's not played in many countries, we've underachieved given our resources.

Niallof9

Enquiring wrote: »

Only 10 teams and we haven't reached a world cup semi final. I'm not saying we should be winning the thing. To flop so often proves we are punching below our weight.

The claim was that Ireland's population was too small, when this was shown to be nonsense, the claim was that it's because there are other sports in Ireland. The playing numbers stats shows that this can't be used as an excuse.

All myths and excuses have been busted. In a sport that's not played in many countries, we've underachieved given our resources.

its a common misconception.just look at Croatia in football. Water polo, basketball hugely popular. Smaller than Ireland yet are World class at football and producing talent.

I don't think anybody involved inside the game thinks like this so i wouldn't;t worry about it. However i will say your idea is for me more accurate if applied to the genetic argument in regards to numbers. D'arcy last year saying offloading isn't in our dna/ we don't have natural size, we don't have speed etc etc. we've one of the fastest players in the World playing sevens and we have loads of athletes. I've a similar bugbear with central contracts and similarly its dismissed on here as nothing. Yet we see talk of POM leaving because theres not a chance his CC of 500k is renewed.

All we can hope for is that Casey, Baird, Larmour, Kelleher are genuine world class talents. on top of the younger players. We really need to look at Murray, Sexton, Aki. Herring isn't good enough. Healy has been a warrior but his time is coming to an end. And we have to really ask ourselves are some of the players that good. personally i think some of these lads are over coached and, and we are missing players with that individual flair or that something about them. having one school produce 7 or 8 of your internationals could be a factor in this too. On one hand its great, on another its an absolute indictment on the state of Irish rugby.

there's no doubt Irish rugby misses out on top talent in regards to GAA. Nash for example. or you could imagine David Clifford being unreal in any ball sport. but i would argue there's heaps of players who miss out. if you're taking 7 or 8 from one school how many are you leaving adrift. go to an AIL match and you'll see tons of talent never having gotten a sniff. i mean if the 13 ail clubs idea had gone ahead instead of 4 provinces then maybe we'd naturally have more players. we choose to have a set amount of professional players. obviously its more sustainable but the net is tighter. talent definitely slips through. Sexton could name you 5 or 6 players he played with over the years in Marys who could have played professionally.

WhoamI2022

Enquiring wrote: »

I did not. Your claim was that we're doing well for an island our size. I've shown that this is not the case when you look at other countries with less playing resources.

No you haven't.

OldRio

Some thrive on the attention. Sad

sydthebeat

laughable how some will only post after ireland losses but never post during ireland success..... agenda perhaps ???

Niallof9

sydthebeat wrote: »

laughable how some will only post after ireland losses but never post during ireland success..... agenda perhaps ???

the success in what year again?

can people live in the present perhaps? laughable how some can't.

ever since the wc warm up games its been a **** show at times. and something has to give. We are slightly less constricted in how we play and there is some change happening. so thats positive. however our 9 and 10 are now in serious decline yet continue to be uncontested selections and our offloading game is still non existent. this is an issue. will we see changes in November and if they work will they stick around in the next six nations? again if they do and are, that is to be applauded. but it didn't happen this time around so people will be disappointed. with the crisis i think a pass is deserved. so lets start now in the coming tournament.but we need to see some bloody change otherwise the losses, and the criticism will keep coming. ireland are never going back to the dark days and there is very little difference between professional teams now. its a game of inches and in fairness schmidt and his defenders on here pointed that out. maybe that was the way? maybe his critics like myself and others were completely wrong. we were still in with a shout of winning despite it all. players blooded. all positives

irishbucsfan

Enquiring wrote: »

Only 10 teams and we haven't reached a world cup semi final. I'm not saying we should be winning the thing. To flop so often proves we are punching below our weight.

The claim was that Ireland's population was too small, when this was shown to be nonsense, the claim was that it's because there are other sports in Ireland. The playing numbers stats shows that this can't be used as an excuse.

