hugonaut wrote:suisse wrote:Saracens are immense. I thought they'd be too powerful for us but the game didn't pan out as I thought. To have possession with 39 mins gone and holding a thoroughly deserved 7 point lead to going in even was a hammer blow. Ringrose butchered an opportunity early in the second half. When we didn't score there it felt like a massive win for Saracens. Ringrose has been superb all season however.
The coaches need to shoulder w lot of the responsibility. The use of the bench was criminal and oddly similar to Ireland. Max Deegan has been playing so well in 2019 and yet he sits down for 74 mins. The game was over when he came on. We didn't use any of our back subs. HOS I can somewhat see but if you don't have confidence in Ross Byrne potentially changing a game we are losing, what does that say about how he's viewed? Leinster fans talk up how much they love Byrne but do the management really see the same? Why is Sexton never subbed or at least moved to accommodate another fly hakf for Leinster and Ireland? If ROL is not a game changing 23 then find someone else in your squad. You can't go to a final, see Your team slowly suffocated off the park, and give 4 players a combined 6 minutes, all to one player
Don't see it like that with regards to the subs. We're a bit weaker in depth this season than we were last season. It's partly due to form, partly due to recruitment, partly due to the 'for the good of Irish rugby' guff, partly due to competition restrictions, and partly due to talent level in the squad.
Obviously Hughie O'Sullivan was a 'break glass in case of emergency' selection on the bench. He's a 21 year old, 2nd year Academy player who spent most of his agegrade competitive rugby at fullback. LMcG was playing with both knees heavily strapped, JGP is injured [and can't play if Lowe and Fardy are playing] and Nick McCarthy missed 4 months in the middle of the season with injury, was excluded from the EPCR squad and has decided that his future lies in Munster ... there's very little the coaches can do about that.
With regards to the outside back sub [No23], Ferg ruled himself out with his ban. Regrets, I had a few. Tomane has been mostly poor [with a couple of good games thrown in], and certainly hasn't done enough to merit even a discussion about being in yesterday's 23-man squad, never mind the starting XV. AB+ is injured and done for the season; he was playing well, but is a one-position man at pro level, even if he played games at outside centre and fullback at agegrade. To my eyes, it really came down to a choice between DK and Locko.
Locko has had a solid season, but not an awful lot better than that. His value lay in the fact that he provided cover across the entire three-quarterline: he has started big games this season at inside centre [against Toulouse in January], outside centre [against Munster in October] and wing [against Munster in December]. That's
real value, because selectors have to allow cover for injury on their bench. If Ringer or Henshaw went down in the first twenty minutes, having DK on the bench – who has had a stronger 2019 than Locko – is f*ck all use to us. You end up with Larmour playing at outside centre for an hour, which would be a huge issue for us tactically ... he doesn't know the nuances of defending his own channel, he can't manage the inside-outside defensive alignment and he can't pass like a centre, nullifying a wide threat.
Thought that Sexton played pretty well and don't see what Ross Byrne would do differently or better. It doesn't make any sense to me to take off your outhalf, your captain, and the reigning World Rugby IPOTY when the chips are down and you need big plays. Sexton is Mr. Big Play.
Ross is a methodical, well-drilled and mentally strong young outhalf, but he's not a game-changer at this point. Reider has started a couple of games at No10 this season, has finished others there, and provides something off the bench that Ross doesn't ... but he hadn't kicked a goal in his senior first grade career before this season, and his place-kicking percentage is in the low-to-mid 60s.
We don't have the same depth as we had last season. Isa retired, Carbery moved to Munster, Jordi moved to Ulster. Tomane has been a hapless replacement for Isa, we haven't replaced Carbery, and while Jack Conan has surged back into form and makes up for Jordi's departure, the loss of Leavy and JVDF vastly outweighs the return of Sean O'Brien, who is half the player he was at his best.
But I actually expect us to rebound well next season:
- JGP, Fardy and Lowe will be able to play in the same team;
- Deegan, Doris and Penny will be physically stronger and more experienced in the backrow, as will Jack Dunne in the second row – all four of them are test level talents [in my opinion], and this season they've each got more gametime than would have been expected;
- Ronan Kelleher is going to push past Bryan Byrne and start contesting James Tracy's spot;
- Conor O'Brien just needs games to build experience to start pushing for European matchday squads, because the talent is all there. I expect we'll be looking at him as a No23 option in big games - plays either centre position as a pro, played on the wing for the Irish U20s and Clontarf, was an Irish Youths outhalf and has a huge left boot
- Frawley [11 games] and Hughie O'Sullivan [14 games] will have benefitted enormously from the amount of exposure they have got this season as academy players, and will be more tested and reliable options. O'Sullivan was pushed into the deep-end this year, and while he didn't swim, he didn't sink either ... he floated. He'll be better for it next year.
- Tommy O'Brien will [hopefully] be fit to play, which should be the start of a serious career: he was a blue chip U20 and has the right stuff.
Onwards and upwards!