You'll need to explain that one to me Jezzer,jezzer wrote:Very poor performance. But not as bad as the ref's, we were gifted a victory out there by a horribly biased ref. If I was Italian I'd be livid.
We took so many wrong options its almost pointless singling out anyone. But I thought Murray made too many given his position of influence.
Best was our top player by far. Henderson and POC did well, Pom definitely the standout of the back row despite the poor yellow. Heaslip was very solid and SOB was average for the SOB we have come to know and poor for the Tullow Tank he used to be.
Without Earls, this team has no cutting edge. I dont care if hes a better winger (which he is), hes the first bame on my teamsheet. Bowe was better but the whole backline made more bad choices than Peter André. Murray really choked our offense, it was like he didnt believe we were good enough to break them down. Sexton was guilty of this at times too, but Murray had the poorer game. Id have brought in Reddan after 50. By contrast, Some of the outside backs seemed to think we were so good that every Hollywood trickshot would come off.
But for the ref it might have been very nasty. Id say we would have had enough in the tank but Italy will never know as they were robbed of a straight shot at us.
With regards Murray. Yes we did go very narrow in the last 30mins. But I thought he did that well. When he did move it out, Sexton kicked to the corners, so it looked like we were trying to close the game down and stay in their half. Our backs saw very little ball in the 2nd half. I hate to say this, but I'm gonna. Ireland played MOCBALL out there today. We didn't break their line, went side to side, kicked aimlessly, poor at the breakdown, weak scum. I could go on and on. But hey we won and are in the Qs with a game to spare. The semis look a long way from here.