D2 Blue wrote:Thanks lads but I'm with VirginMedia. I have ITV but Irish version so nothing but crappy reruns of old ITV series.
Of course I could have signed up to eir but that never happened. Still, it gives me something to complain about.
I have Virgin as well and am watching the Tonga/England game on Eir channel 410.
Thanks Fireworks.
Yes, I went down through the channels and found eir sport on channel 410 (cue very red face! ). That was shortly after my rant.
My crappy vodafone broadband connection isnt helping me reply either. Constantly rebooting the modem.
The lack of coverage from "traditional" broadcasters isn't really helping, but I guess that's the way broadcasting is going
jaysus. You have virgin tv but not their broadband? I didn't think that was even possible.
This performance reminded me of something I think most of us have forgotten.
Every player who Joe has ever coached has become a better player.
Joe has had his hands on the squad for months now and it's showing.
A few examples to illustrate the point.
Larmour had a good, solid game against Wales and followed it with another one today. He's maturing.
Kilcoyne, as on of his naysayers, he's convinced me.
Farrell has added more to his game.
The time Joe has had with this squad means that they are better than the 2018 version.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall who's the greatest player of them all? It is Drico your majesty.
On the re-watch, mighty impressed with Murray's kicking. Particularly in the first half he had some absolute bombs from restarts. Gets 10-15m more than most 9s in the world. Humidity and head helps too.
Overall it was his best performance in green for a while. Looked physically back to himself too.
Sticking with the halfbacks thought Carty's kicking variety was really really good when he came on also and Luke M looked comfortable also. Put in a few nice hits.
Well that's all the doom and gloom blown away in 80 minutes! Excellent performance, they all played well, really. The ones who had questions marks over them, Larmour, Best (too old), Ringrose (too small), Stander(too static) etc all had very good games.
Johnny didn't seemed too bothered about his injury, whatever it was, when he dived on Conway after he scored the TBP.
Let the good times roll.
You know I'm going to lose,
And gambling's for fools,
But that's the way I like it baby, I don't want to live FOREVER!
I get that argument about them complementing each other, but actually I think the biggest thing today was that he looked fit and powerful again.
He was top class at 8 in 2018 but that was a very demanding year, his style is very attritional, and he had an injury (which he may have rushed back from), so I don't think it should be a surprise that he's back firing after a break and a good pre season.
I should point out that after the England game in Twickenham I thought his goose was cooked and that I'd leave him out of the World Cup squad
Having a quick look through the Scottish results since the last World Cup it's interesting to see that France held them tryless in Nice in the warm-ups in August. However, you then have to go back to 2016 to find the next times they didn't score at least one try.
In fact, you've got to go back to February 2016 in the 6N, when England held them to two penalties in a 13-6 win but then in the Summer Tour that year, Scotland faced Japan twice and despite two wins, their sole try was a penalty try in their Second Test match. So, although Japan haven't beaten the Scots, they certainly have no fear of their attacking prowess. That will give the Japanese team great confidence facing the Scottish Squad low in confidence.
Reviewing our game yesterday was a real pleasure. The manner in which our players almost appeared to anticipate every action of the Scots in the first quarter was very satisfying. Throwing our second line-out on half-way to PO'M and then driving the maul for 8 metres before releasing Best, with Conor Murray in support, down the short-side totally un-nerved the Scottish defence.
We followed that by kicking a penalty to the corner for another line-out maul attack, in which we threw to Hendo at No 2 but doubly-stacked the short-side of the maul to prevent Scotland driving us into touch but resulted instead in Best's try.
This sort of tactical astuteness and execution was the hallmark of Ireland's performance throughout the first half. Our kicking from Murray and Sexton was designed to push the Scottish back three into places that we wanted them. It resulted in big spaces immediately behind set-pieces for Murray to find attacking spaces, either by passing or little short box kicks which we competed for or won cleanly. Overall, Scotland were tactically wrung out by the Irish performance which they never came to grips with.
Further elements which really impressed yesterday were our acceleration off the mark across the entire team and the quality of our first-up tackling.
