Ireland vs England - 6N 2025 match thread

That pass is a standard pass that any rugby player, let alone top flyhalf, should be able to make. It's one thing I don't understand about rugby. Most of these players have been playing for at least 20 years of their lives, they should all be able to throw a simple flat 10-15m pass.

I think a lot of us are seeing the game from the Irish side only.

At times in that game England were demolishing us. Their BR selection got a lot of change out of the breakdown, their BR was immense for 45-50 minutes.

I don’t think the game turned on the Irish subs as much but as on the English BR completely running out of steam. When Curry scored his Try he could barely walk not to mind run.

It’s also the reason Conan looked so good, and Crowley wasn’t under the same pressure Sam was, England for years have prioritized size over stamina and continually get the balance wrong.

Sheehan had 3 involvements in his try getting the initial carry and pass at the line off to Conan in our 22, then the long pass out to the wing at the 40m line before getting it back in the English 22 and powering over. Superb all round skills. Absolute delighted for him.

Borthwick's "analysis" is basically cap counting. How is this spoofer still in the job?

Defeat by Ireland means England have won only two of their past nine games – with both victories coming against Japan.

Steve Borthwick, the head coach, blamed inexperience, saying the performance of an Ireland bench containing more than 500 caps was “certainly a factor” in their victory.

Dan Sheehan, Jack Conan and Jack Crowley provided decisive contributions. England’s replacements, meanwhile, boasted a collective total of just 81 caps with Borthwick choosing to omit some of his more experienced heads in George Ford and Elliot Daly from his match-day squad.

“If you look at today’s game, you see two different teams,” Borthwick said. “If you look at the game, you see an Ireland team that has been together for such a huge amount of time with 1,200 caps and an England team that has been together for six months and has half that number of caps.

“The guys went out and if you had been watching that start of the game, you wouldn’t see that difference. It is a team that wants to play aggressively with the ball and I think we took a step forward in that attack and the defence has improved. To be clear, we want to win every game but we didn’t today and we are disappointed with that and I think there are elements we take and build and show the progress we made in the training camp the last 10 days.

“And they've got quality in their team. I was looking at the teams beforehand and I think on that bench they had almost as many caps as we have in our whole 23. And I was looking at that going, this is, this is gonna be a great test for us. And ultimately we came up short and I'm really disappointed we came up short because I thought we could come here and win this game.”

Scotland will be very different game to England. If we are a lot less wasteful in their 22 then I see Ireland winning reasonably comfortable.

We spent a lot of time in England's 22 with attacking lineouts yesterday and didn't capitalise. We fix that and we will do a number on Scotland.

Two years ago we had no hooker for an hour and replaced 5 (?) players through injury in the first half and still gave them a bit of a beating.

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Its not that anyone has made up their minds against Sam, its that he's not ready yet and hasn't earned his place.

Crowley earned his spot and did nothing to deserve getting dropped, so people are understandably hard on Prendergast because to justify dropping Crowley for Sam, we cant then give Prendergast an armchair ride and pretend he's ready when he's clearly undercooked.

i watched the match again this morning .

Our pack were blown away in the 1st 30 mins and England should have put more points on the board. Their back row outmuscled our back row and Marcus smith tactical awareness was excellent. So would have to give credit to England for that time period. England also successfully targeted Sam and made inroads there as our back row tried to cover the Space that you expect your 10 to cover. SP was very poor in this period of the game, but our gameplan couldnt adjust .

England started to tire and we came into the game more, and SP stated to get some decent ball and space, but at least 3 kicks from hand were too long for the chasers. This changed before half time and he stated to find his range .

He was still lying too deep in attack and couldnt attack the England defence or provide a viable attacking threat in his own right, so depended on his excellent pass choice. it nearly ended disastrously on one occasion but came good for the two tries.

Crowley came on and the whole tone of our back line attack changed. His attacking threat and his choice of play was aggressive and hard to defend . The English were tireing at this stage and the entire Ireland bench proved their worth.

Player ratings are clickbait, what is important is the team and how players fit into that team.

IMO Crowely should have started yesterday with SP coming on to close out the game. Whatever Farrell and Easter by are seeing from SP in training isn’t yet translating into Match day. The phrase train like Tarzan, play like Jane comes to mind. He’s definitely one for the future, as his passing choice is excellent , but not the now against tough physical opposition like England or France

PS, if Lowe wasn’t on the field , i dont think we would have won the game as his attacking threat demanded at least 2 defenders stretched out wide every time the ball was sent to him.

IMHO I'd rather have Crowley close the game than Prendergast. I might be wrong but....

Anyway the coaching ticket got it right. We beat one of the top 5 sides in the world. Obviously things to learn on for next week. Ireland are in a good place. Happy days

Crowley played better than Sam yesterday. He did miss a tackle to concede a try and got turned over for a penalty in the 20 minites he played. If he made 3 times those mistakes in 60 minutes, the shine would be gone off his performance

However, Jack is a better tackler.Over the course of the season, Sam is statistically a better penalty taker but was off yesterday. Sam kicked too far yesterday. But if you wrte to reward performance, Jack would start the next day

You need to compare like with like. Murray came into a squad with an aging Stringer and Reddan, there was nobody standing in his way.

Jack Crowley was brilliant for Ireland last year in the Six Nations.

Furlong was brought to the World cup due to Marty Moore being injured and Janes Cronin struggling for form.

Great result and what an impact bench. I think Crowley off the bench to close out the game is a good tactic and may get the best out of both.

Keep at it bud, you're not convincing anyone who wasn't previously convinced. And making yourself look bad to boot. But I could just select any post from you to see that :D

Both 10s had good games, both had errors they'd prefer they didn't, it should be ok for a poster to call those errors out, unfortunately any criticism of Sam (in particular) is pounced on with a certain viciousness.

If Borthwick had name checked Sam as the reason England couldn't get a foothold in the game I'd put my house on it that he wouldn't be referred to as a spoofer

Yes, the coaches picked Sam to start and I think they need to pick him again for next week unless they had already told him that he was benching v Scotland.

We're not going to develop an international outhalf by chopping and changing.