Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Wait for Irish errors x 3

1. Target the lineout. S. Barrett going off early injured resulted in NZ's best lineout forward, Lord, coming on and dismantling our lineout. NZ seemed to read our calls easy and have a man up in front, or alongside, the Irish jumper very often.

2. Target the ruck. Their no.13 made several turnovers. Savea poached some ball too. Beirne's sending off hurt our ability to poach but NZ clearly identified that our ruck resourcing and clear outs are poor and they made hay here.

3. Move the point of contact and spread the ball wide. NZ scored with nice deft offloads in the tight exchanges and used that quick ball then to get wide where we defended the channel between TOB and Ringrose like schoolboys.

And to be honest, they didn't have to be that good to beat us. Just somewhat efficient with their possession in our territory and have a decent platform in the set piece. They made plenty of errors too. We just made far too many and were the masters of our own downfall for the most part.

I'm not concerned about beating Japan (they looked awful against SA), but I don't think either Baird or Ahern will end up in the second row long term so I'd rather see them at 6.

I wonder could we see Prendergast at 7?

Look at the retreat from, in particular, AKi and Lowe vs where Holland came from , and that's your answer for why the clearers never had a chance.

I think you're forgetting some of the things he did well to be honest, go watch him back. I did a post on the match-thread where I tried to show both positives and negatives of his game.

There were other garryowens that were on the money that we won back or made breaking ball in their half due to our pressure (I agree, there were several others that were too long though). There were kicks ahead that were on the money á la TOB (him getting bumped as he went for the ball impeded the catch but there was nothing wrong with the kick). That grubber in the 22 was pre-planned cos there are two chasers ready and going but the kick was too to the left and Jordan read it really well. Should have held on to the ball anyway you'd think in that part of the pitch.

He was one of our 3 only offloads. Carried joint second most, made passes on the gainline (I don't think you could accuse him of playing deep on the day and inviting their defence on us), made second most metres with ball in hand, one of the few to beat a defender. He showed up well defensively. Snaffled a loose lineout ball. I think the penalty he missed wasn't a gimme by any stretch, he did make the others, don't think you can be too harsh on him there. He covered the backfield really well throughout, their ball rarely touched grass when it shouldn't have (we'll just have to disagree on the penalty/turnover incident, I think a kick ahead could have made things even worse as the defensive line is all over the shop and our support were pathetic for how it played out, he stayed on his feet long enough for them to secure the ball).

He did kick one out on the full (or was there two? I only remember one) but he also did one brilliant banana kick from around his 22 to just outside their 22 with no angle, making up huge ground and giving us a great platform to attack off, definitely the best line kick on the day out of either team. Beauden Barrett kicked dead 2, if not 3, fwiw.

The things he did well aren't exactly highlight-reel moments you'll agree (bar the class line kick), but he did have positive contributions if you look beyond stray kicks… it wasn't a brilliant game out of him at all, but it wasn't "poor"… it was just a very mixed bag, hence why people are (almost universally from what I can see) giving 6/10 on the scores. I wouldn't agree with those giving him a 7.

Bare in mind this is with a pretty crap platform the whole game, we had less possession as we kept losing lineout ball and scrums, we were coughing up some of their restarts also.

He had the right ideas but his execution was a little off a little too often for my liking or the receiver didn't play their part on certain occasions (think Osbourne spilling the pass to go through the gap before the controversial penalty we're debating for e.g.).

I'd be far more concerned about other more fundamental aspects of our game than 10's play on the day to be honest.

If he gets decent platform against Japan (or whoever) and still performs like that and has that amount of errors, I'd agree, it's poor play from a 10.

Forgot about the banana kick, that was one for the highlights reel!

I think Ringrose is out of form, but it's not terminal. He was one of the better players on the Lions tour - looked electric in some of the tour games - before injury curtailed his test match hopes. He'll find his attacking spark again.

I find it interesting, also, that all of the attacking problems get put down to Goodman. When listening to the podcasts, the likes of Ruaidhri O'Connor, Cian Tracey and the Molecast fellas are always talking about how Andy Farrell is in charge of our attack. It's clear that our attack has gone backwards since Catt left and Goodman came in, but if Farrell's in charge of the attack, it can't be solely Goodman going under the bus.

It's this kind of head in the sand complete refusal and inability to acknowledge almost any errors on the part of Jack Crowley that leads to these borderline nonsensical debates around the 10 shirt repeatedly here.

yeah i have to agree with packrat on this, there is alot of rubbish on here about crowleys form last season, which was perfectly fine overall up until he was benched for the australia game - he was arguably ireland's best player against argentina and the team stuttered after he went off

he was below his usual standards against castres away to be fair but on the other hand the team as a whole were fairly abject as a whole (but having said all that, munster still should have won) but apart from that game really he was fine last season, with a few fantastic displays dotted in at times