Specific examples of the individual acceleration off the mark were shown by Henderson to make the line-break which led to our first try, followed by the blindingly quick burst by Stander off the back of our scrum which led to our third try. In between those moments we had Larmour jinking to create space and then accelerating up the left wing in a manner than made the Scots look leaden-footed.
As for the quality of tackling, one can only suggest that the clip of the first quarter becomes the coaching video for aggressive line speed combined with quality tackling by forwards and backs alike. Ringrose, Aki, Ryan, Van der Flyer, Healy and Larmour all completed top quality tackles which put opponents on the ground, behind their support runners, during this initial onslaught.
Many Irish fans hoped that some of the performances of the team over the past 11 months were an abberation, a function of their minds being on other targets (such as this game yesterday). The performabce yesterday suggests that they may have been correct because once the players were focussed on the sole objective of beating the Scots, the efficency of execution of both attack and defence was ruthless and the manner in which each individual optimised their preparation and delivery was reminiscent of another island-country about 12,000 miles south of Ireland.
Was noticeable in the warmups how slimmed down some of the guys were. Stander looks like a different physique completely from what he ended the season with for example and most of the guys are visibly a few pounds lighter than normal.
OTT wrote:If you looked at that game in isolation and did not watch any rugby you would think that Stuart Hogg is sh!t.
I have watched Stuart Hogg destroy teams, he is the guy who gives Scotland an outside chance in games they look like they have no chance in.
Massive compliments to Andy Farrell and the players for making Stuart Hogg look not just ordinary but very poor because it is not an easy thing to do.
Thats a thing though. Over the years Scotland have a lot of players like that who seem to be great players but wilt in the face of Irish teams - not just at international level either. In reality, the only player who ever worried me when we were playing a Scottish team, certainly post 2008, was DTH. Hogg, Grays, Russell, great reputations, massive wind.
OTT wrote:If you looked at that game in isolation and did not watch any rugby you would think that Stuart Hogg is sh!t.
I have watched Stuart Hogg destroy teams, he is the guy who gives Scotland an outside chance in games they look like they have no chance in.
Massive compliments to Andy Farrell and the players for making Stuart Hogg look not just ordinary but very poor because it is not an easy thing to do.
Thats a thing though. Over the years Scotland have a lot of players like that who seem to be great players but wilt in the face of Irish teams - not just at international level either. In reality, the only player who ever worried me when we were playing a Scottish team, certainly post 2008, was DTH. Hogg, Grays, Russell, great reputations, massive wind.
I know what you are saying but the same guy tore us to pieces in Murrayfield back in 2017 and won them a game they should not have won. I think he would have started for the Lions in 2017 if Murray had not banjoed him. He can over do it at times (out of frustration) but if you let him have a sniff he will punish you but we absolutely made him look cr@p.
"Horrocks went one way, Taylor the other and I was left holding the bloody hyphen!"
I don't accept that he tore us to pieces at all, we were leading on 70 minutes and lost to two pens in the last 5 neither of which had anything to do with him at all. He got lucky with a Ringrose slip for his first try, and though he finished his second well, it was nothing special ( "We lost because we let in cheap soft trys in the first half" to quote someone not a million miles away from here)
On to Japan for saturday. Weather in Shizuoka is expected to be sunny, and hot. Japan have an 8 day turnaround compared to Ireland's 6 so we will likely see a small bit of rotation in the 23.
Japan are probably expected to try the fast and offload-y game they showed glimpses of vs Russia so I'd expect Ireland to start similar to the Scotland game and keep it tight and with the forwards to begin with to wear out the lighter opposition. I'd go with the following for saturday;
Just rewatching it without nerves and I get the impression we could’ve scored more if we’d put our minds to it. There wasn’t huge imagination to our attack in the second half. Even though I know the final score I find myself expecting us to do more. There were a few chances missed that are frustrating to see, Stockdale overrunning a pass twice, and a blatant tackle in the air on Farrell on 70 mins that Barnes ignored, but our players just look completely at ease from the 4th try onwards.
Remember when NZ reduced themselves to 14 just for a bit of practice? That’s what it reminds me of
). That was shortly after my rant.
