"I started a joke, that started the whole world ......" | Ireland v New Zealand.

I always thought our lineout has never really worked well in the last few years, this blind faith of having POC there to fix it were delusional. Is it a player or a forwards coaching issue I'm unsure. A bit of both buy at the end of day Farrell should have recognised the weakness and that we didn't appear to have the tools to fix it

Ireland looked tired in last 20min cos Farrell knew he didn’t have the depth so played the same players non stop.and yes just look at the results of NZ since 2021.lose to Ireland and France,Argentine.drew against England lost multiple times to Sa.

Are both semis next Friday?

Theres nuance to every game and every result. But in the cold hard light of day this was a world cup with

- the most talented and best prepared Irish team ever

- the weakest Australian team ever

- the weakest English team in decades

- the weakest Welsh team in decades

- a very average Scotland

- a poor Italy

- the weakest Argentine team in about 15 years

- a very good but injury hit French team

- a very good S.A team

As golden an opportunity in history to progress to a semi final minimum and they bottled it. They were slow to breakdown, ponderous in possession, months in camp together and the lineout didn't improve one iota. It was a complete and utter bottle job.

N.Z did nothing crazy, just kicked from play smartly and contested the kicks. Challenged the obviously weak line out. Contested the breakdown as quickly as they could with numbers. Simple things and it was enough. If they won breakdown ball from proper contests then ok, but it was quite literally an isolated irish player with only 1 support player coming in late or at some stages no support at all. Thats lack of bottle, lack of composure and it was repeated all over the pitch.

This was an absolute failure of a tournament from an Irish perspective. To look at it from any other perspective is an excercise in mediocrity.

Where are all the videos of us Irish dancing around not giving a **** about the result. Only the great craic

Aahhhh hindsight. If only I had have went on only fans?

And yet.... Sexton is the best option available.

What has happened to Furlong?

Sucking diesel even in the warm up.

Belly looking very big, even man boobs

I suspect the following question from, in truth, a non rugby person (but big sports fan generally) will annoy some, but is there not a smidgen of truth in the often put argument that test matches are, ultimately, more akin to friendlies and simply can't have the same intensity as knock out matches? I know both teams take tests very seriously but when there is, ultimately, no silverware at stake, its difficult for me to understand how that is comparable to a match like last night. Seems to me that World Rubgy needs more than 1 knock out competition every 4 years (and I know the world calendar is presently being reviewed). The 6 nations is great and all, but its the same six teams being played in a two year rota, every single season....

There are 4 or 5 Irish out halves who would have been better than Johnny in the last 30 minutes last night. He had a poor game yesterday. I thought it was a real tell that BB went for a drop goal, a few years ago it didn’t occur to him and he wasn’t prepared for it but yesterday the ABs played classic knockout rugby. On another day they go to the corners w those early penalties but against Ireland they understood that getting in front was half the battle won.

JS has been a mighty player for us but the argument many of us made a couple of years ago still stands. The fact that no one else is better doesn’t change the fact that he likely wouldn’t make it through a brutal wc campaign and sure enough by 55 minutes last night his legs were gone but Crowley didn’t have the confidence of the coaches, even though he might well be good enough if he’d had the investment. Without being disrespectful, this became the Johnny sexton show rather than the World Cup show. It’s not a poor reflection on sexton, he’s a stone cold pro who was selected and proved his value, but the selectors should have known this was a likely scenario.