Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

I doubt he came down too hard on Joe Mc for smashing into a ruck, even if it was a ridiculous penalty to concede.

I'd be surprised if he didn't, come down hard on Joe Mc, tbh, even if it hasn't resulted in him being dropped here. It wasn't even a remotely marginal penalty, where the timing was off, say. And it's far from his first silly penalty.

Wanting more intensity and fight, and not giving away daft penalties are not mutually exclusive.

I posted here earlier in the week about each of the no.10s kicking percentages, plus that of Nathan Doak. It ranged from 71-79%.

Thomas Ramos is 88.5% in the top 14 and 100% in the champions cup. Incredible really.

It's another area of skills where we have fallen behind in recent times.

Sexton, for whom goal kicking was arguably his weakest skill, had an 80% kicking percetage for Ireland in his final season. It's an interesting angle to show how our skill levels in general have dropped.

I disagree that it’s a no win situation.
the reality is Ireland are a good bit behind France and England.
Beating Italy Scotland and wales will a job well done by Ireland. Beating England would be a great result.

There has been times we struggled against Italy and our players were in general good form. That’s not the case anymore.

And I think Farrell is Struggling to manage this. This happens a lot of coaches - they are good when their players are good but they cannot manage an average team , they just don’t have that mentality.

Johnny Concrete! Now that's a blast from the past!

Farrell has been doing his own thing for years, he's been lucky with the players he inherited and a few talented players that he brought in. Now that he has to shuffle the broken deck chairs on the Titanic he and the players are being found out.

Clip of SP's tackles. There's a few on the gainline (a couple of good tap tackles that stall momentum) and a few that have been mentioned - the tackle is technically 'made' but there's huge post-contact metres. That's the nuance that some on here are referring to in response to 'he made X tackles'.

It's a fairly pertinent topic. Would be the same as highlights of Crowley's kicking performace from the tee vs. Italy last year. Player doesn't do well in some facets of the game and it's analysed. It's not doctored footage in anyway. Just reality.

But yes, you would rather see highlights reels of Irish players doing good things. Turnovers, dominant tackles, line breaks, 50/22s etc. These things just currently aren't happening in any volume.

Casey has hardly set the world alight in a green jersey!!

That tackle was fine. He might well have known he'd reach him after the kick was away but he was fully committed while Jalibert still had possession, even the French fans weren't complaining about it online. Players will always react in the way the French players did to a hit like that, even if it's legal. Irish lads leaving Ryan to take it alone was a bad look.

Yeah, I was worried at the time that he was late but on the replay he was fine. Not sure I'd be using that moment to justify him starting this week all of a sudden, mind. Didn't spot the lack of people joining in the scuffle, that's terrible if so.

There's a lot of stuff has regressed with the team, someone mentioned skills above… fresh blood in the coaching box or on the pitch are the only things going to shake things up in my view