Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

So..... who likes the globetrotters this week?

Yeah, we could have been a score or two down by half time, England probably should have had another try at least. We lost because England brought their absolutely best Twickenham game and we weren’t ready for it. 6/2 conspired with injuries to ruin our defence and far too many players had poor games, Murray being only one of them.It’s a pity about the b2b slam slipping away but this should chasten Farrell somewhat. He loves having to deal with adversity or whatever but he got it wrong on Saturday and it cost us. That at least shakes off the wc exit, we have new tragedies to come to terms with.

It's very frustrating how fans grossly over rated James Ryan. To think that him merely being on the pitch means we would have won on Saturday. The arrogance knows no bounds. He's a good player, not a great player. 7.5/10 standard relative to other second rows.

90 seconds isn't short. It's far, far longer than the average ball in play time for a single passage of play.

Referees operate on the basis that teams should be dissuaded from playing negatively to kill games so, in those scenarios, they are hyper-attentive to any indiscretion. Combine that with England surely absolutely flooding every breakdown to force a turnover/penalty and the chances of an Irish player going off their feet, instigating an illegal clear out or not coming through the gate perfectly is extremely high, far more so than in the other 78 minutes.

Regardless, it was a planned move. This wasn't Murray just deciding to kick it. There was a break in play and it would have been discussed and potentially word being given from the coaching team. Win the line out, set up a ruck using your freshest and strongest carrier further out the field to ensure clean ball with a much better angle for the kick. That is all discussed in advance.

The issue wasn't that it was the wrong play. The issue was that it was a poor execution of the right play. A player of Murray's kicking ability will be disgusted with not even reaching the 10m line from the edge of his 22 from that spot. England get a strike play opportunity well inside our half as opposed to potentially having to launch a different play if they were 10-15m further back which is where Murray would have been hoping to hit.

Indeed you are correct but to immediately go for a kick and not go through one or two phases and get Lowe into a position to kick was a mistake. IMHO.

Lowe could have been an option after one or two phases.

Because it was taken in the style of a box kick, stepping back from the ruck, which makes it difficult to get distance. Any kick in that scenario need to get towards the England 10m line if going for touch or towards their 22 with an organised kick chase if going in field. The scenario when kicking of the back of a ruck from within our own 22 was never going to get close to the required distance. Thats why taking a few phases and getting Lowe or Crowley to kick deep was the low risk option if kicking was the right option

I have listened to a lot of ex Rugby players since Sunday and they are all of the opinion that Murray had no option but to kick the problem was it was not executed to gain maximum advantage it was a systems failure so to single out Murray is a tad unfair.At the time i shouted at the TV "What are you doing" but I have never played Test Rugby so I am prepared to accept that others know better than I do in this instance

On Saturday he was kicking sh*te from the moment he came on. He is also 5 years older and a few injuries down the road so doesn't seem to have the power. And crucially, what you do when 12-0 up, 16 minutes into a game and what you do 2 points up with 90 seconds remaining might not necessarily be the same thing