What can Ireland do to learn how to deal with the pressure of a quarter final of a world cup?
Why would you think it had anything to do with you?
And funny enough France arent labelled as bottle jobs despite failing in a worse fashion!
But what has that to do with me? I'm an onlooker.
Winning the six nations would be brilliant. Irrelevant to my point about going into the next World Cup having learned nothing about dealing with pressure in the quarter finals.
Well I for one hope we make the same mistake next year in the six Nations...
Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
Why dwell? It serves no purpose. The past will not change. It's a complete waste of energy and time.
The Six Nations is around the corner and it's going to be fascinating.
Which is fair enough in isolation. But the constant level of criticism isn’t commensurate with the performance and results of this team over the last 2 years.
I’ve been making this point to you for ages so can remember the following off the top of my head:
Look, should they have won team of the year after losing the QF? Probably not. But the level of criticism you mete out isn’t tempered by the same level of praise when the team do well.
They put a 17 game winning streak together; only 2 teams ever have ever beaten that.
(You do attract a lot of heat here, but I will say one thing is that you never attack the poster, rather than the post, which is to your credit).
We at least now know a new word:
ordure
/ˈɔːdj(ʊ)ə/
noun
excrement; dung.
something regarded as vile or abhorrent.
"can you give credence to this ordure?"
Some threads should be strangled at birth....like this one. Reading this pile of ordure is more excruciating than watching Ulster play.
No need to apologise, your points were completely logical.
You shouldn't be just making things up but apology accepted. Fair play.
Apologies to every one for wasting your time on this
So you have no evidence at all? You're just making things up?
so to be clear you believe that the plan all along was to inspire a nation?
Jesus Christ this is ridiculous
The stats you complied back up the suggestion that we played tight and with no freedom. Apart from that, we're mostly going on what we saw with our own eyes. To me, it looked obvious that we played with fear. Others thought differently but with nothing to back that up. Your stats provide some context.
I'm feeling Alfred Nobel levels of remorse right now.
Any evidence to back that up?
Of course he was
Get over it lads.
We are talking about Johnny Sexton's comments, they weren't directly after the defeat to New Zealand, they were a few weeks later. He said:
"Our main motivation and objective was to inspire the nation. I think we achieved that. We lost, but we won."
Are you saying that he was lying in his statement?
so what is it? Are they always telling the truth so? Are you just choosing that which suits your viewpoint? Professional sportspeople do media training and rarely say much of actual interest. It’s all a nonsense. We don’t really ever get to hear or see what’s really said or done behind closed doors because in actual fact it’s none of our business. They throw a few crumbs to keep the journos happy. Anyone not in those camps who thinks they know what way the players feel based on a couple of tweets is just kidding themselves.
Here's the post that shows it's not bollox. We played with fear. The occasion made us play differently. It could have been because he knew every game could be his last but Sexton bottled it. No one can argue that this was a good New Zealand team, they were very average. We were good enough to beat them comfortably but we underperformed badly under pressure.
Absolute bollox, we didn't play with fear. The single biggest factor imo, besides Kelleher's error, was JGP having a poor game. The opening sequence saw us in their 5m line twice before the Aki try, and both times JGP took a poor action that led to a turnover. He took poor choices in the second half too, trying to go wide too soon etc.
Cant believe we are still talking about the WC, yes Sexton was too old, but what was the alternative - it was a year (or 2) too early for Crowley, both the Byrnes have been tried, Frawley kept getting injured, cant hold the 10 jersey in Leinster, Carberry never recovered his form from injury in 2019. Billy Burns not good enough. The alternatives were tried, we just ran out of time
I think those past issues won't be a factor simply because, the players coming into the environment have won u20 grand slams and reached a u20 world cup final. Overall, we're in a good place. Consider where we were when Farrell came in!
This past world cup showed me that depth wise were still a little short. It was always going to be hard to lean on a 37 year old out half. This cycle, we have players coming up that win and win consistently.
Or just choose to disbelieve players if it doesn't suit your viewpoint.
We made basic errors, easy kicks but most of all we played with fear. That's not what we were doing for the past 2 years. I'm not sure if it was this thread but someone had a look at our stats and it showed we played a different game than what we had been doing.
Also, you're ignoring the fact that this was the worst New Zealand team to enter a World Cup. They were there for the taking. It was a weak tournament overall, this was our chance. As Rob Kearney said, if we played close to our best we would have beaten them but we were nowhere near that. And that was down to the occasion.
All I see there are excuses and wishy washy nonsense. Sexton bottled it, that's hard to accept given his career and this was how it ended but that's what happened. He wasn't the only one. If everyone's honest, they'll admit that the occasion got to the players. Plenty of experts have said it. But like I noted, some are more comfortable with ignoring the reality and brushing it under the carpet. We'll be in the same position in 2027 if the management and players don't address the issue and find solutions.
