There is definitely more improvement required from Ireland than there is for SA next week.
Although Pollards kicking from the tee and out of hand was way off.
POM had a few nice pop pass in the lead up that pop/fling to JMcC. Yes it was really annoying! Almost as annoying as the decision not to take the 3 points at 7-0.
I thought there was a lack of imagination in the tap pen and free kick routines from Ireland. If they are going do the same next week they need a bit more guile against SA.
I noticed a considerable drop off towards the tail end of the season compared to the first half, where he was consistently making a significantly greater impact to the game and in my point of view should have started ahead of POM during the 6 nations.
Don't feel Baird had a great game in any of the key knockouts and was pretty poor in some of them, emphasised by some big individual mistakes.
Quite likely it was in part at least physical or mentally tiredness, his minutes increased by 50% over the previous season.
Whether his impact during that run of worse form was greater or lesser than POM right now is up for debate but the argument isn't as strong as it was earlier in the season.
interesting that Murray Kinsella and Bernard Jackman on the 42 members podcast do not apportion any blame to Lowe for his keeping the ball in from the SA penalty (jackmans literally says 100% no fault to Lowe). They say that its the other irish players switching off of something that Lowe has done plenty of times before (name checks Frawley, but also "players around him")
Id think similar. One of those things hes praised endlessly for if someone else is more checked in.
Not surprised by that comment from them, not sure how anyone is blaming Lowe for that one. That is literally the job of the player who is on the line for those kicks - Lowe did exactly what he was supposed to do.
The fault lies 100% with the other Irish players not being alert to it - no idea how so many of them in the area had completely switched off at the same time, especially those that were recently on the pitch.
I would agree with that, people seem to think he should keep it in, also have the ability to regather and then pass safely to another team mate
It was a huge piece of skill and should have been rewarded better, Irish player know he tries it so should have been alert
not sure how anyone is blaming Lowe for that one
??
literally in the post i quoted
"Lowe's two mistakes, trying to keep the ball in play with nobody near him"
and im not going to go back through the match thread, but there are plenty of examples in there if you want to take a look
heres a quick example
The gymnastics ye are doing to excuse a brain fart is admirable. Flinging a ball infield to nobody isn't a skill.Pointing out that a player got found out isn't a weird agenda
The gymnastics ye are doing to excuse a brain fart is admirable. Flinging a ball infield to nobody isn't a skill.
Pointing out that a player got found out isn't a weird agenda
It should be but no, it won't happen. We need more people who can win collisions in pack outside mccarthy in tight. McCarthy is also one of the rawest internationals i have ever seen in every other aspect.
The Bulls game he made mistakes but also was the victim of some poor passes which left him in a poor place to receive
I wouldn’t have said he had a poor end to the season, maybe not as many flying runs but he had a lot more responsibility
That been said do I see POM been dropped? No
Wasn't saying you were questioning Lowe. I stated:
not sure how anyone is blaming Lowe for that one.
I'd seen the poster you quoted and others questioning Lowe's actions but it makes no sense to me
Lowe should have realised there was nobody near enough to him to attempt such a thing, that’s 100% on him. His mistake was throwing a loose ball infield to nobody in particular. Should they have been closer? Probably. But that’s a separate mistake. One mistake doesn’t erase the other.
You keep having these weird pops at Joe McCarthy that just aren’t justified. He had a perfectly fine game yesterday, and arguably outplayed his opposite man, Eben Etzebeth.
Out scrum was really good with him on the field and he showed up for some good carries and big hits.
Frawley and Murray were as close as Kolbe, they were just both asleep.
He did not outplay etzebeth 😅 hes a carry specalist who made few yards and often drew a single tackler.
I thought it was Aki and Murray, and neither would out-pace Kolbe on their best day to be fair. I’m sure the coaches will fix this for the next match. Players need to be closer before attempting it, or just let it go.
https://www.skysports.com/rugby-union/video/30998/13174320/kolbe-punished-lowe-mistake-for-sa-try
And what did Etzebeth do that was so noteworthy?
McCarthy had more carries (6 v 3) for more metres (11m v 4m), they made a similar number of tackles (8 for Etzebeth v 7 for McCarthy). Neither had any turnovers won or lineout steals. Both left the field after 49 mins. The Irish scrum was probably in the ascendency for that period, and was unlucky not to be rewarded with penalties on at least 2 occasions.
Nah, that's rubbish and is antithesis to how the game is played.
Lowe won possession of the ball through a fantastic piece of skill.
His team mates not belong awake to it is on them.
Looked at it again there, Kolbe is actually miles away when Lowe leaps for the ball, but is running at full tilt in anticipation. Aki is closest to him, Murray is closest to Lowe and just isn't looking at all, and Frawley is closest to the Irish line. Frawley gets closest to the ball, but Kolbe gets there first and dinks it past him.
All three (Frawley, Murray and Aki) were at fault for not watching the play and not reacting quick enough.
There isn't enough time in those instances to have a quick glance around and see where all of your support players are - you have to just assume they'll be alert too to the possibility of the kick falling short. Lowe does his job, the other three do not.
There is awareness and there is having eyes in the back of your head though. I find it perplexing that they weren't even trying to run over towards the line and I'm sure Lowe was expecting them to.
But anyway, to the broader point be that Lowe's error or whoever was near him there were a lot of unforced errors. The Lowe error on the kick off absolutely killed me. I think we could have won from there without it.
Etzebeth plays a different role. Go look at the ruck clear outs
You go and look at them - you're the one claiming he'd some special game here.
Or could it be that you haven't looked at any stats and are just spoofing here?
To be fair, I don’t think this is especially good evidence that either outplayed the other tbh..
I never said he had a special game are you responding to someone else?
Your comparing a proper tighthead lock to a carry specialist and ignoring rucks
yeah Kolbe is probably rugbys closest thing to a 100m sprinter, his acceleration turnaround time to hit top end speed is insane. I still remember his block down where he sprinted from his own try line to block Jaminets kick in the World Cup.
This all came from one poster having a strange pop at McCarthy (not his first one), and I responded saying he'd a fine game. Statistically he was clearly a more effective ball carrier than Etzebeth - carrying almost twice as many times for almost three times as many metres.
There isn't anything else really to separate them, so on that basis it's perfectly reasonable to say McCarthy was probably the more effective, especially as I think the Irish scrum had the upper hand.
The context of where both of them are at in their careers is hugely relevant too - McCarthy is 23 years old and earning his 11th cap in that game, Etzebeth is nearly ten years his senior, and earned his 121st cap on Saturday, as well as being a double RWC winner.
I think McCarthy was probably just straight up the better player anyway on Saturday (though neither was especially prominent), but from the perspective of where the expectations should be for each of them McCarthy was far far better.
If you're Murray in that situation do you take the chance and clean Kolbe out of it off the ball, knowing you'll get binned and the team is out of scrum halves or let him in for the try? I was kind of annoyed that he did nothing but it would most likely have been a PT and YC.
Yeah, outside of the PT, Ireland were not remotely undone in the tight exchanges. Some bad errors and some lapses in defence out wide were the real killers. The pack pretty easily went toe to toe with the Springbok pack.
I thought McCarthy was fairly average, but our second row was just as good as theirs and given the team he was going against that's a good showing. I'd still consider Ryan over him for the next match, but that's hardly a sleight.
Mccarthys be all and end all is ball carrying. Etzebeths isint. Its like comparing casey and Malherbe by number of passes
Are you trying to outdo your Tom O'Toole at FH idea?
You mean my tot shouldn't play 10 idea
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