Ireland v Wales 2018 6Ns

[paddyor]

think their missing list stands at Warburton, Faletau, Webb, Davies, North

Norths on the bench. Jake Ball is missing too.

[simonokeeffe]

think their missing list stands at Warburton, Faletau, Webb, Davies, North

Norths on the bench. Jake Ball is missing too.

Had North started for Norhampton and When was the last time Ball was picked ahead of anyone (genuine question)?

[paddyor]

think their missing list stands at Warburton, Faletau, Webb, Davies, North

Norths on the bench. Jake Ball is missing too.

Had North started for Norhampton and When was the last time Ball was picked ahead of anyone (genuine question)?

North played 80 mins in the Anglo-Welsh before the England game and got 80 last week. Ball started vs NZ.

[simonokeeffe]

Chapeau

[dropkick]

Advantage Wales.

1. The centres
2. Jacob Stockdale v Liam Williams (unless Earls shifts)
3. Our bench
4. Our lack of imagination with ball
5. Warren Gatland and his coaching team.

If we win this game, with.....f%~k it. Time for a pint

We should be more confident.
1. Wales don't have world class centers.
2. Stockdale is a try scoring machine and has size advantage over Williams.
3. Look at the Welsh bench. In fact certain Welsh starters wouldn't make the Ireland bench.
4. Maybe they'll come up with some plays at the weekend.
5. They're good but we shouldn't be bigging them up before playing them.

I think this love of being the underdog has got to go. You'd never see the best boxers bigging up the opposition. There's a good reason for that. It's because boxers who do that never make it to the top!


Irish rugby has to throw away the comfort blanket of being underdog and think themselves as being better than the opposition. Performances range wildly depending whether we're underdogs or favourites because of a misled tradition of wanting to be underdogs.


The Welsh believe they're better than us and that gives them an edge imo. Look at all the tight games they won down the years by hook or by crook.


NZ, Aus, England and SA are all talking about winning the world cup while it's almost taboo to mention Ireland winning it even though we're 3rd seeds.


So while we don't need to go all Conor McGregor, embracing favouritism will be a step forward for Irish rugby.

[JohnB]

It will be a tight contest between us. The Welsh have had our number of late and we’ve lost some talent to injury. However, we are at home and Schmidt and Farrell have had 2 weeks to work on the defensive lapses evident against the Italians. Hopefully, an Ireland victory beckons.

[sunshiner1]

by dropkick

2. Stockdale is a try scoring machine and has size advantage over Williams.

With you on Stockdale. The guy is well over 6 foot with a serious jump. No offence to Earls but he's 5 ft 9? 5 10'? I think Stockdale will do fine. If we want him to be a top international winger we can't be hiding him in defence.

[outcast eddie]

Advantage Wales.

1. The centres
2. Jacob Stockdale v Liam Williams (unless Earls shifts)
3. Our bench
4. Our lack of imagination with ball
5. Warren Gatland and his coaching team.

If we win this game, with.....f%~k it. Time for a pint

We should be more confident.
1. Wales don't have world class centers.
2. Stockdale is a try scoring machine and has size advantage over Williams.
3. Look at the Welsh bench. In fact certain Welsh starters wouldn't make the Ireland bench.
4. Maybe they'll come up with some plays at the weekend.
5. They're good but we shouldn't be bigging them up before playing them.

I think this love of being the underdog has got to go. You'd never see the best boxers bigging up the opposition. There's a good reason for that. It's because boxers who do that never make it to the top!


Irish rugby has to throw away the comfort blanket of being underdog and think themselves as being better than the opposition. Performances range wildly depending whether we're underdogs or favourites because of a misled tradition of wanting to be underdogs.


The Welsh believe they're better than us and that gives them an edge imo. Look at all the tight games they won down the years by hook or by crook.


NZ, Aus, England and SA are all talking about winning the world cup while it's almost taboo to mention Ireland winning it even though we're 3rd seeds.


So while we don't need to go all Conor McGregor, embracing favouritism will be a step forward for Irish rugby.

I don't read too much into all this posturing by either team, it's largely for the media and probably demanded by tournament sponsors etc.

