jezzer wrote:Well LRIP has done the player review better than I could do it, but I think Mike Mccarthy needs special mention. He was a warrior out there and he had our set piece humming as well as his usual dog in the loose.
Barring our maul defence (and offence now I think of it) that was a very complete performance against a team who should have been spitting fire at kickoff but who folded like an origami bunk bed by the end. Delighted for the owner in particular.
Chapeau to Give and Leo on the attack game. Thought our running depth and lines were the best in a while. Especially seeing forwards coming around the corner and hitting the ball at pace is something we've rarely seen in the past 24 months or so.
Tracy, Dooley and Molony.... wow. Dooley had a terrific first quarter, Tracy had an awesome spell himself and Molony looked born for it all game long.
You look at Ben Teo and the way he has progressed over two years into a top union centre and you wonder... what other team in Europe would let that guy walk out after investing the time and seeing him become a force at the European standard?
Kirchner looked better than Kearney at fullback for this one game. The dropoff when he's put on the wing is strangely dramatic.
Anyway, really buzzing still after a great performance. Not so much the standard of the oppo, but the intensity , the offload game, the cohesion and the young lads showing that the pipeline is as good as any in Europe.
Really enjoyed the game and agree with pretty much all you say - particular shout out to Maccer who was excellent, he was excellent against Connacht too and think he's having his best season with us since he came on board. He might just be playing himself into 6 Nations contention.
The sh!t offload aside, Teo was very good and I think 12 is his best position (as opposed to 13).
This is another performance improvement benchmark but we were playing the 9th placed team in the premiership and our backs still haven't scored a try in the European Cup this year. Wasps next week will be a real test against strong opposition so really looking forward to seeing how far we've come on!
jezzer wrote:Well LRIP has done the player review better than I could do it, but I think Mike Mccarthy needs special mention. He was a warrior out there and he had our set piece humming as well as his usual dog in the loose.
Barring our maul defence (and offence now I think of it) that was a very complete performance against a team who should have been spitting fire at kickoff but who folded like an origami bunk bed by the end. Delighted for the owner in particular.
Chapeau to Give and Leo on the attack game. Thought our running depth and lines were the best in a while. Especially seeing forwards coming around the corner and hitting the ball at pace is something we've rarely seen in the past 24 months or so.
Tracy, Dooley and Molony.... wow. Dooley had a terrific first quarter, Tracy had an awesome spell himself and Molony looked born for it all game long.
You look at Ben Teo and the way he has progressed over two years into a top union centre and you wonder... what other team in Europe would let that guy walk out after investing the time and seeing him become a force at the European standard?
Kirchner looked better than Kearney at fullback for this one game. The dropoff when he's put on the wing is strangely dramatic.
Anyway, really buzzing still after a great performance. Not so much the standard of the oppo, but the intensity , the offload game, the cohesion and the young lads showing that the pipeline is as good as any in Europe.
Really enjoyed the game and agree with pretty much all you say - particular shout out to Maccer who was excellent, he was excellent against Connacht too and think he's having his best season with us since he came on board. He might just be playing himself into 6 Nations contention.
The sh!t offload aside, Teo was very good and I think 12 is his best position (as opposed to 13).
This is another performance improvement benchmark but we were playing the 9th placed team in the premiership and our backs still haven't scored a try in the European Cup this year. Wasps next week will be a real test against strong opposition so really looking forward to seeing how far we've come on!
The big reason why I thought Te'o should always have played 12 for is is not because he's a big unit. His offload game (that stinker aside) is excellent. We have a backline very good at creating width (with skips and wraparounds), we work inside runners off 9 and 10 around the fringes, but we're not great at getting penetration off 12. A lot of the time 12 in Leinster is for the hard yards or to ship it wide, not as a fulcrum.
With Te'o there, we finally have someone near enough to the breakdown who can bring in the blindside winger and the loose forwards for offloads to attack the oppo 10-12 channel. This is the kind of stuff that we were awesome at under Joe in 2011. Te'o looks perfect for that fulcrum role and Luke a lot more dangerous playing 13 than 12. It also would have let us give Ringrose more time at 13.
the spoofer wrote:I didn't think his offload was bad, I thought that Kirchner did a Fitzy on it.
Thought that too. Te'o could still have done better but Kirchner overran him all the same.
6 of one half a dozen of the other. Kirchner could have held his depth a bit but Te'o shouldn't be letting the ball go like that unless he's going to find his man.
EDIT: Not going to get too worked up over it though. It's that small margins stuff again. And in fairness the kick from Joseph (?) was an absolute peach. It's not like that pass alone left Bath a free run to the try line. It still took a high quality piece of play to create the chance.
the spoofer wrote:I didn't think his offload was bad, I thought that Kirchner did a Fitzy on it.
Thought that too. Te'o could still have done better but Kirchner overran him all the same.
6 of one half a dozen of the other. Kirchner could have held his depth a bit but Te'o shouldn't be letting the ball go like that unless he's going to find his man.
EDIT: Not going to get too worked up over it though. It's that small margins stuff again. And in fairness the kick from Joseph (?) was an absolute peach. It's not like that pass alone left Bath a free run to the try line. It still took a high quality piece of play to create the chance.
Yeah, ya live by the sword, and all that. Sometimes these are the prices you have to pay for playing exciting running rugby. I would have been gutted had they scored from it but I'd still like him to keep the offloading going when the opportunities are there.
Think Leinster did really well in most aspects of the game, Leo has got a lot of praise I think Gervin should share that. Forwards and backs were looking like they understood what both need to do.
