England v Ireland. Twickenham. Sat 9th Mar, 16:45. RTE2

I'm sure Murray kicking it away was a team strategy rather than an individual decision.

Refs hate teams trying to go "up the jumper" and run down the clock for the last couple of minutes and will find any reason to penalise a team that attempts it.

Time to pave the way for O’Gara. O’Connell should have gone post WCz.

Along the lines of only hope eng have is if ire go down to 14 or 13 players

They are awful on the RTE panel. Virgin Media are much better. I don’t even listen to the RTE panel for rugby anymore. They’ll skirt around any issue involving an individual error.

Ireland blew it, they won’t always have a team like this. Even though well short of their best mainly to do with England performing as if their lives depended on it to be fair, but Ireland still should have won in the end.

Might win the championship but it feels like another opportunity to do something special has been allowed to slip away. At some stage England and France, maybe even Wales at some point will get their act together and close the gap again.

I dont know how that indicates anything beyond them performing well.

I am replying to a user who claims that they can't produce when it counts and I am saying that if anything they are outperforming rather than underperforming.

People here are alluding to them being some kind of bottlers which is complete nonsense. If they lost by 50 points I guess that would be fine or if they won 2 out of 5, that's cool but if they come very close and lose , well they must have some kind of psychological flaw, it's totally ridiculous. Again they will be 6 nations champions but because they don't win 100% of games, some people will say that they arent up to it. Clearly this is more a reflection on the mental fragility of those posters , since they need to project their anxieties onto a bunch of strangers.

Then surely the strategy should have been to pass to Lowe to kick for distance and make it a long way back up the pitch in 90 seconds

Will Genge be cited for the head hit on Furlong

This is hopefully a humbling experience for the team, the coach and the fans. Farrell's 6/2 might have been a good idea but it blew up in his hand today, and Hedno & Healy are not a bomb squad that came in and made any kind of impact that offset the mess that had become of our backline. The less said about the last ten minutes the better. I could see Murray lining up his box kick and thought here we go, England will win this. Then the ref gave Beirne more warnings and time than he deserved on the line while Irish players plead with him to release. Head up his arse stuff. We lost 3 lineouts against Wales and it fell apart again today. it takes nothing away from England to judge that Ireland came into this match woefully unprepared. And hats off to Felix Jones, I don't know how much of Englands performance was down to him but their defense was precisely the style to unsettle and unbalance Ireland's attack. And our backline defense was poor, how many times England got around us reminded me of the last time they beat us, in much the same way. Something clicked for England today, while something broke for Ireland. Hopefully we'll correct a lot next week but times up for some of these players.

Surprised to lose today. Hats off to England! They have been shat on here by posters and today they answered. I've only seen highlights. England scored a couple of outstanding tries! We scored a couple too. Judging by the posts it appears that we were bullied up front. Line out a mess! Again.

O'Connell should be sacked. He offers little. Line out has been misfiring for a long while.

They are consistently outperforming, does that work?

They are the best coaches side.

It's not a slight, outperforming is the best compliment anyone can really get.

We should beat the globetrotters next week.

Jackman did a bit on the French analytics for phases a while ago on how the data shows teams kicking the ball away after 3 rucks was more conducive to winning than teams playing until the 6th ruck as they were easier for defences to read and more likely to be turned over or receive a penalty.

In the RWC final with 50 seconds on the clock and a 1 point difference saw Kriel with possession in his half kick the ball long to McKenzie to set up a final counter for NZ. I'm sure not everyone agreed with him not holding on to possession to see out the game but it's what coaches are telling players to do these days.

Top teams don't do "up the jumper" anymore as a result, particularly in your own half and with opposition only needing a kick to win.