The current sports psychology approach is for each individual player and the squad as a whole to convince themselves, without doubt, that they will win. I suspect this is the head space they are in at the moment and perhaps Joe's reason for creating distance between the squad and the negative vibes in the media.

The trick, apparently is to then switch to a mind set of nonchalance just prior to kick off.

[suisse]

For all the talk of Ireland missing players, we can't forget that Wales are short of 4 guys who played in the Lions test series in NZ last summer.

Jonathan Davies
Taulupe Faletau
Sam Warburton
Rhys Webb

[Oldschool]

Advantage Wales.

1. The centres
2. Jacob Stockdale v Liam Williams (unless Earls shifts)
3. Our bench
4. Our lack of imagination with ball
5. Warren Gatland and his coaching team.

If we win this game, with.....f%~k it. Time for a pint

We should be more confident.
1. Wales don't have world class centers.
2. Stockdale is a try scoring machine and has size advantage over Williams.
3. Look at the Welsh bench. In fact certain Welsh starters wouldn't make the Ireland bench.
4. Maybe they'll come up with some plays at the weekend.
5. They're good but we shouldn't be bigging them up before playing them.

I think this love of being the underdog has got to go. You'd never see the best boxers bigging up the opposition. There's a good reason for that. It's because boxers who do that never make it to the top!


Irish rugby has to throw away the comfort blanket of being underdog and think themselves as being better than the opposition. Performances range wildly depending whether we're underdogs or favourites because of a misled tradition of wanting to be underdogs.


The Welsh believe they're better than us and that gives them an edge imo. Look at all the tight games they won down the years by hook or by crook.


NZ, Aus, England and SA are all talking about winning the world cup while it's almost taboo to mention Ireland winning it even though we're 3rd seeds.


So while we don't need to go all Conor McGregor, embracing favouritism will be a step forward for Irish rugby.

Agree completely with your comments re underdogs.

[fourthirtythree]

I've long been a fan of embracing the tag of favourite and am generally really happy to do it. I thought the odds for us against Scarlets last week were really silly - a tight win would always be a good result - and I think they are generous to us here also.

We have long underestimated the Welsh probably because they have mostly been poor in the league and have generally been abject in European competition, regularly rolling over for sub-par English and mediocre French opposition and ignoring their long record of success at international level. When they whipped us in the WC quarter final it wasn't a big outlier.

As for people talking about the amount of players we have missing: all the talk before the tournament was how many Wales had out and how few we had. We are now more disrupted than them. IF they have more lions out surely that just suggests that their key players were viewed by Lions management as better than ours.

I think it's reasonable that we are favourites at home, but it is most likely tight as a gnat's arse. One poor decision - like when Kaplan messed up and they scored, or the ones Ferris pointed out this week when highlighting the grotesque hypocrisy of the Welsh management and their trolling of rugby officaldom - and we could lose even if we do play just well enough.

[cormac]

Other good news is that Wayne Barnes isn't the ref

[LeRouxIsPHat]

Other good news is that Wayne Barnes isn't the ref

I would honestly have barely any hope if he was the ref.

I think people are worrying too much about who's not there or who Wales have back. We've still got a brilliant side on paper. Yeah we're weaker because some guys are missing, but our back line is almost full strength and we're arguably just missing one player from each row up front. That's not a bad situation to be in at all.

As for the underdog stuff, I agree we should be more confident in general...but disagree about World Cups. We should expect to lose every single World Cup game...in fact we should consider pulling out of it. Nothing in rugby has provided me with disappointment in the way that World Cups have.

[Ruckedtobits]

Even with so many missing and players like Larmour andZebo sidelined that is still a tasty team though I would not have Kearney anywhere near. We are good enough to win at home against Wales.

Consistent anyway, even if still wrong.

[Ruckedtobits]

Wales half-backs should be our specific targets. Scrum-half has a wind-up pass and Biggar is too brave for his own good and deserves to be targetted by our runners, parti ularly, Bundee, Farrell, Stander and Porter. Don't kick ball at their back three, keep it in hand and we'll get penalties for either points or position.

