2025 Nov 01 | AI's Round 1 | Ireland v New Zealand | 20:10 GMT | VM in Ire / TNT & Discovery+ in UK

My big fear is that this could be the beginning of a very chastening series for this team. Australia are going to come all guns blazing and are improving under Schmidt who would love to get one over on his former assistant.

The two players that worry me most currently are VdF and Ringrose. Both are miles off their best and have been for a while and we have no obvious replacements for either.

And the lineout now is a total crisis. You can see that psychologically the players are spooked by it. It's costing us big time in games because we can't convert territory to points because of it. This is a real test of Farrell now and will define his reign, can he be ruthless and make the changes that are required. We're 2 years out from the WC and drifting badly. Can he course correct?

James Lowe is not on a central contract.

He also wasn't bad either.

No lineout once again. I'm actually struggling to remember it being as bad as this in well over 30 years. We used to suffer against the likes of England when Ackford and Bayfield made mince meat of us back in the day and you'd watch our lineouts through your fingers but this is.very similar! Zero confidence in it now

No line breaks and no shape in the backs when we have the ball.

Solve those two issues and you'd see a massive improvement. Apart from that, it was all huff and puff but not a lot less

As for positives? Not am awful lot apart from TOB looking good and JGP had a good game. Crowley did well,.considering he had little shape to play with.

Losing Beirne was ridiculous. What a farce of a decision.

What worries me generally is they’re a team who match up very well to present problems for us IMO and have for a long time.

Irish teams (Leinster very notably a few weeks ago in Croke Park) thrive off generating quick ball in attack because we just don’t have game breaking athletes for the most part, so if teams can succeed in going after our breakdown they can always drag us into an arm wrestle. Aussies have always had multiple elite jackal threats in their side for 30+ years now.

They lack quality in certain areas, but they’ve buckets of pace and a real ability to mess up our ruck, that’s pretty much our kryptonite right there.

We never beat Australia comfortably though. They were hammered by Scotland last year but could and probably should have beaten us. Japan our only win seems more likely than not.

Fraser McReight had 5 turnovers today against England in a game where Aus were well beaten. He's always caused us bother when he's played agaisnt us.

It's a game that's happening more often than not for this team now.

VdF good for Leinster so far? He's been decent, but a shadow of the VdF who was world player of the year. He was well off it in the 2nd half and both him and Casey were garbage for the final try. This is the issue when he's had zero competition for his place in the team with 5+ years.

My player ratings:

Furlong 6/10 - nice try, scrum was relatively ok, some good loose work

Sheehan 5/10 - solid but did little to impose himself on the game

Porter 4.5/10 - brought the physicality but little else

Ryan 4.5/10 - a shadow of the former world class player he was

Beirne - possibly the harshest red I've ever seen

Henderson 4/10 - too slow, needs to be moved on, he was 100% correct though with his annoyance at ref

Baird 7/10 - great lineout work, some good work in the loose, strong defence, a good outing

Van Der Flier 6/10 - very solid as per usual but his soft shoulder allowed the Riogard try

Conan 6.5/10 - very strong in everything he did, brilliant work to keep team mate from being driven out, odd decision to take him off

Park 6.5/10 - much better than his shocker against Munster, his boot is one of Ireland's great strengths

Crowley 4/10 - trying too hard, made the wrong decision too often, not a good day at the office for him, will get another chance in this window so will hopefully perform better

McCloskey 7.5/10 - a very strong performance, the best Irish player today, should have stayed on but was goosed once Aki was in the 23

Ringrose 4/10 - 0 line breaks for Ireland, one would hope the 13 wouldn't allow a stat like that to occur

Lowe 6/10 - didn't do much wrong, had a stronger second half but failed to really impact the game

O'Brien 5.5/10 - barely had a sniff so very difficult for him to have any meaningful impact on game

Osborne 6/10 - solid again from him, but he's in danger of just being a solid utility player unless he can hold down a position in the centre

McCarthy 6/10 - a fine debut, can only be pleased with himself

Kelleher 4.5/10 - didn't do much wrong but was the weaker of the Irish hookers today. Didn't really impose himself on the game

Bealham 5/10 - no howlers but no great impact. Solid.

Doris 6.5/10 - great to see him back, a remarkable performance considering the circumstances, we really need his carries for 80 mins games

Casey 4/10 - short cameo so had little chance to make a positive impact, unfortunately his main contribution was to let Riogard in for the try

Prendergast 4.5/10 - didn't make any real impact but did have a slightly better outing than Crowley. Not sure he would have done any better than Jack had he been the starter.

Aki 4.5/10 - should never have been on for McCloskey as he shouldn't have made the 23. Most memorable contribution was a woeful pass to Lowe that gave NZ a 5m scrum

Farrell 5.5/10 - team were very green having played very little this season. To keep the game competitive for so long, with 14 men for 20 mins, was positive.

O'Connell 3.5/10 - line out is a disaster, has been for a good while

Goodman 3.5/10 - 0 line breaks. Zero.

Let's see, come 22nd of Nov we'll know the answer.

I blame Farrell 100% for Crowley and prendergast playing without confidence.
He threw Crowley to the wolves last autumn and then completely over sold and blew up prendergast before he did the same to him.
he should have stuck by Crowley and made him his no 1, and allowed a very young prendergast to naturally grow and eventually overtake Crowley.

Beyond stupid what Farrell did. I said it at the time that it would hurt Ireland, Leinster and most of all prendergast.

Yeah, good summary I think.

Some of it had to be gameplan (and not his call) but even during the period while we were in the ascendancy we seemed to have a ridiculous over reliance on kicking garryowens, and every one of those I can remember he executed poorly.

I too would back him to continue in the shirt, still think he’s probably our best option, but there is no scenario where he was anything but poor today.

McCarthy looked a bit shell shocked out there today when he came on, if I were Jack Boyle I’d feel hard done by.