Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Casey will probably be on the bench next week, lm a Munster supporter and have a lot of time for Craig, but l think by the world cup Doak will have overtaken him he's a much bigger man and has been in great form for Ulster and a great place kicker to boot.

He trotted back in the first half when Wales got into our 22.

As I said, good going forward, liability once he has to turn and cover back or to make defensive decisions

Either that or Scotland are going to batter us lol. Mental stuff at Murrayfield.

On a serious point I genuinely think England have (to steal an EOS quote) "the horses" to beat France so it really could be on.

France at home, strong favourites.

Yeah, I’m personally happier with the fact that we’ve beaten them 10 times in a row, but whatever.

France at home after losing the weekend before is a very dangerous animal.

Like clockwork

In fairness you mentioned the kick yourself saying that it was poor that we managed to miss touch for the penalty at the end of the game. We definitely missed a trick in not getting that BP try whether it had been from that lineout or the 5m tap.

Kicking it dead was piss poor from Jack and he knows it but we still had to something with the ball once we got the lineout, the way some are talking you'd swear Ireland score a try from every 5m lineout, the truth is we don't.

Hard to see England on current form going to Paris and winning regardless. The French regularly struggle with England historically. Maybe they’d have been a bit more nervous if they were trying to win the GS in front of their own fans. England are usually a sticky team to beat even when they’re not going well and have their backs to the walls next week.

That’s fair enough. Players make mistakes.

Just seemed like your whole post was doing what you’re accusing others of doing by trying to put some blame of Dan Sheehan even though a 5m tap and go has never ever been a score in itself.

I didn’t think there was much in the post you replied to (although I have no idea if there’s a history between you and the other poster) and you echoed the same thoughts during the game. Tit for tat arguments are what drag this place down in my opinion and best not to get involved. Otherwise you’re become part of the problem and it never ends.

Hopefully the lack of a BP win against Italy doesn’t decide anything. In fairness we were lucky to get out of it with a win so we got what we deserved at the end of the day.

So you perceived that a poster commented negatively on a player who plays for your team by changing the argument and blaming a guy who plays on their team (I’m assuming the other poster is a supporter of that team).

I called out your post as I see you regularly accusing others of bringing provincial bickering into threads, yet here you are doing it yourself. Anyway let’s leave it there and stop clogging up this thread further.

Quite interesting to see our offload stats comparing the whole 6N last year (25) to 41 this year after just 4 games. Shows how we’re trying to expand our game whilst England appear to be becoming less expansive or at best stalling in that aspect.

I thought the game was going kick heavy in November and kicks are up slightly but looks like the game is already moving towards offloading. England have made the most kicks in open play with 123 and France are in 4th with 118. We’ve made 120 over 4 games. Scotland are the outliers with just 93.