Can Ireland play good attacking rugby in the future without huge centres?

It's a non issue in my book. If size was all that important, than we have the players now and coming through who are big enough - Griffin 6'1, McSharry 6'2, Sheridan 6'4, and Farrell 6'4. But it's not the be all and end all so yeh...

Totally different players used for totally different roles. Smith could not do what Nonu does and Nonu could not do what Smith does. Apples and oranges. May as well compare Keith Gleeson and Simon Easterby.

L7, aside from yourself, I don't know who is specifying Wales' bigger back line as being the reason they beat us.

matthew8 wrote: »

Of course we can. But we can't play attacking rugby by putting people out of position like McFadden at 13.

Hard to believe but McFadden is actually a 13 by trade. It's his first choice position and the position he was developed in.

Ok, so if we assume that the answer is no, we can't compete with big centres, what do we do then? It's not like D'Arcy, Earls, McFadden are being picked at the expense of a couple of strapping 17 stone monsters, we have to adapt our play to what we have and go from there.

Good small players will have their problems against good big players especially against good big fast players.

Be that as it may, the problems I've seen in the Ireland team have been :-

1. In Defence.

When our line speed is slow as against Wales we can be run through and over. Same goes for every team who is not generating intensity in defence. Given good line speed and commitment from the available players this should not however be a problem. Its probably been said but teams like Leinster don't have monsters at 12 and 13 and yet maintain a miserly defence against top teams.

2. In Attack

Smaller men get wrapped up easier and if they do the recycle will often take longer allowing a defence to reset after a line bust. This can be addressed with good strength and technique in ball presentation, or, looking to offload in or prior to contact. Again, big men will usually find it easier to get their hands free in close contact but this is a technique and attitude thing. Its also a matter of having players running good support lines.

What you can't do is expect smaller men to truck it up and continually make significant attacking yards in heavy contact. This shouldn't be a huge problem for Ireland because we do have powerful ball carriers sprinkled throughout the team and in terms of strike runners in the back line neither Tommy Bowe or Rob Kearney lacks physical size. Sexton is also a good size for his position.

What I have found most frustrating of late is the dearth of attacking play and inability or unwillingness to play for offloads.

While I found very difficult to take against Wales the lack of speed and intensity in defence - we stood right off and let their power runners come at us, giving up yardage easily time after time - that would in fairness appear to be a recent 'thing' or, hopefully, an isolated bad performance.

The lack of incisive attacking play is much more worrying. Everything seems to hinge on Ferris or SOB demolishing whoever tries to tackle them, or we kick the ball. There is little effort to play deception from first phase (aside from the now telegraphed Sexton loop) and little evidence of good support lines and offloading in broken play. We also have a weakness in our passing in midfield.

Sexton can hit a long skip pass - how many others of our backs can we say that of. It makes us much easier to mark - line up on the power runners and double team them, safe in the knowledge that we are laboured going wide.

The problems in attack are not down to size issues in the centres.