Leinster v Munster Saturday 5.30 Aviva

[Xanthippe]

R scannell is the find of the season for me, he has never looked out of his depth, and made some great carries when needed most.

I'm glad someone finally mentioned Scannell - thought he had a great game. Was just imagining him at 12 with the other "find of the season" at 13 and Henshaw at 15.

[Raydollard]

Cullen treats Madigan as badly as that other clown O'Connor did. Cullen has been an abject failure for the past four years and needs to be dumped.

[Oldschoolsocks]

Has it been established that ray dullard is in fact Ian Madigan's mum yet?

[Xanthippe]

Has it been established that ray dullard is in fact Ian Madigan's mum yet?

To be fair it would be unusual if his Mammy wrote like that - it's much more likely to be a 12 year old brother/cousin.

[leinsterforever]

Fair play on the victory, I would have taken that result prior to kick off.

I am again very dissapointed by the standard of reffing I the league, admittedly he was poor for both sides, but imo it had a massive bearing on the final result.

Killer made a complete balls of his tap and go, I really need to watch it again, but imo it should have been a reset as the tackler didn't seem to be behind the try line?

Positives for me are as follows:

Young Holland put in a very good shift for such a Young lad, he took his try very well, and did nothing wrong, I would have liked to see him control the game a bit more, but with Munster playing the game from 9, that is hardly his fault.
I am bulling that he was taken off, he should have been allowed see the game out.

R scannell is the find of the season for me, he has never looked out of his depth, and made some great carries when needed most.

Earls is in amazing form, he has completely changed his game, and is a class act in defence and attack.

Archer seems to have put on some positive bulk while being injured, and given the length of his down time I fully expected leinsters international front row to drive Munster around the field all day.
Archers work rate is what impressed me most.

The list of negatives is too long, so I will leave it there.

Best of luck in the playoffs.

Archer's work in the loose is verging on world class. He's vulnerable in the scrum though, and his history of neck injuries is a concern.

I thought Billy Holland showed up well, except for one thing very early on when he chose to carry when it was massively on if he looked to pass to the right

[Oldschoolsocks]

Has it been established that ray dullard is in fact Ian Madigan's mum yet?

To be fair it would be unusual if his Mammy wrote like that - it's much more likely to be a 12 year old brother/cousin.

brother/cousin - not sure where you're going with that hypothesis, a bit to close to uncle/daddy for my liking

[johng]

Ian Madigan's ma has more to be doing with her time than sh1t like that.

[munster#1]

R scannell is the find of the season for me, he has never looked out of his depth, and made some great carries when needed most.

I'm glad someone finally mentioned Scannell - thought he had a great game. Was just imagining him at 12 with the other "find of the season" at 13 and Henshaw at 15.

Not sure he is at that level yet, but it would be an incredible attacking combination.

Scannell is without doubt the best 12 to come out of the Munster academy

Scannell and ringrose would be a very small partnership.

[munster#1]

Fair play on the victory, I would have taken that result prior to kick off.

I am again very dissapointed by the standard of reffing I the league, admittedly he was poor for both sides, but imo it had a massive bearing on the final result.

Killer made a complete balls of his tap and go, I really need to watch it again, but imo it should have been a reset as the tackler didn't seem to be behind the try line?

Positives for me are as follows:

Young Holland put in a very good shift for such a Young lad, he took his try very well, and did nothing wrong, I would have liked to see him control the game a bit more, but with Munster playing the game from 9, that is hardly his fault.
I am bulling that he was taken off, he should have been allowed see the game out.

R scannell is the find of the season for me, he has never looked out of his depth, and made some great carries when needed most.

Earls is in amazing form, he has completely changed his game, and is a class act in defence and attack.

Archer seems to have put on some positive bulk while being injured, and given the length of his down time I fully expected leinsters international front row to drive Munster around the field all day.
Archers work rate is what impressed me most.

The list of negatives is too long, so I will leave it there.

