Should have reset that scrum, thought it just wheeled
Great contest.
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Very good test match.
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Goes to show how good Ireland are right now.
Italian second try today was unbelievable
Was a cracker of a match… Thought they’d pull off the upset was Aussies were looking a week ahead.
I didn’t see that coming tbh. They’ve been unwatchable for a decade. Hopefully that’ll change now.
Would be great to have SA in the six Nations.
They’re unwatchable after week 2 in 6 nations. Often gamey for November tours tho. Australia overlooked the Italians with their team selection.
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Would be great to have SA in the six Nations.
Not for me, they can stay where they are
The boks definitely tried to play a little bit this year compared to previous years. The fact they lost to Ireland and France away by less than five points at the end of a long season with no kicker is fairly impressive.
They’ve three or four very good players to come back in as well.
It would be the Seven Nations then.
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RUGBY UNION | NEIL FRANCIS
Bone-chilling hit on Joey Carbery highlights the need for tougher sanctions for head-high tackles
Neil Francis
Sunday November 13 2022, 12.01am GMT, The Sunday Times
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Test rugby without brutality is like Christianity without hell. You cannot sanitise this game or limit the effect of huge men running into each other — it was about the only thing that kept us awake yesterday at the Aviva. My God, it was a dull game, but it was physically all-encompassing for every player on the park. The Fiji coach, Vern Cotter, in the pointless pre-match babble, said it was going to be a training run for Ireland. It was far from that. You don’t get red cards in training runs and God only knows, if Fiji had kept all their players on the park, how close it would have been at the very end.
The match should have changed in the 45th minute, when Ireland didn’t have the acumen to take advantage of the red card issued to Fiji’s blindside flanker Albert Tuisue. In terms of what it will do for Joey Carbery’s career, moreover, that remains to be seen.
Nothing upgrades despair so beautifully in this game than another Carbery injury. The HIA was done and dusted in 60 seconds — nobody was in any doubt that the player had been concussed. Up to that point, he had had a decent outing. He does not possess the sort of alchemy that Johnny Sexton does, but he controlled the game reasonably well for Ireland and his football instinct showed from time to time.
However, his physical frailties came to the fore again and in the lead-up to the red card Carbery missed his second tackle of the game on Setareki Tuicuvu. Had he made his tackle Ireland would have squeezed Fiji in their 22 and could have ploughed into the tackle zone as the visiting side were short on numbers. One minute later, he was taken out by Tuisue.
As deliberations were ongoing, the camera panned to Cotter in the coach’s box. His frustration was palpable. At that stage Fiji were well in the game but it has become all too common that it doesn’t seem to matter how many times you say it in the team room or try to teach it on the paddock, there have been far
too many head-high tackles from Fiji and some of the other Pacific Island teams, and it must stop.
The pass from Carbery was in another player’s hands but the shoulder had already been pointed and presented to Carbery’s face, and the connection was just one of those awful moments. In a team of such great footballing skills, sometimes the greatest one you can demonstrate is pulling out of a tackle when you know it is going to cost your side. Tuisue, however, was unable to resist the temptation to follow through.
The weak-willed people who dominate disciplinary committees will suspend him for three to four weeks but his crime should merit a full six months. Six months, I always find, focuses the mind wonderfully, that is if you have a career when it finishes.
Carbery feels the full force of Tuisue’s reckless tackle, an incident which ended the fly half’s involvement
SPORTSFILE
There are many issues to address before next week’s final autumn Test. One of them is to be able to take Australia seriously. After the Wallabies lost 28-27 to Italy in Florence yesterday, Ireland require a match against a side shorn of their Rugby Championship insecurities and firing on all cylinders. That is hardly going to happen now.
Ireland, now with Carbery out, must decide on their back-up out-half. If Ciaran Frawley is fit, he should be brought straight back in. Jack Crowley looked good enough to play at this level and his two conversions were struck so cleanly that you reckoned that if he gets a prolonged chance, he could be one of Ireland’s top scorers.
It is very hard to say something positive about this game. It was going to be a daring adventure or nothing at all, and we got the latter. The crowd were so apathetic that they could not drum up the enthusiasm for a Mexican wave until the 68th minute. The third quarter in particular was of really poor quality. It wasn’t helped by Mathieu Raynal’s fussy and unsympathetic interpretations.
Fiji were also streetwise enough to play keep-ball and wait until their players were brought back on to the pitch from the sin-bin.
Ireland had 15 turnovers, too many knock-ons and too many handling errors to take advantage of Fiji’s lack of numbers.
What also contributed to a dull game was the fact that there were 34 lineouts, including the usual committee meetings beforehand, and that just chews up the clock.
Ireland’s wings were a mixed bag. Mack Hansen has a locker full of magic tricks and sleight of hand, but yet again the advanced billing on his pace left us sold short.
On three occasions, he was left grasping thin air as his opposite number, Jiuta Wainiqolo, left him for dead. The Fiji wing was the most dangerous player on the pitch and, once again, if he had a decent supply of ball and his team had a full complement, God knows what could have happened.
Robert Baloucoune got a reprieve after his tentative performance against South Africa but again, even though there was very little box-kicking and balls put up in a kick-chase game, you get the feeling that defensively he cannot read what is going to happen. He can survive with Ulster because his pace will get him out of trouble if he is caught in no man’s land, but not at the highest level.
Another factor here is that a wing must be versatile but even the simple art of rucking, which every wing worth his salt must be able to do, is severely lacking.
James Lowe will come back in when he is fit and Jacob Stockdale will also come into consideration for the Six Nations.
There was a little bit of Fiji magic in the 62nd minute and Ireland were opened up with disquieting ease. When Fiji went left Tuicuvu came on to the ball and he was brought to ground.
I have seen all sorts of offloads in the game of rugby union over the years but nothing like this, as he held the ball up as if he was holding a tray full of champagne glasses and transferred it to the ambassador’s wife seamlessly at a diplomatic function.
Wainiqolo latched on to the invitation and scorched through an attempted tackle from Stuart McCloskey and as he stood up the scrambling Ireland tacklers pulled off a simply magnificent underhand offload to the supporting Simione Kuruvoli, who got the Fijians in under the posts.
A pity that we only got one moment like that in 80 minutes.
Ireland will be much better next week and need to throttle up, even to dispatch a side as listless and confused as the Wallabies.
Would that not ruin the Four Nations tournament in the Southern Hemisphere then though?
They really need more than ten nations
Any clip of this? Didn’t realize Ireland were playing another friendly yesterday…
It’ll feature in the documentary
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Who cares ?
You can buy the DVD at Christmas
Our own South sea islanders are clearly different.
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Scotland giving New Zealand bags off it here.
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