Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Croc roll was banned in mid 2024 making it harder to clear out poachers and hold onto to your own ball.

The access for kick chasers was also brought in at the same time. We conceded a penalty from a kick off against NZ in the AI last year for one of their chasers running into Porter who had their back turned watching the catcher. Initially players were trying to buy penalties by running into ‘blockers’.

Nope, just came in last year, we started seeing it in the NH during the AI.

You might be thinking about 50/22 which was trialled in 2021 and came in fully in July 2022. That was a great addition to the game stopping teams putting 14 in the defensive line and creating more space out wide. England in particular seemed to struggle once that was introduced. Beforehand it was very difficult to beat their rush defence.

last night was a poor Munster Leinster game. Leinster of old would have won pulling up. The biggest issue facing Ireland is the decline of Leinsters key men. they are still better then what the other provinces have but the overall standard is average. I believe What Farrell has to do is freshen up his coaching ticket with better coaches and back what he sees as the future in some positions. He cannot afford to let it mature naturally, it will take too long.
he needs to call it now , back himself.
if he thinks prendergast is the future, back him. If he thinks Crowley and casey not the answer, then develop what he believes is the answer.

I don’t think Irish fans can afford to be provincial going forward, and I admit I have posted some silly stuff here on that topic, but Ireland are at a crossroads. If the right choices are not made going forward the future could be very very bleak.

Stoped reading after the first paragraph, “lineout and scrum look very poor”…did you even watch the games 😂

You don’t just “lose skills”…

It's hardly 'blindly follow'. The kicking game most of the provincial teams use is not fit for purpose. Ireland are declining at the moment due to a number of factors that have been mentioned already. Successful teams have adapted we haven't. Teams will use this gameplan against us. The least we can do is learn to defend against it.

Ulsters backs created 3 tries and are amongst the top try scorers in the league, with 1 less fewer games than most teams.

leinsters backs created 0 tries tries vs Ulster and had to rely on the Leinster maul/scrum to put points on the board.

You’re confusing it with another game I think. Three of Leinster’s tries came through the backs, only one from a maul.

Ringrose is only 30 and Ryan is 29…they aren’t on the wane.

VDF isn’t playing as well as he used to but he’s still a top player. The other two are the main issue along with Aki from an Irish perspective.

That’s funny - I must have imagined the try where James Lowe plays a beautiful pass to put JJ Kenny in space and Kenny then absolutely stitches McIlroy with a step and burned in to try.

I similarly must have imagined the Harry Byrne pass to width for James Lowe to try, or Rieko Ioane carrying Rob Baloucoune over the try line.

The Ulster backs did absolutely nothing of note against Leinster - Leinster had 80m more of carries than Ulster and considerably more clean breaks (7 v 3).

To me that is hyperbole he was good last night , kicking very effective bar the loose one straight out, and passing as effective as ever. Against Munster at home scrapping for every second he did well. Huge work rate off the ball too

Big-Al you should rewatch the Ulster game. They were incredibly conservative in their play and didn't use their backs anywhere near as much as they have in other games.

They had 38% of possession yet kicked the ball 28 times to Leinster's 27. They didn't want to engage Leinster's rush defence so elected to kick to us to try and regather in the air. It's actually a good tactic in the current game and something I'm surprised that Munster didn't attempt more of last night. But the Ulster backs certainly weren't shining in last weekends game at the Aviva