Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Hi Im bringing my 8year to his first Irish game on Saturday. Im was wondering would we get to see the team bus arrive at the Aviva. What time would we need to be at ground if so. Very excited lads

Cheers

Thanks for that. I was thinking it might be like that. He will be happy enough with it

I didn't think you were slating him, just not giving the full picture. I just think calling it a 'poor' performance, saying "he did very little well", asking "what did he do well?"… was a bit of disservice. I just said I'd point out what I saw that he did well, it wasn't a disaster of a performance by any means. Go back through the comments in time during the game and there's a barrage of negative stuff there and very few to praise anything that went well. Which is fine, people are watching live and you can only take so much in. I find the comments the day after a match are generally a bit more insightful as people have had a chance to watch highlights/replay, read a bit more about it, take in other's opinions, even cool their jets a bit if it's a loss.

That's not to say I'm not happy with his performance and know he can do better, those kicks frustrated me too as anyone can overcook a garryowen but there were a few too many for my liking. He needs to stop missing touch, happens too often. It's a consequence of ekeing every last yard. When it comes off like the banana kick it's great, but it can be a momentum killer in a tight game. If he's only getting 10m on every kick like Sexton towards the very end I'd be annoyed also mind!

I'm realistic as to what else was going on around him on the team. We were on something like 44% possession (poor Sam had 12% possession to work with in the last 10 minutes which is why I was saying to largely discount his time on the pitch apart from being a bit annoyed at two poor passes). We were getting so little traction due to scrum/lineout/turnovers he would have needed to conjure up some magic and some of those riskier plays like the grubber in the 22 or the dink to TOB to come off. He did try them (to his credit) and was unlucky with the TOB one in particular as that was on the money.

He showed against largely the same players he was playing with a couple of weeks ago he can put in a performance doing all of those things he is being criticised for (I genuinely think it was the most encouraging performances of an Irish 10 in a few years). The difference the other day is he got snagged this time where he danced away from JGP/Larmour, the dink didn't go to hand to TOB and it did to Farrell, the garryowens were better measured (or better chased on some occasions..?). Fine margins I guess.

I think ultimately we're a bit on the same page and ultimately arguing over semantics/appearances of "poor" and "mixed" and the balance of positive/negative contributions. You have it weighted negative, I have it in the middle of the two. That's just our own viewpoints and we're probably not going to bridge that divide, which is fine too, that's what this place is for.

I think this is an excellent summary and, having watched bits of it back, I'd suggest the kicks-from-hand were differing in quality based on the type of kick.

Imo, his contestables were his poorest type of kick from hand. A kick is only as good as it's chase, but there were definitely a decent number that were too long, and gave the chaser little chance.

However, I'd go as far as saying his other kicks-from-hand in play were much better quality and he was unlucky with some. For example:

• The grubber in the first half was an quality kick, and just dribbled over the try line, he was unlucky. (For me, Osborne doesn't quite have the pace you want to attack a grubber from that range imo)
• The grubber in the 2nd half was a decent kick, but it was a brilliant read from Will Jordan.
• The chip to TOB was also a good kick, and on another day it falls into his arms and we're over.

But more importantly here, they were all good decisions too imo.

His contestables and kicks down the line are the 2 types of kick he needs to improve most, imo (we've seen an improvement on his goal kicking this season that I expect to continue). But his grubbers, kicks in behind and chips, I think he's already got enough quality with.

Crowley wasn't great, we had a lot of possession and territory in the first half and he did nothing with it. Not his fault but he didn't make anything happen with a lot of ball. Prendergast looked worse when he came on, similar to Crowley last year, trying to make something happen against the odds. But I'm much more worried about the coaching honestly. Scrum and line out are a real mess and both have been for years now. I'm not sure what the attack plan is, though it's hard when noone has any confidence in the set piece, including the opposition. To think we were lethal off scrum and line out, off goal line drop outs, off broken ball, just a few years ago, and now in a game where the wheels came of for NZ for an hour and we couldn't buy a score.

If our game plan is up and under we are doomed, we do not have the pace (nor the kicking accuracy) to make that game work against NZ, France or SA. They will eat it up and use it to score against us as the ABs did a the weekend. We did well on Saturday with a short game, one off carriers pulling in their forwards. We made yards most of the time and it disturbed NZs ability to settle and get into their game. The stop start stuff helped. That game needs great decisions from 9 and 10 to read the room and change the picture to build an attack, that was absent and we seemed to abandon that approach towards the end of the first half. That and our first half defence were the only positives from Saturday. The team will get better as the series progresses but the bigger questions about set pieces and attack aren't going to be easily answered.

The worst part is if we win this lineout, the hit that led to Beirne getting sent off probably doesn’t happen…probably got what we deserved there for having such a pathetic first attempt of a line out.

First off, I don’t buy the whole “we don’t have big physical players” argument. Yes they may not be physical freaks out there like Will Skelton but there are enough strong and physical athletes out there to make it work, and certainly no less than what NZL had out there, certainly from the start anyway.

Carrying the ball into a two man defence…well, that’s going to cause you problems, that for me is the big issue and that was an issue in 2019 until 2021 which led to our attack being so toothless.

Well the question needs to be why are they slow to respond to kicks? Ringrose, TOB etc are not slow players and the likes of McCloskey are quick for a big guy. For me the issue is Lowe and Osborne, I am a big fan of Osborne but he’s a centre NOT a 15 at this level. Once Hansen is back get him on the left wing in place of Lowe and Keenan in at 15 and we’ll start making progress in the speed department, I still wonder how much of this speed is hampered by our tactical approach…after all all we heard was we weren’t capable of playing the fast, intricate attack that we wanted to play prior to 2021/2022…which was quickly dispelled.

What saddens me more than anything is we are living in an era where in Ireland v NZL fixtures that NZL are the ones more up for the game than we are…how has that happened? I think there needs to be some changes made, not whole scale but there are players that don’t fit our game plan who are being kept on due to their experience and reputation and all it’s doing is holding us back further.

if Prendergast had been turned over for that penalty in the way Crowley was the uproar from certain posters would be unholy so it can be hard to take the arguments on here at face value at times.

I'd agree with a lot of your post, but it's fair to say the exact same thing can be said the other way round too amongst other certain posters.

And fwiw, I think the talk about Crowley's "ceiling" is wide of the mark. Here's what Ian Madigan, for me the best pundit around at the moment, has said on the topic, and I don't think one poor game has changed that:

One thing that does frustrate me and you hear it sometimes when you hear people talking about the ceiling of players, and this was coming up last year, "Prendergast has a higher ceiling than Crowley".

That's trying to predict the future. And sometimes players don't fulfil their predicted ceiling. And I'm not saying that Prendergast won't go on to be a brilliant outhalf, I think he will. But Crowley maybe is showing that his ceiling is actually higher than you thought it was. "Maybe I've got more layers than you originally thought".

We have one big physical player who is a try scoring machine and line breaker for his province and Farrell has never picked him. Gavin Coombes.

Edogbo also fits this bill but was unfortunately concussed against Leinster. At least Farrell was willing to select him.