All myths and excuses have been busted. In a sport that's not played in many countries, we've underachieved given our resources.

You haven’t shown anything to be nonsense or busted any myths. You just keep saying you have. Your one attempt failed completely.

I get the semi final thing. It’s frustrating how we consistently underperform at world cups. But in reality making a semi final or even a final means absolutely nothing. The target should be to win the competition. Targeting a semi final is a losers mentality.

Outside of that competition, it’s undeniable that we have delivered higher levels of performance at times (and also atrocious standards in 2013 and 2019)

Either way, the same change is needed, they need to deliver the same standard of performance at the World Cup as they have shown themselves to be able to in grand slam years. They’ve another 3 years to take another shot at achieving that and there’s lots of competitive rugby to be played before then, so whining about making an arbitrary stage of that competition is probably a waste of time until it actually arrives on the horizon.

Enquiring

irishbucsfan wrote: »

You haven’t shown anything to be nonsense or busted any myths. You just keep saying you have. Your one attempt failed completely.

I get the semi final thing. It’s frustrating how we consistently underperform at world cups. But in reality making a semi final or even a final means absolutely nothing. The target should be to win the competition. Targeting a semi final is a losers mentality.

Outside of that competition, it’s undeniable that we have delivered higher levels of performance at times (and also atrocious standards in 2013 and 2019)

Either way, the same change is needed, they need to deliver the same standard of performance at the World Cup as they have shown themselves to be able to in grand slam years. They’ve another 3 years to take another shot at achieving that and there’s lots of competitive rugby to be played before then, so whining about making an arbitrary stage of that competition is probably a waste of time until it actually arrives on the horizon.

Of course, we should be aiming to win the world cup and we have but we've choked in nearly every world cup. Not even making it to one semi final.

With other competitions, we've only won 3 grand slams, ever. This is in a 5/6 team competition. Again the excuses about population and other sports are busted here.

So the facts are there to see, given our resources, playing numbers etc, we have underachieved.

aloooof

Enquiring wrote: »

So the facts are there to see, given our resources, playing numbers etc, we have underachieved.

RWC aside, we really haven’t in the last decade.

Enquiring

aloooof wrote: »

RWC aside, we really haven’t in the last decade.

I'm not so sure. Despite our financial circumstances, schools set up and provincial set up, we have only performed on a par with Wales whose circumstances are far worse. That's just on 6 Nations performance as well. At world cups, they have way outperformed us, knocking us out in 2011, then we got knocked out by Argentina in 2015 and effectively knocked out by Japan in 2019.

ionadnapóca

CMcsporty wrote: »

France have a very good young 10
And one of the most exceptional 9’s on the planet. Who is also very young.

To crystalise everything you need to know about the level Ireland’s 10 & 9 are at I encourage people to rewatch the opening 2 minutes of the 2nd half.

1. Sexton kicks off by putting an average kick into the French 22 nearly 15 in from touch line.
Should be 5m from touch.

2. From resulting Lineout Ireland get good ball from Connors at the tail. Beirne acts as SH and throws pass to Murray.
Under no pressure at all from French defence Murray throws the most god awful pass out to Henshaw
It’s so bad it bounces at the feet of Henshaw who does remarkably well to gather but has to go back inside.

3. 4 phases later Murray actually makes a snipe from a ruck. Stockdale had come in to a dead ruck.
No gap and Willemse stops him just beyond gainline.
At least he had a go at the pillar defence.

4. 2 phases after that Murray passes out to Doris at the tip of a 3 man pod.
Dorris manages to get a good pass out of the tackle to Sexton to run on to.
With 5 on 2 20m from the touch line Sexton pops it to CJ beside him without properly committing Vakatawa who gets a hit in on CJ and the ball pops up in the air and CJ regathers.
Sexton had loads of time to pick the pass out the back to Henshaw and Ireland would have had -Henshaw, Stockdale and Keenan v Rattez and a clean run to the line.

