Ireland v. France Sun 10 March 15.00

[Ruckedtobits]

It's looking, and feeling, like a bitch of a day in Dublin with gusting sleet showers and temperature about 4C. Nobody will enjoy this but least of all France. Have we anyone who comes from Donegal or Dunedin? They'll be the only ones who know how to play in that shite!

[CiaranIrl]

Kearney out, larmour to FB

[fourthirtythree]

Best of luck Jordan.. Opportunity knocks.

[Twist]

This is not the kind of day you want an inexperienced full-back


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[dropkick]

Great opportunity for Larmour. Let's hope he takes it.


Tactics today should be to go for the posts whenever possible. The French will give up penalties so take the points on offer.

[FLIP]

Two cards should have been pulled out there for the deliberate charges on best and furlong at the kick off. Extremely dangerous and absolutely deliberate

[FLIP]

POM doing his best matador impression for the French try there

[Leinsterimp]

Poor performance again against a terrible French side, lacking in execution at the moment

[FLIP]

Poor performance again against a terrible French side, lacking in execution at the moment

In my eyes a good performance until we made the subs in bulk.

If Cronin had made a cameo like Scannell did the media would be slating him.

[outcast eddie]

The bench didn't cover themselves in glory. We conceded two tries and one scrum penalty and lost one ball against the head while they were down to 14 men.

[artaneboy]

Poor performance again against a terrible French side, lacking in execution at the moment

I assume you’re joking!

Very good performance- much improved. Should have scored 50- but I’ll take that win and performance all day, seeing as where we were a month ago.


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[artaneboy]

The bench didn't cover themselves in glory. We conceded two tries and one scrum penalty and lost one ball against the head while they were down to 14 men.

They also won three scrum penalties in a row and any amount of line breaks. Overall, given the disruption of all the changes, the bench did fine individually. A very understandable lack of cohesion at times. But, as I mentioned- understandable.


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[Leinsterimp]

Poor performance again against a terrible French side, lacking in execution at the moment

I assume you’re joking!

Very good performance- much improved. Should have scored 50- but I’ll take that win and performance all day, seeing as where we were a month ago.


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I thought the performance was sloppy still, need to improve massively for next week. French defended so narrowly yet we continued to just batter it down the middle, splitting the attack and playing side to side. Too easy to defend against for better oppositions

[hugonaut]

That was a very, very dominant performance, the likes of which we haven't managed against France in the Six Nations in my lifetime. 26-0 before the hour says it all. The 14 points conceded in the last three minute dulls the scoreline somewhat, but in the context of the tournament [where we've still got a slim chance of winning it], Schmidt was absolutely right to get all those players – Healy, Best, Furlong, Henderson, Murray and Sexton – off the pitch. It's a short turnaround to an important away game next weekend, and exposing those players to injury risk when we had the game sown up would have been unprofessional.

The lads look like they've got a bit of confidence back. Far fewer drops than against Italy, even with a wet ball, and much better cohesion. Players held their depth better and in general gave better passes and took smarter lines. Ringrose makes a huge difference to the Irish backline, and to the Irish team in general. He's a world class player - one of the three best players in his position in the game. He does everything well. James Ryan, Stander and Cian Healy added a lot as well - Healy turned in a huge performance in the first 50 minutes, and the two other lads went all game. Besty took his try very well – reminded me a lot of this one he scored against Scotland in 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIMe_0NaezA still a strong dude

It was frustrating not to score more in the second half when we looked to have the French on the rack. We couldn't seem to engineer one-on-ones close to their line, despite dominating possession.

[paddyor]

Would totally agree with the comments on Murray, hes not been his best and sexton is getting hit more as a result of his slow ball. Schmidt must not be afaid to replace him early if need be. Im surprised that Ryan is picked ahead of Porter, the only reason I can see for this is to give Ryan a big game and more experience. Conan imo is playing better than stander at the moment and also surprised hes not starting. Van der flier needs to carry more over the gainline, his defense and workrate are amazing, but his attack is poor compared to O'Brien and Leavy. Also would have put Marmion straight back in matchday squad (if not starting). A few of the selections have me scratching my head, but in Joe we trust

Ryan is likely to go to RWC.

Porter is the prop most capable of playing both sides; he played loosehead until last year. So he will definitely go to RWC. If we bring Healy, Kilcoyne and McGrath as looseheads with Furlong and Porter as tightheads, then lose a tighthead in the warm-up, we're in trouble. If we bring two looseheads and three tightheads [Furlong, Porter, Ryan] and loose a loosehead in the warm-up, we can put Porter across to loosehead sub.

We have much better strength in depth at loosehead than tighthead – Healy has 86 caps, McGrath 54 caps & Kilcoyne 27 caps [167 caps total] compared to Furlong on 31 caps, Ryan on 17 caps and Porter on 13 caps [61 caps total] – but we will end up bringing more tightheads than looseheads.

Didn't Ryan start out as LH? Nearly certain of that.

[hugonaut]

Didn't Ryan start out as LH? Nearly certain of that.

He did, but his last starts as a loosehead were in the 2014-15 season. Porter was playing there as recently as May 2017, less than two years ago. Porter was also a better loosehead than John Ryan ever was [in my opinion].

[LeRouxIsPHat]

I was delighted with that performance. France weren't even that bad and yet we were unbelievably dominant in that first half, can't remember us owning the ball like that before. I mean I know Joe's teams tend to dominate possession, but this was on another level.

It pretty much answered all the doubts I had after the England game and I can see how that result probably fed into the last two performances. I've seen it mentioned that the squad went on the piss over the break and honestly think that may have played a big part in us playing better today, we just seemed far more relaxed. We've needed much more subtlety around the first receiver and thought that was the biggest difference today, we were far less predictable and that allowed us to get a bit more go forward, and then a combination of that and being more relaxed meant that we could keep it going. Our breakdown work was ferocious (especially Furlong) and obviously that was helped by being on the front foot.

Compare that variety of who the first receiver was and what they did with the ball with the England game where we had static runners and tried to turn Bundee into a playmaker, it was a total contrast today. It wasn't perfect but the conditions were awful and I wouldn't have expected us to go from 1st to 5th gear straight away. I'm really not bothered by the last 10/15 minutes.

I can't remember our second row looking so solid without Dev, thought that was another big positive from today.

There's lots to work on but I think today was a big step forward and I'm excited about the next game.

[Leinsterimp]

I must have been watching a different game, thought France were as bad as they’ve been the whole tournament

[Ruckedtobits]

All round good attacking performance but only adequate finishing, bar tries from Sexton and Earls. The tries from Best and Stander were what we should have had on at least three further occasions and the "missed" tries from Healy and Ringrose looked sloppy by their standards.

The reintroduction of the big players was very evident and it was great to have them back. The injection of tempo when Cooney, Carty and Dillane arrived was noticable but generally our execution and intent lacked the precision necessary to impress Joe.

Larmour's late, searing break was beautiful to watch but he must learn to off-load to others in a better position, when he has created such a gash in the defence. He certainly should have off-loaded left today, 10m short of the French line.

Henshaw, if fit, should come in for Bundee next week. Hopefully, Leavy in and Tadgh Byrne and SO'B on the bench. I'd also like to see Jack McGrath back-in the match-day 23 as Killer's scrumming technique scares the S# 1T out of me. BTW, PO'M stills needs work on his tackling.

[neiliog93]

Good first half, but should have absolutely put them to the sword. I do feel Gardner's refereeing contributed to keeping them in the game in the second half - he let their fatties flop everywhere in the rucks and the try call was farcical.