Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

the future is Ben Murphy and Prendergast

I thought Casey in particular got absolutely no protection at the rucks for his 10 mins or so. Some of that is obviously on our pack, but mostly for me the ref was just allowing a free for all on those rucks in terms of Argentines lying on the wrong side, flopping on the ball etc.

The way our lineout has been for quite some time, you'd question turning down kickable penalties in the opposition half. The dropped goal, excellently done was following a kick to the corner.

Aside from our likelihood to f**k up the lineout, strong packs are able to contain or turn over our maul.

Looked at some of the penalties again - it is amazing to me that we were only awarded 6 penalties in the whole game.

The penalties we were awarded:

• 2 mins - Moroni shoulder to head on Crowley (TMO called, ref initially called play on)
• 18 mins - Tip tackle by Oviedo on James Ryan
• 27 mins - Isgro goes through the ruck and blatantly plays JGP
• 64 mins - scrum penalty awarded against Argentina tight head
• 67 mins - Argentina chaser in front of the kicker (called by touch judge)
• 75 mins - Kodela shoulder to head on Doris (called by TMO)
  

That means in the whole game, Paul Williams saw 3 infringements total, and in a game with relatively little kicking (compared to last week) and plenty of attacking from both sides, he didn’t think Argentina were never offside and never committed a single technical infringement at any ruck (apart from Isgro’s, and that was incredibly obvious).

That is not only unusual - it’s frankly unprecedented I would say. It’s not like this is some brilliantly disciplined Argentinian side - across their 10 games this season before this they’d conceded on average of 10.5 pens per game.

If Argentina hadn't 'scored' their intercept try would the TMO have intervened about the head on head contact? I heard no contact between any of the officials following the incident.

Casey isn't that inexperienced now. He may not have a massive numper of starts but he should have a reasonable number of minutes clocked up now?

It’s 26 carries for 36m, but still not great. James Ryan accounted for almost half that total at 17m.

None of our pack carried particularly well. Beirne got some easier carries in wide channels (most of his came on the try he knocked on), and JVDF and Doris carried into heavy traffic all day.