Best of luck in the playoffs.

Archer's work in the loose is verging on world class. He's vulnerable in the scrum though, and his history of neck injuries is a concern.

I thought Billy Holland showed up well, except for one thing very early on when he chose to carry when it was massively on if he looked to pass to the right

Billy Holland has been in great form for the last 2 years. He is a very similar player to McCarthy, kind of half way between a 5 and a 6.

We really need archer to come good. He held up really well against Leinster.

[cwebber82]

Cullen treats Madigan as badly as that other clown O'Connor did. Cullen has been an abject failure for the past four years and needs to be dumped.

Madigan was lucky to get 5 mins last Saturday after his gutless display against Connacht.

I've never been Madigan's biggest fan. He's talented but lacks the required temperment.

His display against Connacht confirmed to me that he's just not the player many on here hoped he could be.

[curates_egg]

Scannell and ringrose would be a very small partnership.

Yeah. Small centre partnerships are rubbish, as Leinster have shown

Seriously though, Scannell is taller than BOD and Darce. Ringrose is 6'3" I think. Once he grows into his frame, he'll be a fine size. I hope he doesn't become a weights monster, as I think it would take away from a lot of what he does well but he should grow out a little.

[Kinger83]

Part of the reason our attack wasn't very cohesive at times on Saturday..

The Ireland out-half scored all of his side's points in an impressive individual display at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday, but he revealed after the game that he was still muddling through the post-Six Nations period and even confused his non-Ireland team-mates by calling some of the plays designed by Joe Schmidt during Saturday's win over Munster.

"We play differently for our province than we do for our country and that's half the challenge to get back into the system," he explained.

"At times I was shouting Irish plays and Ben Te'o didn't have a clue what I was talking about and Garry (Ringrose) had half an idea because he was in camp training with us.

"It's hard to get out of that Irish mindset and into the systems here, as hard as you try and as much work as you do off the pitch, it sneaks back in there."

http://www.independent.ie/sport/rugby/g ... 95768.html

[curates_egg]

Part of the reason our attack wasn't very cohesive at times on Saturday..

The Ireland out-half scored all of his side's points in an impressive individual display at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday, but he revealed after the game that he was still muddling through the post-Six Nations period and even confused his non-Ireland team-mates by calling some of the plays designed by Joe Schmidt during Saturday's win over Munster.

"We play differently for our province than we do for our country and that's half the challenge to get back into the system," he explained.

"At times I was shouting Irish plays and Ben Te'o didn't have a clue what I was talking about and Garry (Ringrose) had half an idea because he was in camp training with us.

"It's hard to get out of that Irish mindset and into the systems here, as hard as you try and as much work as you do off the pitch, it sneaks back in there."

http://www.independent.ie/sport/rugby/g ... 95768.html

Jaysus. Between that and him running into a post...it doesn't help the narrative.

[molloyjh]

Second thing was not running straight. We barely drew in any defenders and seemed to hesitate whenever we had a good opportunity to attack. Even the try we scored was very lucky. We blew a couple of opportunities for easy overlaps just before it. It should have been simple hands to Kearney in acres of space, instead it nearly went badly wrong when Saili almost caught Johnny. Ringrose tried his best to draw defenders but mostly it was just pass out the back, pass out the back, go sideways, pass out the back, go sideways. Don't know what's happened to us because that wasn't the case until recently.

A million times this. There was a lot to be frustrated about on Saturday but for me this was top of the list. It was what we saw a lot under MOC, playing with width without ever earning it. Ringrose was about the only one who would straighten and that lovely break in the second half came from exactly that. We miss Luke in that regard too I think. He made a huge difference to our attacking game last season in that regard. He just has the smarts in that regard.

Murray Kinsella was watching our new scrummie a couple of weeks ago and there was a clip where he set up a try by running a good support line and drawing a defender before putting his man into space. That's really basic stuff, but we weren't capable of it at all on Saturday. It's really telling when you cheer about the defence more than the attack!

