Wales v Ireland 2019 6N (The Match)

[LeRouxIsPHat]

Re-watched the game and just want to add to the chorus of criticism for the referee. My god he was shocking. If we’d had something important on the line I’d be absolutely fuming

I did too and one bit really stood out when he called out that we had advantage for a knock on and then two seconds later (literally) Ringrose threw a speculative offload and that's when he called advantage over. Wales then kicked upfield and that's when Adams tried to trip Earls and should have been binned.

There was also a very obvious knock on from Davies at the back of a scrum on the Welsh line. I had seen it at the time and I'm sure everyone else watching did too, not sure how it could have been missed.

One thing that I'm hopeful of sorting purely by selection is that our maul improves when Dev comes back. There's no better man to set a maul around, and I know Tadgh Beirne has had some success against him over the last few seasons but by and large he's excellent there. Our set up has really been terrible, and I can't understand how teams have got through on us on the occasions when it's actually been okay initially.

[Dexter]

I'd like to compliment the vast majority of posters on this thread who have contributed balanced and insightful comment and analysis, nicely coloured by a bit of personal opinion.
It's just such superior commentary to pretty much anything you'll find in the newspapers, anything on TV, or anything on the radio sportstalk shows.

Thanks all!!

[enby]

What is the current position with non-foul play, non-scoring TMO reviews? The ref on Saturday (correctly) awarded Wales a 5m scrum after initially ruling that Earls did not carry over. It seemed that a combination of crowd pressure and TMO intervention caused him to change his mind. I thought that the TMO could only intervene off his own bat in the case of foul play and upon request by the ref in relation to a score. In the U20s match on Friday, Ireland were awarded a try and the TMO without being asked by ref told him that there had been a forward pass leading to the try being disallowed. Has that rule been changed, and, if so, what is the new rule?

[tomthefan]

I don't think it was even the TMO who intervened, it was the tv director. He showed the replays on tv, the crowd saw it on the big screen, the ref or one of his assistants saw it and the rest is history.
This is the same reason French tv directors don't show the dodgy stuff French players do, instead focusing on Basteraud's dreadlocks moving in slow motion or some other arty sh*t.

[TrapperChamonix]

I'd like to compliment the vast majority of posters on this thread who have contributed balanced and insightful comment and analysis, nicely coloured by a bit of personal opinion.
It's just such superior commentary to pretty much anything you'll find in the newspapers, anything on TV, or anything on the radio sportstalk shows.

Thanks all!!

What I laugh about is that the various media outlets are telling us to calm down and not overreact. But the only ones who a) over hyped the team before the 6 Nations and b) overacted to the losses are the same media outlet. You'd be forgiven for thinking they are trying to sell copy....

[Oldschool]

I'd like to compliment the vast majority of posters on this thread who have contributed balanced and insightful comment and analysis, nicely coloured by a bit of personal opinion.
It's just such superior commentary to pretty much anything you'll find in the newspapers, anything on TV, or anything on the radio sportstalk shows.

Thanks all!!

You're welcome.
It's nice to be appreciated.

[hugonaut]

One thing that I'm hopeful of sorting purely by selection is that our maul improves when Dev comes back. There's no better man to set a maul around, and I know Tadgh Beirne has had some success against him over the last few seasons but by and large he's excellent there. Our set up has really been terrible, and I can't understand how teams have got through on us on the occasions when it's actually been okay initially.

I think that we are not varying the speed of our mauls enough, and that in general we are taking too long [I'm talking in terms of 3-4 seconds] to get a 'perfect' maul shape. A lot of the time we use up the first ['once'] call at the original location of the lineout as we get the ball right to the back, and we tend set up the maul on the position where the catch comes down. We seem to show them the same thing a lot of the time.

That means that the defending forwards are afforded a short period of time where they aren't worried about going backwards, they're thinking about establishing position to a] stop our maul before it gets started [players in the right location, good body positions]; or b] how to work forward through and at the edges of our maul.

If you occasionally try to get it moving before the ball is right at the back, you can put a little bit of panic in the opposition team ... they're having to firefight a changing situation instead of just carrying out a drill.

Also, for all the criticism that Gatland got waaay back in 1999 in Lens for calling a 13-man maul late in the game against Argentina, I think there's serious value in rehearsing mauls where 2-3 big backs join in – say Henshaw and Stockdale, or Farrell and Aki. Have them train it so they know what they're supposed to be doing, and get them to race in and join that maul so that you can get 10 on 7. The element of surprise plus weight of numbers can make it work.

The maul doesn't have to be static for five seconds for the referee to call 'once' - in terms of the laws, a maul should always be moving towards one goal-line or the other

[hugonaut]

Re-watched the game and just want to add to the chorus of criticism for the referee. My god he was shocking. If we’d had something important on the line I’d be absolutely fuming

I did too and one bit really stood out when he called out that we had advantage for a knock on and then two seconds later (literally) Ringrose threw a speculative offload and that's when he called advantage over. Wales then kicked upfield and that's when Adams tried to trip Earls and should have been binned.

There were only six yellows in the entire tournament, four of them going to French players [Aldegheri against us, Chat against Italy, Huget against Scotland, Fickou against England].

[Columbo]

I appreciate the reasonable case for the defence, and I do agree with some things – a clutch of half a dozen games doesn’t necessarily tell us much about another clutch of games 6 months hence, so it’s entirely possible we can go on and have a great world cup.

