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[EOYT] Ireland v Australia 16/11/13

McLaughlin with no broken toe > Henderson with broken toe in fairness.

Yeah, what feels like Leinster bias/over reliance on familiarity does annoy me a little, but truth is its not been huge. Its people complaining because Kidney did it, and yeah I want Ulster players getting their chances, but Tuohy vs McCarthy is not a game settling call. There's no game influencing call on selection there really. Jackson vs. Madigan maybe? Not sure it woulda made a huge difference.

The biggest issue this evening was the Ireland team did not look right in its head space. Schmidt has to settle that. It's difficult to say how many other issues came from that.

My bad, I didn't realize he was still out, but Olding could make a difference - and Tuohy surely would provide a better platform in the scrum than Toner as well as being far better at ball carrying.
 
Does anyone think it might be psychological?
The team have looked uncomfortable when playing top tier opposition. Regardless of who the coach is and what game plan they intend to implement, the players aren't going to execute it if their minds are in Lala Land. I really think the players need help getting past this mental block. Whatever it is, it only happens when the green jersey is pulled on.
The line out and scrum was bad. I never thought I'd see the Aussie scrum crumple the Irish scrum, but they did. Embarrassing considering how lowly the Aussie scrum has been regarded so far.
Ball retention was poor. Players seemed very lacklustre when supporting a ball carrier making quick ball or continuity impossible. Too much time was spent trying to shove the Aussies off our ball. As soon as our ball carrier hit the deck there were Aussie's all over it.
Reddan looked indecisive when getting the ball away. Maybe he was pressured from the **** ball coming to him but either way he didn't perform what he was there to deliver, which was fast ball. Murray wasn't much of an improvement highlighted by the simple knock on ridding us of a consolation try. If we did get it the score would have flattered us.
I felt our backs were standing way too flat. Sexton was at a stand still whenever he received the ball taking away a lot of go forward. It didn't matter anyway as someone was either going to knock the ball on or the ball would be passed behind the man causing him to stop in his tracks.
The kicking. I don't know what we were thinking. It seemed every ball went to Folau. Had the Irish players heard of him before?
Sexton was missed, however Madigan was still one of the tidier players in the second half.
There were a lot of bad players today but I will pick on O'Connell and BOD because of the reputation and leadership they possess. When the going gets tough, these are the guys you want to look to. But they were so poor. And what was up with the decision to go for the corner 10 points down? BOD was a great player but the more he plays the more I begin to see that his time is up. Why does he always kick the damn ball? Even defensively he has been found wanting.
So many problems in that performance. So frustrating to watch. I can only imagine how it must feel for the fans who pay to see them at the Aviva, only to be repaid with the same consistent **** time and time again.
I get we have a new coach and new systems. But that's no excuse for what we saw today. I was happy to see us win 1 out of 3 as long as we gave a decent showing for ourselves but that hasn't been the case.
 
My bad, I didn't realize he was still out, but Olding could make a difference - and Tuohy surely would provide a better platform in the scrum than Toner as well as being far better at ball carrying.

Maybe. Not entirely sure myself.

Anyway, just read elsewhere that Olding may be out for the injury after getting injured in the last minute of an already won Ravens game. FML.
 
Yeah that try confirms it. Linespeed is better, but no one bothers to atempt a tackle.

I am going to break a wall or my hand before the end of this match. This is not reflective of our true ability.

This is EXACTLY how I feel every time I see Wales fall to one of 'the big three'.

Prior to today I had Ireland as my dark horse for next years 6N, if they play like they did today they'll get the wooden spoon.
 
I'd like somebody to explain scrums to me again i'm so confused

we're done

Based on what I've seen this year (Not just this match), the scrum now seems to work like this. The packs bind up like usual, then pre-bind with the opposition before it begins.
they then come together, and one of two things happen:

1) The scrumhalf waits to put the ball in, until they mess up and a penalty is awarded. or,

2) He feeds it straight to his team, and THEN a penalty is awarded. Ocassionally the ball will come out, but this seems rare.

I hope they change it again...
 
Relax guys, this was obviously just a cunning ploy by Schmidt to lull the All Blacks into a false sense of security in order to grab that elusive first win. I mean that's the only possible explanation for that performance.
 
I didn't watch this game so can't comment. What jumps out at me though is that OZ were woeful in the Rugby Championship (clearly a level down from SA and NZ) yet they can go to the NH, beat Ireland comfortably and by all accounts were pretty unlucky not to beat England too. Can we take anything away from this in terms of the gap between the NH and the SH? or has OZ improved?? Or both??
 