[Dexter]

With the recent performances, that was a game to get of the way with any sort of a messy, scrappy win and move on. Everyone probably had a fair idea it would turn out something like it did: a narrow win for someone in a bad game.
Looking at the last 3 games as a block, 6 points is probably about right - we got 2 from the same fixtures last year.

[ChrisUppy]

Second thing was not running straight. We barely drew in any defenders and seemed to hesitate whenever we had a good opportunity to attack. Even the try we scored was very lucky. We blew a couple of opportunities for easy overlaps just before it. It should have been simple hands to Kearney in acres of space, instead it nearly went badly wrong when Saili almost caught Johnny. Ringrose tried his best to draw defenders but mostly it was just pass out the back, pass out the back, go sideways, pass out the back, go sideways. Don't know what's happened to us because that wasn't the case until recently.

A million times this. There was a lot to be frustrated about on Saturday but for me this was top of the list. It was what we saw a lot under MOC, playing with width without ever earning it. Ringrose was about the only one who would straighten and that lovely break in the second half came from exactly that. We miss Luke in that regard too I think. He made a huge difference to our attacking game last season in that regard. He just has the smarts in that regard.

Murray Kinsella was watching our new scrummie a couple of weeks ago and there was a clip where he set up a try by running a good support line and drawing a defender before putting his man into space. That's really basic stuff, but we weren't capable of it at all on Saturday. It's really telling when you cheer about the defence more than the attack!

Yeah thought this was really noticeable too. And on the occasions where someone (usually Ringrose) did straighten the line and commit two defenders there was nobody running a line to exploit that space.

[dropkick]

R scannell is the find of the season for me, he has never looked out of his depth, and made some great carries when needed most.

I'm glad someone finally mentioned Scannell - thought he had a great game. Was just imagining him at 12 with the other "find of the season" at 13 and Henshaw at 15.

Find of the season for Munster. He has been easily better than Saili. Holland looks another good find. He kicking and game management has been very impressive.

[molloyjh]

With the recent performances, that was a game to get of the way with any sort of a messy, scrappy win and move on. Everyone probably had a fair idea it would turn out something like it did: a narrow win for someone in a bad game.
Looking at the last 3 games as a block, 6 points is probably about right - we got 2 from the same fixtures last year.

The problem is that the performances in all 3 games was below the standard we need to win this competition, even if we have moved top for now. One bad game is fine, you can move on from that. But when you start to string poor performances together they inform what is coming next. Hopefully the internationals can get up to speed quickly and we can turn the last few weeks around. It's a good run in for us with a week off on either side of the Edinburgh game and a week off ahead of the SFs. There's a lot of scope to address the issues.

[Dexter]

With the recent performances, that was a game to get of the way with any sort of a messy, scrappy win and move on. Everyone probably had a fair idea it would turn out something like it did: a narrow win for someone in a bad game.
Looking at the last 3 games as a block, 6 points is probably about right - we got 2 from the same fixtures last year.

The problem is that the performances in all 3 games was below the standard we need to win this competition, even if we have moved top for now. One bad game is fine, you can move on from that. But when you start to string poor performances together they inform what is coming next. Hopefully the internationals can get up to speed quickly and we can turn the last few weeks around. It's a good run in for us with a week off on either side of the Edinburgh game and a week off ahead of the SFs. There's a lot of scope to address the issues.

Yeah agreed. I'm just hoping that a bit more integration of the returning players will lead to more cohesion. Jonny even admitted he was getting calls mixed up with Ireland plays during the game. So, put those bad performances behind and use the good run in to address to the issues, as you say.
I'm hopeful rather than completely confident, but there's a awful lot of room for improvement!

[BlueWheels]

Kirchner didn't protect any possession he got and kicked poorly.

You left out "can't tackle" ... in fact his best move of the game was when he departed the field to allow Jack McG to return.