But I don’t agree that consciously or unconsciously we weren’t really focused on the 6N – on the contrary I think we were absolutely gunning for a slam. We didn’t come out and say it, but a big theme in 2018 had been that we had overcome the underdog preference – we were going into big games as favourites and winning. And I think that’s why the England match was quite so traumatic for the squad, and Schmidt was right about that. We weren’t pipped at the post, we were absolutely miles away.

I don’t agree that it was down to breaks not falling our way – in fact non-Irish rugby twitter were united in saying that the ref absolutely rode Italy out of the game against us! Things could have been even worse.. And against England and Wales our performances were so uncompetitive that catching breaks was almost irrelevant..

And on the question of being fired up – I don’t think you can disentangle this from performances. I’m personally not a big believer in ‘wanting it more’ as a very good explanation of anything much at the top level of professional sport – ‘being technically superior’ and ‘having better tactics’ are better predictors of success. And confidence, and the kind of inner conviction that enables top teams to stay in matches and win, comes from success

I agree with ronk – you can’t stand still, other teams and coaches watch matches after all! I thought the scary thing was how frozen we looked when things weren’t working – the confidence seeping from the players was almost visible, as they kept on blindly going through the same misfiring routines. And sorry to invoke Kidney, but I just remember so clearly watching Ireland in despair in his latter years, things going wrong on the pitch and it would cut to him in the stand, watching, frozen in place, no idea how to fix it – I couldn’t shake off the echo this 6N.

Anyway hopefully I’m just over-reacting massively, certainly no team is owed anything and maybe I’m overthinking. (also sorry to come into your room uninvited and post essays )

[LeRouxIsPHat]

There were only six yellows in the entire tournament, four of them going to French players [Aldegheri against us, Chat against Italy, Huget against Scotland, Fickou against England].

I don't know what the average rate is (would guess more than one per game?) but that's really interesting, surely must have been an edict from above.

Sorry to be a broken record but Gardner really did play a huge role in the manner of our defeat on Saturday. I think you could argue against the three penalties that took Wales to a 16 point lead. Sexton did seal off but there were other offences before that. Furlong was offside but Beard had jumped across the lineout to steal that ball in the first place, and compare that to the free kick that James Ryan conceded for running into the gap. The scrum penalty at HT was complete bullshit, we were dominant and should have had the penalty ourselves. The first penalty against James Ryan was nonsense as well and maybe Wales wouldn't have chipped for the try if they didn't have advantage? Hard to know and it was a brilliant score. And that's just the scores, there were loads of others which have already been mentioned and would have made a big difference.

I know we still put in a poor performance but I just feel really sorry for the players being humiliated like that when they really didn't deserve to be. Wales didn't have to play any rugby to get a 25 point lead and you could see our confidence levels plummet as we tried to force things to get back into it. I don't mind a result going against you when you've put in a poor performance, but the manner of it was really unfair IMO.

[olaf the fat]

So much to discuss about the game and full 6ns - but still too scarred from the game almost a week on!

Wales were very good, they took a really good start / lead and then just had to hold their nerve, which is no mean feat with the Grand Slam up for grabs. They defended like demons and managed to exert enough pressure to make us crumble. Yes, in reality they had to play little rugby to win the match, all they had to do was be competent and determined - 2 thing we were not but that is down to Wales controlling the game so well. I don't want that to sound dismissive of them in any way - they were good and Gatland has proven time and time again that he is a superb coach. Fair play and advantage Wales in the RWC semi final - if we ever make it that far!

We were found out, Murray and Sexton were poor. Murray was just not back up to the level required yet- did this heap too much pressure on Sexton? he seem to be struggling with the WPOTY title for a start. SOB just does not have enough rugby under the belt to slot back in at 6Ns level. Too many playing out of form or under pressure, the margins are too fine at this level to carry that.

While we were poor & headless - we weren't really 25 - 0 poor (well until reached the middle the middle section of the game anyway!), if we had managed to keep the head and the ref was not so finicky, we could have put Wales under some pressure and exposed them to Grand Slam nerves - but this would have just papered of the cracks that would be ripped asunder next September.

We are too easy to read - fair enough going back to the tried and tested, but things like not letting POM tackle but only ruck worked before, but gets too easy to read. Expect to see some amount of variation in Japan.

[ronk]

Pointing out a weakness more than making excuses, Ireland have a funny relationship with the Grand Slam. We get really excited when it's on and really down when it's not.

Last year we barely got past France and England were struggling and exposed when we met them. We earned the slam but a few doors were opened in our tough away fixtures. The fixture list is important.

If a championship had been in our hands the result might have been a bit different but Wales are a good side and never harder to beat than a slam decider at home. If we had beaten England we'd have grown over the championship, instead we shrunk.

The 6N is a tough tough tournament and luck/timing is essential. England have been a different beast with Billy Vunipola for a while now. We got full strength when we were weakest but England faded after he got injured losing to Wales and drawing with Scotland.

[Laighin Break]

Pointing out a weakness more than making excuses, Ireland have a funny relationship with the Grand Slam. We get really excited when it's on and really down when it's not.

Last year we barely got past France and England were struggling and exposed when we met them. We earned the slam but a few doors were opened in our tough away fixtures. The fixture list is important.

If a championship had been in our hands the result might have been a bit different but Wales are a good side and never harder to beat than a slam decider at home. If we had beaten England we'd have grown over the championship, instead we shrunk.

The 6N is a tough tough tournament and luck/timing is essential. England have been a different beast with Billy Vunipola for a while now. We got full strength when we were weakest but England faded after he got injured losing to Wales and drawing with Scotland.

I wonder how the game would have panned out had the England Scotland draw been before the Ireland game