5. 3 Phases later Sexton chips too hard over the top for Aki.
6 on 4 over lap with Fickou completely isolated.
Bouthier easily gathers and clear the ball down the middle of the pitch into the Irish 22.

If I hear Ireland are now trying to play heads up rugby one more time I’ll scream!

We have halfbacks who are way past their best and incapable of playing what’s in front of them at this level.

I see Murray Kinsella mentions the kick from Sexton in his piece
https://www.the42.ie/ireland-championship-minutes-france-5251400-Nov2020/?utm_source=shortlink

Also highlights how the ensuing 1&1/2mins where Ntmack and Dupont instantly recognise the overlap and execute superbly.
Now that's head's up rugby!

Sexton & Murray have played together 61 times.
In fairness they were never capable of this level of skill but they are now so far from their best they cant even execute basic overlaps.

WhoamI2022

Enquiring wrote: »

I'm not so sure. Despite our financial circumstances, schools set up and provincial set up, we have only performed on a par with Wales whose circumstances are far worse. That's just on 6 Nations performance as well. At world cups, they have way outperformed us, knocking us out in 2011, then we got knocked out by Argentina in 2015 and effectively knocked out by Japan in 2019.

How are Wales far worse? They have more players, they have a bigger stadium which brings in more money, it is the national sport, majority of players go overseas and they still select them. So they don’t have to pay wages

They have direct access to the English league and pick off player the English don’t want. They have club rugby getting the same revenue from Pro 14 as the irfu

Enquiring

WhoamI2022 wrote: »

How are Wales far worse? They have more players, they have a bigger stadium which brings in more money, it is the national sport, majority of players go overseas and they still select them. So they don’t have to pay wages

They have direct access to the English league and pick off player the English don’t want. They have club rugby getting the same revenue from Pro 14 as the irfu

Are they top 4 in the world? No, are they close? Yes.

Not bad for a country with a tiny population. :pac:

irishbucsfan

Enquiring wrote: »

Of course, we should be aiming to win the world cup and we have but we've choked in nearly every world cup. Not even making it to one semi final.

With other competitions, we've only won 3 grand slams, ever. This is in a 5/6 team competition. Again the excuses about population and other sports are busted here.

So the facts are there to see, given our resources, playing numbers etc, we have underachieved.

So if we look at it since Kidney took over:

We've won 2 grand slams since 2009. In that time England have 1, France have 1 and Wales have 2.

And since then we've won the 6 Nations 4 times. That was the most of anyone in the competition until yesterday.

This is in a competition against England and France who are far, far bigger than us as rugby nations, and Wales and Scotland who are around the same size. So how does that bust these excuses (I'm not sure who is making excuses for us winning this competition!)?

Enquiring

irishbucsfan wrote: »

So if we look at it since Kidney took over:

We've won 2 grand slams since 2009. In that time England have 1, France have 1 and Wales have 2.

And since then we've won the 6 Nations 4 times. That was the most of anyone in the competition until yesterday.

This is in a competition against England and France who are far, far bigger than us as rugby nations, and Wales and Scotland who are around the same size. So how does that bust these excuses (I'm not sure who is making excuses for us winning this competition!)?

I know you want to brush over the world cup but unfortunately, the chokes in the biggest and most important competition can't be ignored. 2011, knocked out by Wales, 2015, knocked out by Argentina and 2019 effectively knocked out by Japan.

The excuses have been used for these defeats but have been busted as I pointed out. We've done better recently in the 6 Nations compared to our miserable record previously but it doesn't change the fact that we've underachieved in a 10 team sport.

VayNiice

Enquiring wrote: »

I know you want to brush over the world cup but unfortunately, the chokes in the biggest and most important competition can't be ignored. 2011, knocked out by Wales, 2015, knocked out by Argentina and 2019 effectively knocked out by Japan.

