Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

you’re some dinosaur, glad you’re not picking the team

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Is the pipeline of project players drying up? Quite a few foreign born players in the line and a lot plus 30 - does Ireland have the development pool to replace them?

Contrast it what the atmosphere at a Leinster game. Was in at the Lions match a few weeks back and with only 20k fans it was a much more enjoyable experience.

Very poor and flat performance. Think it was evident too many of our players had too little game time this season because we looked incredibly rusty and lacking sharpness.

Very cagey game overall with a lot of poor quality contestable kicks from both sides.

Ireland’s attack looked as dull as I’ve seen it in a long time, which is concerning given it’s the first game of the post Mike Catt era.

As poor as we were, we could have won it. Pivotal moment for me was when we were attacking in their 22 (or just outside possibly) around the 45 min mark, just after we’d scored the try to go in front. James Lowe gave away a sloppy penalty for a head/neck contact in a clear out, and we let them off the hook. Our tails were up at that time and they were still missing Jordie, and think even if we came away from that sequence with just 3 we’d have possibly hung on.

All Blacks were good value for their win though. Young forwards like Tamaiti Williams, Wallace Sititi and Tupou Va’i all were superb IMO, DMack was controlled and composed and I thought the introduction of Roigard and his excellent kicking game helped them see it out.

Only really Josh & JGP emerged with any real credit on the Irish side IMO. Crowley was poor and Frawley was a lot worse. As i mentioned during the week, we got the bench selection badly wrong and got negative impact there.

My goodness. Tetchy aren't you. 'Your player'? Odd phrase. Surely there all Ireland players?

Playing to the crowd when you're 10 points down is mad wouldn't mind if they were winning

Lots of the usual anti-irish bile over on the BBC sport website,they seem to have big issues with us being ranked no 1 and also seem to believe we're arrogant (pot- kettle)!!!

For the immediate period yes but building for a future when your kicker is over 35 no IMO

Sky NZ said it was his 3rd start. What was it's then his 4th?

I said since 2016 furlong has been getting flogged. Used Italy as an example because bealham has only started 3/4 games.

Impressive covering up for the coaching team trying to twist my words into something I didn't say.

Nearly 7000 posts that's an impressive life you live

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Ireland seemed to stick to rigid pre planned everything last night. The restarts were all the same, we got traction from one, all the rest were comfortable clearances finding touch around half way for the all Blacks. With the way our line out was functioning that was a net gain for the All Blacks. We played a good few moves for Aki to attack their out half channel, again, one worked, the rest didn't. A few times we tried to move the ball in the first half it was extremely flat to the line and broke down immediately. Crowley also kicked contestables to either wing from open play, none of which worked. Actually as a measure if a team is on it's game or not, getting up to and actually contesting up and unders is a good measure, one which we failed on last night.

When POM is not on the field the line out seems incapable of sorting itself out, thinking on their feet, you wonder is it the similar in general play without Sexton? Had he the personality and the freedom from management to shake it up when it wasn't working.

Last night we were poor in every facet of play, the lineout was probably the most unforgivable, as in the most predictable area that teams would spend their time working on.