Yes agreed on all that. It’ll be a big learning curve for them.
How they get on in NZ will be huge. If they could sneak one win and stay competitive in the other two games it’ll be huge.
Beirne is really beginning to find his feet at this level.
Plenty of learnings.
Italy will provide stern opposition in a fortnight.
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What’s your point?
Odd comment. I’d say it says more about your fixed mindset to be honest.
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The Rubby goys trying to play down defeat and blowing the GrandSlam with the auld ‘they’ll have learned a lot’ cliché.
A team with lots of guys nearing or over 30 will take great comfort from having learned a lot yesterday 
We’ll be told they were brave next.
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This Ireland team has basically been together for two years since the beginning off covid.
Porter swapped sides of the scrum. He’s barely 20 caps in his position.
Both Kelleher and sheahan are new and young for their position.
Furlong is about a good while.
Beirne is really only getting a consistent runs of things recently. He hardly has 30 caps I’d say. Definitely not starts anyway.
Henderson and Ryan are around a while but they’ll be around for 4 or 5 more years injury permitting. For their position they are only coming into their peak.
Doris is new enough. Conan around a while but only in the last twelve months has he nailed down his position.
JVF is about a while.
Carbery got his first six nations start and has played very little. Gibson park is only around 18 months or so as a starter.
Henshaw, Aki and ringrose are around a long while but still young enough.
Hansen is new.
Keenan is another covid break through.
Conway is around a while.
It’s a relatively new Irish team in fairness. Don’t get the big issue with that.
The consensus amongst the rugby crew on here beforehand was that Ireland would give it a good rattle but defeat would be their lot against the best side in the world. That’s pretty much how it transpired.
It’s a competition where away wins have traditionally been hard come by. 5 home wins so far, albeit England will most likely buck that trend in Rome this afternoon.
It’s soccer types like yourself that invest so much in a bit of national glory in the Ireland rugby that take defeat so hard. A by product of the Eire soccer team been such a joke on the international stage.
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It’s extremely disappointing to lose the game in the context of this years Six Nations.
It is possible that in losing they learned some things which may assist them as they look to improve (like all sports teams) and as RWC23 comes into view.
These are not opposing thoughts.
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Learnings with regard the World Cup I assume they mean. The anti rugby brigade play down the six nations every year and focus on World Cup so it seems quite strange that now focusing on learnings for the World Cup is seen as hilarious?
@Thomas_Brady is all over the place here. He could do with a period of reflection in the sin bin.
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Neil “Franno” Francis asks the question in his piece why was Carberry taken off with 2 minutes to go, if not injured probably made more sense to leave him on?
That’s the one big worry. Farrell was involved with the England side who imploded in 2015.
We made some daft decisions in the final ten minutes.
A better question than why take off Carberry would be why select Murray in the 23.
He is completely incompatible with the style of game we’re trying to play. As soon as he came on it was back to slow plodding kick fest.
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A team at it’s peak failed. I’m not disputing they can take something from it, but their failure is being spun as a positive like they are a young team setting out.
Only in rubby is failure spun into something it’s not.
If losing a test match narrowly, away from home to a stronger and better side, one widely accepted as the best in the world currently is viewed as failure by the soccer crowd, then failure it is so.
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Yes, it was failure. Thanks for fronting up and admitting. Anything else is irrelevant.
The Eire soccer set spun an 11 game winless streak to the start of Stephen Kenny’s tenure (including a home defeat to Luxembourg and failures to beat the might of Qatar and Azerbaijan) as some sort of a soccer revolution and modern approach to the game and rewarded all that failure with a new contract.
That’s spin for you.
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It was regularly called out, on here anyway.
You rubby lads are always the same in loss… brave, heroic… A load of scutter. They were awful yesterday on most areas of the game - that’s a very poor French team and if they’re the best in the world then rubby must be at a very low ebb. The handling and passing were brutal yesterday… very basic stuff. But you’ll dress it up with learnings and being away from home and anything else you can throw out.
It’s professional sport, it’s win or bust.
They still have a shot at the championship tho as that French team are very beatable.
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Who’s on commentary and co-commentary duties on TV3 here for Italy v England?
I’d agree with that. He’s probably the least suited scrum-half of all the options available to Farrell. If you need to chase a game he’s particularly ill-equipped