The excuses have been used for these defeats but have been busted as I pointed out. We've done better recently in the 6 Nations compared to our miserable record previously but it doesn't change the fact that we've underachieved in a 10 team sport.

Would you not be better suited to the soccer forum?

Heres Johnny

Enquiring wrote: »

I know you want to brush over the world cup but unfortunately, the chokes in the biggest and most important competition can't be ignored. 2011, knocked out by Wales, 2015, knocked out by Argentina and 2019 effectively knocked out by Japan.

The excuses have been used for these defeats but have been busted as I pointed out. We've done better recently in the 6 Nations compared to our miserable record previously but it doesn't change the fact that we've underachieved in a 10 team sport.

We were beaten by Japan, not knocked out by them. If we defeated Japan we would have played SA in the quarters. And would have been beaten out the gate.

VayNiice

On a positive note, it's great to see us take some steps forward in the back row. Doris and Connors have gotten some valuable gametime and both have shown positive signs. Doris' stats from yesterday are pretty poor but he looked to make a good impact at times too and has been a real threat at the breakdown. I thought Connors and Stander both did well yesterday.

It'll be really interesting to see the make up of our back row in 2021 when Leavy comes back.

Enquiring

Heres Johnny wrote: »

We were beaten by Japan, not knocked out by them. If we defeated Japan we would have played SA in the quarters. And would have been beaten out the gate.

That's why I said effectively. That was the whole thing wasn't it? The expectation was to win our group easily, take out South Africa and make our way to a world cup final shootout against New Zealand. We all know what really happened. Hence why it's called a choke and why the excuses about population etc were rolled out again.

Enquiring

VayNiice wrote: »

On a positive note, it's great to see us take some steps forward in the back row. Doris and Connors have gotten some valuable gametime and both have shown positive signs. Doris' stats from yesterday are pretty poor but he looked to make a good impact at times too and has been a real threat at the breakdown. I thought Connors and Stander both did well yesterday.

It'll be really interesting to see the make up of our back row in 2021 when Leavy comes back.

I have hope for Doris but he had a really poor game yesterday, worse than O'Mahony has been playing in the green shirt.

[Deleted User]

Skeetur wrote: »

Hes turned into Rob Kearney. Pull out one good performance every 4/5 games so everyone remembers he's world class then goes back to being mediocre.

What's this about?

If Rob Kearney from 2019 (at the very twilight of his career) had have started at FB yesterday, it's an entirely different game. Stockdale was terrible in defence, and no Irish player was able to reliably contest in the air. Kearney has always been rock solid at both, providing an anchor at fullback so that long distance kicks aren't a threat and we can contest kick returns. RK was pivotal in that role for both the most successful Leinster team of all time and the most successful Irish team.

Yet here we are, yet again, with someone who apparently never actually watched RK play for Ireland but has convinced themselves that they're an internet expert.

🤦*♂️

sydthebeat

[Deleted User] wrote: »

What's this about?

There was a full moon last night.....

mfceiling

VayNiice wrote: »

Would you not be better suited to the soccer forum?

Or the ranting and raving.

mfceiling

Enquiring wrote: »

I have hope for Doris but he had a really poor game yesterday, worse than O'Mahony has been playing in the green shirt.

He didn't and he's been way more physical than POM has ever been.

Enquiring

mfceiling wrote: »

He didn't and he's been way more physical than POM has ever been.

Doris barely got the ball, made few tackles and got sin binned. He's a hope for the future but he was no improvement on O'Mahony yesterday.

WhoamI2022

Enquiring wrote: »

Are they top 4 in the world? No, are they close? Yes.

Not bad for a country with a tiny population. :pac:

That’s confirm you really haven’t a clue :-) you might say you are “busted”

Enquiring

WhoamI2022 wrote: »

That’s confirm you really haven’t a clue :-) you might say you are “busted”

Just threw your own logic back at ya.

You have no argument, you're a busted flush.