Very poor performance last night. the pack didn’t deliver at all and the poor ball which the backs got they did little with. our scrum was very poor on occassions though it did improve. at times though it was being absolutely destroyed and not just beaten. it reminded me of a time i heard about when suttonians used to playm lahide in rugby and when offered a choice of a scrum or a lineout the fingalians used to go for a lineout because their scrum was that bad. ireland were malahide last night. we can go into the wc knowing that we will not get parity in the scrum. we can’t go into it knowing we will be destroyed. our best scrum of the night was perhaps when we had just brought on simon best and our front three were him, rory best and horan. hayes is such a better player than best outwith the scrum though than best though that we really have to start him. myself and rock were talking on the phone last night and after talking to him i have arrived at his conclusion that o’gara’s try should indeed have been awarded. o’gara fumbled the ball backwards before the line, itlalian winger then knocked it over the line and o’gara touched the ball down. couldn’t understand rte saying it was never a try when it clearly was. o’gara did not knock the ball forwards so it was a try. the knock on rule is awarded all too frequently in some instances and bevin was correct in his decision. it really isn’t that important from an irish perspective anyway. to me ireland looked overtrained last night. this contributed massively to their sluggishness. i just hope the management have the balance right between workload and rest timed for the world cup. i think they will.
as a separate point what a fool george hook is. o’driscoll doesn’t contribute anything to ireland he stated last night before withdrawing it half an hour later. going on about how much the preparaton of this team costs as well was a nother stupid assertion. so the irfu should go cheap on preparation for fear that we don’t perfrom? i like brent pope, ciaran fitzgerald and mcguirk but pope’s attention seeking comments make me glad that rte don’t have the rights to the world cup.
It was certainly a disappointing performance but I’m not inclined to read too much into it. This Irish team still has difficulty in putting big scores together against weaker teams (like the start of last year’s 6 Nations) and no amount of pretending otherwise will convince those players that last night’s match had any importance whatsoever.
The pack’s performance was worrying though and the back row in particular looked weak. Wallace will add plenty to that area but there’s always the possibility of him getting injured and we don’t look prepared for that possibility. Hard to read too much into the backs but Trimble lost the ball in the tacke too often. This was a time for retaining possession, not forcing offloads and he kept spilling it.
Hook was some annoying alright. Gobshite going on about the money spent and O’Driscoll not making a difference. He never offers any rugby analysis - it’s just silly soundbites.
To think that Namibia were watching that shambles the other night as they wait for us in the long grass sends shivers down my spine.
The only thougt I’m consoling myself with is that the players have spent the last two months learning the RWC playbook for line-outs and set moves in the backs. They then go into these warm-up games, and EOS not wanting to give anything away to the French and Argie spies, they have to revert to the Six Nations playbook. This would seem espeically to be the case for the backs’ moves, where often the ball was delivered half a second too late or half a yard behind.
However, there is no reasonable explanation for the scrum. We were mullered and it is very worrying.
It’s also clear that an unbalanced, cobbled together back-row, will be reefed out of it by a unit that knows what its doing.
Parisse is a gem of a player but the Eyeties murdered us on the ground.
Very disturbing and you’d have to say that our warm-up has gone pretty terribly. We don’t look half the team we were this time last year. Where’s the control?
Bandage wrote:
…as they wait for us in the long grass… .
That could be included in the buzzwords section.
Limerick waited for Waterford in the long grass
Tomas Mulcahy was going on about Kilkenny waiting for them in the long grass in 1982 on Sunday…