'Ireland are screwed" is the phrase that sums it all up. 3 games, 3 losses. Not the best record you want going into a world cup. The players say its not the world cup so it doesn't matter. Kidney says its all about the learning curve. You get my point. Reminds you of 07, doesn't it? Here is why I think everything is going downhill. 1. Not doing the basics. From the 3 matches we have seen Ireland have made so many mistakes, it almost makes you wonder are they doing it on purpose. Ireland had little possession against Scotland 3 weeks ago. The main reason was they couldn't retain the ball. They either kicked it away, knocked it on or lost it from the set piece (mainly lineout). You can't win a game without the ball, simple. I admit we had a 'B' team on but when you are at international standard, fighting for a seat on the plane to New Zealand you would put your body on the line to make sure you did enough to let the coaches seriously consider you as a contender to make the team. Against France the lineout was awful, especially in the first half. Rory Best was dreadful. We tried way too many 'flashy' moves which ended in knock ons or players not knowing what they were doing. When Flannery and Paulie came on the line out improved drastically. I remember when we had a 5 metre scrum in the French half and i beloved we could win. We lost. Two words just sums it up. Tony Buckley. The Aviva game was terrible. Knock ons, poor box kicks, not securing ball, penalties, crossing, poor back play it was disgraceful. 2. Scrum half. Realistically, I believe TOL is going to continue as our 1st choice scrum half. Why? He's from Munster and DK already knows what he wants to do and who he wants to play for the world cup regardless of the warm ups. It's not like he was going to start playing Sexton at 1st centre because he was tried out there for 15 minutes. Reddan is our No.1 scrum half easily. He is fantastic. Great pass, can tackle, knows the back row well, bosses the pack around etc. If we want a physical scrum half, we need Boss. In fairness his passing is much better. He can tackle, spots gaps so he can burst through then offload to supporting players usually Seány. Need him on the bench and will fit great onto the Italian match. Murray will be a Lion come 2013. I don't think he should come on the tour as he has no experience but give him a year or 2 and he will be a world class scrum half. Stringer should come but he hasnt been given any game time. He has easily our best pass. If we want to play a fast expansive game we need a great distributor from the rucks and who else but strings. Of course he is being ignored for some reason which I don't understand so I can count him out of the team. Scrum half is a vital role and since we're playing someone who doesn't deserve to be playing in the AIL I dont think we'll get that far. 3. Props. Mike Ross and Healy are world class, don't need to get into them. Buckley is useless. Yet he is getting played over the Bull. Hayes is past his sell by date but still is better than Buckley. Court is club standard nothing else but we need cover and he is our best replacement as he can play tight or loose head. Buckley will travel and Hayes wont, big mistake. 4. Fullback. Big concern for fullback. With Jones gone and Kearney has a slight injury, our only proper fullback is Murphy. Yes he is being ignored and wrongly so as he is outstanding. We know he is recovering from an injury but he is being reduced to a game against Connacht. For a player of his standard you would be fairly annoyed. Our only cover for Murphy is Fitzgerald and Earls who can't even catch air. I can expect the Ozs to launch GOs on us all day long. 5. Kidney being bias. It us pretty obvious that DK has never seen a Leinster game. He consistently plays Munster players over Leinster players who are clearly better than them. Donncha Ryan over McLaughlin. O'Callaghan over Cullen. Leamy over Jenno. O'Leary over Reddan and Boss. Earls over McFadden (even though Earls had 1 game). I admit Fitzgerald played pretty poor against France in Bordeaux and they needed to bring in a new player but Earls was horrible today. Cost us 2 easy tries. Leinster this season were the stand out team. They changed their gameplan and played heads up attacking rugby and had an offloading game. Reminds you of the ABs. Why can't Ireland play like that? They have Munster players on and only 2 of them can play like leinster, Paulie and flannery. We can be devastating when we want to be but not when we are consistently crash balling it. 6. Paddy Wallace. 7. Backline not knowing what to do. For most of the game today and last week, when we had ball in hand we didn't know what to do with it (excluding the first 15 minutes today). We resorted to kicking the ball aimlessly or giving stupid passes which went nowhere. If we want to beat the Ozs we can't give the ball to Cooper, Beale, Ioane and O'Connor which will happen if TOL is doing his box kicks and if we get confused and not knowing what to do with the ball. Well that's all I can think of for now and sorry for it being so long but please give your opinions.
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Why Ireland will fail at this World Cup
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