[MylesNaGapoleen]

Wales half-backs should be our specific targets. Scrum-half has a wind-up pass and Biggar is too brave for his own good and deserves to be targetted by our runners, parti ularly, Bundee, Farrell, Stander and Porter. Don't kick ball at their back three, keep it in hand and we'll get penalties for either points or position.

If, as expected, wales employ their rush defense I can see deft grubbers/chips in behind . Forecast is for a cold, dry day, perfect conditions for bobbling balls behind their backline forcing them to turn and deal with it as aki & co come rushing through.
Would prefer that rather than offering williams & hp the chance to run back at us.

[suisse]

Other good news is that Wayne Barnes isn't the ref

I would honestly have barely any hope if he was the ref.

I think people are worrying too much about who's not there or who Wales have back. We've still got a brilliant side on paper. Yeah we're weaker because some guys are missing, but our back line is almost full strength and we're arguably just missing one player from each row up front. That's not a bad situation to be in at all.

As for the underdog stuff, I agree we should be more confident in general...but disagree about World Cups. We should expect to lose every single World Cup game...in fact we should consider pulling out of it. Nothing in rugby has provided me with disappointment in the way that World Cups have.

I really don't think it is an underdog thing at all. We're about to find out if our depth is as strong as we'd like to think, with inexperienced back ups at tight head, lock, openside and both centre positions

One of the big areas of concern is not who Wales have back or who we're missing. It's what we do with the ball. You said we have "a brilliant team on paper." We might do. But against Wales especially, we've looked utterly rudderless since Schmidt took over. Joe seems to be engaging in a pretty silly war with the media. They're fully entitled to ponder how we use the amount of ball we have. Our team might be brilliant but if we have to work so much harder for our scores than Wales, then it doesn't matter really. Our try scoring record v England, France and Wales is a big concern. I'm worried. It has nothing to do with underdog status. More the plan we have in place to break them down.

[LeRouxIsPHat]

I really don't think it is an underdog thing at all. We're about to find out if our depth is as strong as we'd like to think, with inexperienced back ups at tight head, lock, openside and both centre positions

One of the big areas of concern is not who Wales have back or who we're missing. It's what we do with the ball. You said we have "a brilliant team on paper." We might do. But against Wales especially, we've looked utterly rudderless since Schmidt took over. Joe seems to be engaging in a pretty silly war with the media. They're fully entitled to ponder how we use the amount of ball we have. Our team might be brilliant but if we have to work so much harder for our scores than Wales, then it doesn't matter really. Our try scoring record v England, France and Wales is a big concern. I'm worried. It has nothing to do with underdog status. More the plan we have in place to break them down.

I was talking about the underdog tag in general, not just for this match. Although I do think there is a false sense of nervousness that appears when a game is on the horizon. Loads of people said that if we beat France that we then had three home games that we should be winning. Suddenly when this game actually appears a lot of them find reasons why we shouldn't be winning it. The same will happen with Scotland. Even if we win and they lose, it'll suddenly be seen as a banana skin in two weeks, and they'll be "hurting and keen to save their season".

Do we really have inexperienced back ups at lock and both centre positions? Does that really ring true when Ryan would probably have started anyway and Aki is arguably first choice? They may not have many caps, but I think you're reaching a bit there, and it's not like Wales don't have players in a similar situation.

We do have a brilliant team on paper, that doesn't mean we're guaranteed to win or win easily, I'm just saying we have a right to be more confident than we appear to be. I'm honestly not sure what you've seen from Wales to be so worried about them over running us. They didn't run England ragged and Scotland were abysmal in the extreme. Again, that doesn't mean they're not going to be tough to beat and I'd say it'll be a nervy 80 minutes, but I think you're building them up to be something they're not, and playing us down in a similar manner.

[Peg Leg]

Oh we absolutely have a team to run rings around Wales. There is a group of nearly 40 players in and around the national team from whom you could pick several teams to whoop Wales. That's if the passes stick and we have the ref suss'd. Two big if's.

[Twist]

Other good news is that Wayne Barnes isn't the ref

Glen Jackson is, though