Sexton in the World Cup was managed badly, started against South Africa in what was a bruiser and than 2 weeks later started against Scotland and than a week later started against New Zealand.
never should have started against Scotland, many people called it at the time and they were right. At this age he should have minded better and skipped the Scot’s game.
and if we had beaten the all Blacks he should have been benched against Argentina and than started a potential final against South Africa.
he was 39 for fcuk sake. The more you think about it the more stupid it looks how he was managed by Farrell in the World Cup.
He has an 88% kick rate in the urc this year
Sexton kicked 3 from 5 against New Zealand in 2013; a game we lost by 2 points at the death. It was the year after ROG retired.
I'm sure there was chatter at the time that his kicking was too much of a liability, that he was "just NOT a kicker that Ireland can rely upon currently to slot those goals & conversions".
Chatter that would perhaps seem a bit short-sighted, given the heights he reached in the ensuing ten years.
(Additional context: he was 28 in 2013, i.e., 4 years older than Crowley is now)
This 'debate' has dragged on so long Sexton has aged two years since it started.
You can watch the entire last drive back on YouTube. The repeated claim that Sexton was a passenger and added nothing is absolute bollocks.
He is there in every single phase and keeps the team moving steadily upfield going in a controlled fashion and guess what, we worked our way up the field. There's very few out-halves you would prefer in that situation and Farrell was simply never going to bring him off while the game was in the balance. I doubt any coach would have.
Very few out halfs than a 38 year old after an intense 80 mins that seems implausible
80 posts since I last looked at this thread. 'What have I missed? ' I thought.
Sigh. Ireland win the Six Nations and yet.
You hardly looked in thinking it was going to be anything but a badly disguised provincial mickey swinging contest?
Is it?
You've repeatedly called him a passenger
I'm not sure I have called him a passenger even once not to mind your claim that I have repeatedly done so.
Phog is correct. He said ‘close to being a passenger’ and separately said ‘he wasn't really contributing much’. Semantics 101.
I stand over that statement.
What's "close to being a passenger"?
Being a driver?
It certainly is. Anyhow, looking forward to the SA tests.
Is anyone here going? It's the one tour I'd love to go to.
Andy Farrell is deeply, deeply unpopular with some people so some sort of reaction was inevitable.
Alas no, though I see it sold out super quickly. Should be a great couple games. Be pretty disappointed if we don't get at least one win.
You might not want to look up Sexton's kicking % for Ireland in the early years of his career - you will be in for a shock.
And equally, it's possible to be critical of some of his decisions while still thinking he's done a brilliant job.
When I have passengers in my car I often ask them to help with the GPS or do other little things that help us get exactly where we want to go on time.
I wouldn't be keen on them doing any actual driving.
Yes it is - and that is true for most posters. A smaller number have nothing but criticism however.
Fwiw, I'm on record here that I think Andy Farrell is up there with being our best head coach. In fact, if we had progressed past the QF I'd have him ahead of all previous coaches.
At the moment, I have himself and Joe neck & neck and out front of the others.
It's incredibly boring that an argument from 5 months ago has to be relitigated because some provincial willies need to be waved.
A better discussion should be how good our scrum was overall this Six Nations. It was actually a pretty powerful weapon, especially in the games against Scotland and Wales. Didn't get as many penalties from it as we should have either. Kudos to Andrew Porter for changing the perception around his scrummaging.
wait for it.......
Ireland also had the joint best lineout in the competition as well. We've improved over last year's Six Nations and the World Cup. It got ropier in the last few games, but again it's a pretty big positive that our set piece has improved overall.
Lies, damn lies and all that. France were down a lineout forward and after two 100% games it definitely wobbled. We seemed to be fine with simple lineout calls but as soon as we added any variation it struggled. That's still worrying.
I wanna wave me willy! But it's freezing here. I'm not getting the langer frostbit!
Letting the intrusive thoughts win, Dub?
Scrum improvement was very evident over the course of the 6N. Either we’re painting a better picture to the officials or the perception of our scrummaging has changed and we’re now getting rewarded as a result. Porter got a lot of criticism after the WC so by the same token deserves a lot of credit as does John Fogarty. I wonder has McCarthy made a big difference helping Furlong to get a little more go forward and stop the scrum wheeling to the degree it was against NZ?
Lineout/defence off lineout is still a concern. We won a lot of safe ball at 2 but poor attacking quality and our maul wasn’t as potent as the opposition knew where we were going so could prepare themselves. It was a big part of our downfall in the English game where POM‘s yellow resulted from a lost attacking throw on half way (we conceded an early try to NZ from the a similar situation) and again we conceded a soft score (Smith drop goal) from poor defence off a 4 man lineout near halfway (similar to the Jordan score). It’s pretty evident teams are targeting us here and getting some success.
Lineout has a huge amount work to do as SA will definitely be targeting us there in the summer.
I still think Porter is a liability. He hasn't done anything to improve his binding and a better team will have him in trouble again
Hes our best losehead by a country mile anyway
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