Ireland vs England - 6N 2025 match thread

I’m afraid you’re in for a few very disappointing years of watching Irish rugby if that’s your view because there’s nothing that happened yesterday that will have Sam gone from the 23, and probably not even gone from the first 15.

sorry have to pick you up on your post, Crowley wasn’t the last tackler on the England try scorer, and he was trying to cover open field.

“If” he made 3 times this mistakes ??? Seriously !

Fact: SP got ran over in defence , made at least 3 kick too long , one of which led to England's first try.

“However, Jack is a better tackler”, what about Jacks line speed and attacking threat, play variation, kick game, etc etc yesterday ?

“Over the course of the season , SP is a better penalty kicker “ . Based on what ? It’s his first senior season and Not yesterday ,when it mattered in a tight first 60 mins playing for Ireland in the 6N , not his club.

Is it verboten on here to have the opinion that SP had a torrid first 30 mins and would have been hooked before halftime if England had converted more of their chances.

He could have been hooked before half time if he was worse than he actually was, but he wasn't bad enough to be. He's learning quickly and he will be a very good player this season and for years. So will crowley.

We have 2 excellent out half's who are young which we never had apart from a season or so at end of humphreys career [20 plus years ago] and at the end of o garas career [ 10 plus years ago]

If this is the future of the Ireland 10 debate where everyone slates their least favourite, and its ok to have a favourite btw, as completely useless its going to be a nightmare to read.

Yes I'm talking about online posts.

Looking back at the tries conceded, Beirne, Healy, Crowley and Henshaw all made poor efforts that cost us. That’s a part of the game that we have to tighten up on as Scotland have plenty of players who can hurt us if they get an easy line break.

This.
Starting against an England team successfully all-in on causing chaos and disruption is an entirely different challenge to coming on when your team has broken them and are very much on the up.

If Kelleher’s try had stood and we were less wasteful with our entries in their 22 would we still be having this conversation about 10s?
We really should have put another 2 tries on them in that first half.

21 year old, first six nations start, heavily targeted by England. He passed the test. Crowley was also excellent. Lucky we have them both.

Don't forget that intercept Sam threw, he was lucky the ref was lenient on the call. Slinging long passes is all well and good, but not to the middle of the bloody park.

England's defence is completely different to what they tried to do(badly) in the Autumn Internationals. They will defeat Scotland handy enough.

When it was pointed out that Borthwick said jack had a good game, there were more than a few of you replying in the mod of "WTF does he know?" along with some character assassination of an international coach.

So this is your response to any compliment of a non Leinster player. This "can't we all just roll in behind Ireland" is a very thin veneer over some seething hate of the other 3 provinces.

When called out, you revert to "but but Andy makes decisions and he's infallible because he's an international coach" mode. Well Borthwick is also an international coach and took England further that Ireland in the last world cup if I'm not mistaken.

It's time you guys were called out on your hypocrisy. Nothing but a bunch of kids spitting their dummy out of the pram.

The Irish Times team ratings.

Maybe I missed something but I'm not sure where they got that 9 for Keenan.

15 Hugo Keenan (Leinster) Rating: 9

14 Mack Hansen (Connacht) Rating: 7

13 Garry Ringrose (Leinster) Rating: 9

12 Bundee Aki (Connacht) Rating: 7

11 James Lowe (Leinster) Rating: 8

10 Sam Prendergast (Leinster) Rating: 6

9 Jamison Gibson-Park (Leinster) Rating: 9

1 Andrew Porter (Leinster) Rating: 8

2 Rónan Kelleher (Leinster) Rating 8

3 Finlay Bealham (Connacht) Rating: 7

4 James Ryan (Leinster) Rating 6

5 Tadhg Beirne (Munster) Rating: 7

6 Ryan Baird (Leinster) Rating: 6

7 Josh van der Flier (Leinster) Rating: 8

8 Caelan Doris (Leinster, capt) Rating: 7

Mod: Warnings and bans handed out. If the standard of posting doesn't improve, more will be handed out with the option of going straight to a ban.

A reminder - if you have an issue with a post, report it. Do not respond on thread.

I'm surprised you are trying to make it sound bad for SP.

I thought you were firmly in his corner?

Every time it’s the same with a few wind up merchants on here to popping in to start off a Crowley-Prendergast narrative which persists for the whole week and quickly descends into a toxic provincial mess which doesn’t do anything for the players involved. You wouldn’t know who won the game by reading through the comments.

I think most genuine fans are thankful that we have two good options that will get better with time who compliment each other by being able to change up the game. As a Leinster fan I would have gone the more experienced route and selected Crowley for this game and would have no issue if he gets selected next week as he’s back playing with confidence. I called out the over the top criticism of him at the time of the AI whilst also calling out some of the over the top praise for him after the NZ game. There’s no such thing as a perfect game (although Dupont in the Champions Cup final was close)

Both players contributed to a great win yesterday with some lovely moments and also made poor mistakes which on another day could have cost us the game. Great that they get that experience in a winning team and that we won’t be in the position we were for the last 3 World Cups where we didn’t have anyone behind Sexton who had started any big games.