I didn't watch this game so can't comment. What jumps out at me though is that OZ were woeful in the Rugby Championship (clearly a level down from SA and NZ) yet they can go to the NH, beat Ireland comfortably and by all accounts were pretty unlucky not to beat England too. Can we take anything away from this in terms of the gap between the NH and the SH? or has OZ improved?? Or both??
Conveniently ignore the Lions :p

There is a definitely a gap between NH and SH but I don't think it's as big as some make it out to be. Australia are looking better each game, I feel - I mean they looked good in that last Bledisloe game too. See how they go vs Wales, and judge from them from there, for me.
England and France came within a score (or so) vs NZ so the gap isn't ridiculous from that POV.
 
Conveniently ignore the Lions :p

There is a definitely a gap between NH and SH but I don't think it's as big as some make it out to be. Australia are looking better each game, I feel - I mean they looked good in that last Bledisloe game too. See how they go vs Wales, and judge from them from there, for me.
England and France came within a score (or so) vs NZ so the gap isn't ridiculous from that POV.

Haha, yup, very good point. I actually forgot about that series (shows how memorable it was - and I did actually watch all three tests! and bet on the Lions for a series win).

Without watching the OZ games in the NH I suspect you are probably correct. I did see a good deal of improvement from the Ozzies in the final game v NZ and I hope they have continued that on to the NH. At the time of the Lions series I thought OZ were rubbish and therefore the Lions were not that much chop either.

For me the ABs have played pretty poorly v France and v England while France and England have played very well. Certainly we must give credit therefore to those teams however my gut tells me that the gap is bigger than those scorelines suggest.
 
Aussies are improving a lot, I want to see Wallabies next year in Rugby Championship with David Pocock, Scott Higginbotham, Wycliff Palu and Henry Speight.

Cheers
 
Right. I'm surprised. That game didn't go quite as I suspected. Conrad Smith predicted the margin almost exactly correct :D

I thought Ireland would have the edge in the scrums, but the scrums in general were a real mess, and overall Australia probably had the better of this set piece. The lineouts were pretty even - I think each team only lost one throw each. Australia's dominance at the breakdown was one of the keys to their success - they did get penalized quite a bit in this area, but they did manage to turn a lot of ball over (and slow down the rest of the ball).

Genia looked a bit sharper this week, but still made a couple of errors, but Cooper was pretty good. Sexton looked fine while he was on, but the backline seemed to lose some sharpness once Madigan came on. The Aussie midfield was pretty quiet with ball in hand, but did get through a pile of work on defense (scrum.com have Toomua leading the tackle count for Australia). I was very impressed with Luke Marshall for Ireland - he made a couple of errors but looked the most dangerous back on the park with ball in hand, making a couple of great line breaks. In contrast I though O'Driscoll was pretty quiet - he was running pretty laterally at times looking for gaps, but Australia's midfield defense was more than up for it. Cummins had another strong game for Australia - I wasn't convinced he was really up to test standard, but he has been more than adequate in recent weeks! Bowe and McFadden had a few good runs, but I thought Kearney was rather quiet at the back. He was completely outshone by Folau who looked very dangerous with ball in hand (and in the air!).

Overall a very good performance by Australia. They didn't actually make as many chances as they have been in recent weeks, but they were far more clinical in taking their chances, which is a great sign for them!

"Classy" 'I said so'.

Lol. I know it is not worth debating with you as you find anyone disagreeing with you aggressive and 'nitpicking', but Australia weren't really that much better in the backs. I would say they had the edge (which is no surprise), but I don't think they were substantially superior. They were certainly far more clinical, but Ireland's backs are recorded as making three times as many clean breaks as Australia's. Ireland just made a pile of unforced errors. Ireland's defense out wide was truly pathetic at times - that certainly isn't Australia's fault though, and they did a great job of exploiting it.
 
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Was that a red? I'm not convinced.

Its a red alright, and its his own stupid fault. It has clearly been flagged to one and all that this is will be a red card. If a player only get a yellow card for one of these, it is usually because the referee has bottled it!

Its been two years since the Warburton incident, and yet players are still lifting the ball carrier up by gripping him below the waist. What will it take for players to learn NOT to do this..... I hope and pray that it will not be the paralysis, or even death, of a high profile player!
 
Right. I'm surprised. That game didn't go quite as I suspected. Conrad Smith predicted the margin almost exactly correct :D

I told you, buddy:

Wallabies by 15

:D

Aussies are improving a lot and ABs is declining slightly. They could be a real threat in the next Rugby Championship. They came close in Dunedin, if they face ABs today in Australia, I wouldn't be so sure of a NZ victory.

Cheers
 
Pretty impressed with the display, but the scrum is still inconsistent - even though they seemed to gain ascendency in the 2nd half - and our defence is still a little too leaky for my liking. Line breaks were pretty even and watching the game I always felt that if we'd been playing the Boks or 'The Darkness' we'd have let in almost as many tries as we scored.

