Ireland Team Talk XI: Team of nervoUS MOD warning Post 1

awec wrote: »

Sorry, but this is pure nonsense. We’re back to making excuses again. “The problem was not player performances, “sure everyone was ****e”, “you can’t guarantee dropping ****e players would improve things”.

Ireland clearly needed some fresh, in form faces and some tweaks to the tactics. We did neither and we paid the price for it with a disastrous year. Would changing fresh faces and tweaking tactics have guaranteed an improvement? No. Would it be more likely to lead to improvement than sticking with the same faces and same tactics that were consistently failing? Yes.

Name one excuse I made? What are you actually talking about?!

Podge_irl wrote: »

While there was obviously no large change in personnel, several positions had different players pop in and out over the course of the season - be it for injury or whatever reason. Those players did not play any better.

This is not an absolution of the coaching - if anything it is a criticism. When you have players playing poorly across the entire team it is an indictment of the environment and the coaching.

Marmion did well v NZ.

Podge_irl wrote: »

Yes, its pretty consistent. But some players did come in and they were no better.

Maybe a large change in personnel would have been something worth trying. I think it would have ended up with the same outcome, if not worse, because when all 15/23 players are playing poorly I don't think the issue is generally personnel.

At least more players would have been tested.

Also, there were games were Sexton and Murray needed to be replaced they were playing so badly but it didnt happen until v v late in the game. What is the point in having subs if they aren't good enough and or coach doesn't trust them? 'finishers' is that what NZ call them?

awec wrote: »

How do you know? Seriously, you're stating this as if it's fact.

Could Ireland have fared better with someone like Farrell at 12? If Schmidt had actually invested time in developing half backs (and remember, he complained in 2015 that he didn't have any other half backs) could Sexton and Murray have been given the boot up the arse they so desperately required? Would Larmour have done any worse than Kearney at 15? Conway couldn't have been picked ahead of Stockdale or Earls?

All these things are an impossibility in your head? An absolute certainty that they wouldn't have improved us?

We didn't have a wealth of untapped talent sitting at home, but we had a number of in-form players sitting watching the match while the same old suspects stank the place out on the field.

Schmidt deserves plenty of praise, and rightly so, for developing some depth for Ireland. He deserves all the criticism coming his way for failing to use it. He did what every single manager before him did in putting too much faith in out of form favourites, and he got the exact same result for it in the end.

Can you give one example anywhere in sport where bringing in inferior players at an elite level produced better performances?

stephen_n wrote: »

Can you give one example anywhere in sport where bringing in inferior players at an elite level produced better performances?

Stephen Donald World Cup final 2011 (possibly 4th choice out half) - guided NZ to world cup

In your opinion (or in some peoples opinion), Conway, Chris Farrell, Larmour, carty, carberry, marmion, Conan.. are inferior.

Sexton and Murray at their peak are better than Carberry or Carty and Marmion at their current best. However, injured (hopefully not but most likely declining) Sexton and Murray are not clearly to superior to the listed players.

Again in form Farrell versus an injured Henshaw

Conway v the try scoring machine Stockdale (but who needs more time to learn defending)?

Utah_Saint wrote: »

Difficult to say really. Could be a number of things. There def seemed to be a trend in the NH for a bosh merchant at 12 for a while. Maybe it was the influence of Rugby League coaches in the game? Maybe it was to create an extra ball carrying option for teams where their backrows lack someone with Speed & Power. henshaw does seem to have the perfect blend to transform into a ball carrying 12. Although it cancelled out his greater assets in my eyes.

What do you class as Henshaw greater assets? Just wondering.

At the risk of bringing specifics to a broad-sweeping-statements fight, I do have something specific that i'd like to see brought to the Irish set up under Farrell.

We have seemed very poor at setting up any kind of structure in phase play. England, NZ and Japan in particular (just off the top of my head) seem to have a much more consistent shape that they can set up in attack and maintain for a number a long string of phases. Even if it breaks down after a while they can re-form into their pods and get moving again.

There were variations on what this system was (1-3-3-1 or 1-3-2-2 were some of the more common ones) but it was just the fact of having a defined shape that everyone knows to revert to that gave them cohesion.
This is the kind of thing i'm talking about
https://www.the42.ie/ford-farrell-inverted-triangles-analysis-4872364-Oct2019/

With Ireland on the other hand it seemed to be a case of having a very well planned strike move that works off a set play, or nothing. If the set move breaks down then we lose our shape entirely and it comes down to very basic carries from the forwards or maybe a switch / loop called by Sexton. Even those seem to be considered too risky to call often and the replacements like Carty or Carbery don't have the confidence to do it.

A structure like the ones used by England in the article above is a good compromise between a safe, well rehearsed plan and an expansive game. Your fist receiver has two main passing options (as well as running/kicking himself) and those passes can be rehearsed endlessly. fingers crossed Farrell brings some of these ideas in now that he's in charge.

clsmooth wrote: »

If JS had picked Marmion, Carty, Farrell and Conway ahead of Murray, Sexton, Henshaw and Stockdale, do you think the result would have been any different against NZ? Would there be an element of people thinking WTF was Schmidt thinking by dropping those 4? Player selection wasn’t the issue, tactics and preparation were. We got it badly wrong this year. As an aside I would have liked to see Ruddock and Larmour (on back of him coming of age as a genuine quality international over the World Cup-it was only a few months previously the finger was pointed at his defence vs Sarries and if he should be in the squad) start vs NZ. Wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference unfortunately. We just weren’t at the races.

Doubt the NZ result would have been different - the Japanese result on the other hand.

A loss to SA who eventually won the tournament after winning the group would have been seen as a poor to average world cup. Losing to Japan and being destroyed by NZ is a truly awful one. I agree that the changes in a QF would not have mad ad a sufficient difference

Interested Observer wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that is our shape, purposefully, and has been for a couple of years. But I agree with you that our attacking play needs a complete overhaul.

I think that makes me fell worse That seems to be what you'd come up with if there was no plan.

ionadnapokot wrote: »

Re: Hume
That’s a big statement!
Do you mean physically?

What’s his passing and kicking like?

His passing and offloading game is really impressive. Haven't seen him kick from hand enough. He's powerful and has good feet and seems to have gained pace in the last 12 months. Defence seems to his biggest work on. Real shame about his hamstring injury. Ulster probably won't see him now until March.