Still, after this bloody awful year as a Wallabies fan I was pretty pleasantly surprised by how clinical the backs were and how effective our breakdown work was for this match. What's more, I also was impressed that the boys got on so well in spite of some pretty dubious calls here and there. Sending Hooper to the bin for not rolling away when he wasn't even impeding the play was just ridiculous... The red card too was pretty harsh I thought. I know he went past the horizontal, but he also corrected it somewhat too, and tried to balance him back down.
But anyway, I half expected us to lose to Ireland - what with a fair few key positions in that Lions series being Irish - so this match makes me hopeful that the boys may actually be on the up finally.

Like Conrad said above though, there a few things to ponder though: Next year Australia will likely have available missing talent to the tune of:

- Pocock
- Higginbotham
- Palu
- Speight
- Beale

That could give us a serious boost in both our set piece play and back-line penetration. Palu can be a bit of a passenger at times, but his frame gets him over the line most times, and Higginbotham was having the best year of his career till his injury, and will add both much needed grunt and ball playing skills to our second row.

In the backs we're doing pretty well, but you'd have to think Speight will force his way in. I can't fault Cummins and don't think anyone would want to remove our beloved honey-badger - the kid has so much enthusiasm and energy and more often than not converts any half chance he gets (sort of reminds me of Ben Tune), so I think we may see AAC dropped to the bench. The question then is what do you do with Beale if he gets back to his brilliant best for the Waratahs? Cooper is back to his best at 10 (and is actually tackling now too), and Folau is playing brilliantly at full back and is easily the best player under the high ball in the world right now (thanks Kevin Sheedy and GWS), so you wouldn't put Beale in for him and a Speight-Cummins wing combo would be about as lethal as they get, so you don't want to push Folau to the wing. I'd suggest putting him at 12 in a 2nd five-eight role, but having 2 dominant ball playing five-eights would confuse things I think.

Anyway, not a bad problem to have :). Kind of handy back up too if anyone gets injured - sort of like slotting Inglis in for Slater in the Kangaroos; you are going to scare opposition teams either way.
 
Looking back at this game I don't believe that any difference what so ever would have come from a different line up. We still have a psychological hangover from the Kidney era of players not believing that they can win in green. O'Driscoll, O'Connell, Reddan, Heaslip O'Mahoney and many more of those players would never put a performance like that in with their provinces or even some of them with the Lions. A coach has to take some criticism after a performance like that but Schmidt didn't tell his players to fall off tackle after tackle and drop ball after ball, Schmidt didn't do everything right obviously but for me this game was 95% down to the players.


I think Schmidt is intelligent enough to use this to his advantage and while we have a snowball's chance in hell against the Blacks I feel if we can put in a respectable performance in against them we can build on that for, as Big E said 'when it matters', in the 6nations.



Changes to personnel for next week? I'd be happy with a half decent 9, give Henshaw a start ahead of Kearney, I wouldn't drop BOD but let Fitzgerald cover him, Tuohy for Toner, McGrath has been better than Healy and unfortunately despite **** performances Ross is still irreplaceable.
 
You say Ross is irreplaceable but considering all his performances so far i think we won't lose anything by chucking Moore in the deep end, hes been far more impressive for Leinster than Ross who TBH looks a little past it this season.
 
You say Ross is irreplaceable but considering all his performances so far i think we won't lose anything by chucking Moore in the deep end, hes been far more impressive for Leinster than Ross who TBH looks a little past it this season.

Yeah, it could be worth a shot but it'd be risky throwing him in to a side with no confidence playing against the All Blacks, if they think he could pull through a possibly horrendous hammering on debut I don't see any reason not to give him a shot.
 
what. Just noticed how wrong you were before ? How does that head-to-head comparison seem now ? Whatever man, you've been in such bad faith the whole way in this thread and anything I say from now on you'll respond to with the same vehemence. I see how you function...anyways:

sorry to hear about Ireland's woes. Glad they lost for France's sake only. Glad for Australia, will watch the match carefully to see what really happened. I must say I'm surprised with the score, this sure ain't encouraging going into facing New Zealand. Though I haven't seen much of it, I'm sure it's just one bad game and they'll give NZ something to chew about at home.

You're right I'm the horible person, everything I've ever said is wrong while you are the everright big ewis or whatever. Coming on making a comment like the one you made in the middle of one of a teams ****test performances and you got your bite, shouldn't you be happy now? Despite all these claims you make you are a wum your not a victim.
 
I'm pretty pleased with that result. Ireland worried me before the game, I feared they'd become our bogey team. Early penalty count also worried me as the whistle seemed to keep Ireland in touch despite some handling errors.

I'm developing some serious man love for folau, his work under the high ball was just incredible.

sexton's injury clearly hurt ireland and I agree kuridrani had to go even though I didn't think the tackle was malicious, you have to protect the ball carrier, no excuses.

now I just hope we can get through Scotland and Wales. I'm sure Scotland will be cold, wet and windy :)
 
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