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Ireland called and found wanting

Georgia deserved to win that Rugby match, lads. I say this as someone who has come to love Ireland in his two years of living there. I took that game hard too, it wasn’t easy to watch. The Namibia game could have been just a result of nerves and media pressure but Georgia made it two tough matches.

The one commentator nailed it when he said Ireland had no game plan. Georgia had a simple one but at least they had something. And they executed on it. In that last quarter they pounded the ball back into Irish 22′ and then tried to roll over the line. Simple plan but only by the luck of the Irish did they fail at it.

Just imagine if the Georgians had a more accurate drop goal kicker. They could regularly get their kicker close enough to the poles and give him enough space to go for it but he just managed to miss each time.

Ball from the back of Irish scrum was dirty and rushed when it should have been calm and collected. Normally in an Irish game you get to watch in awe at Ronan placing a ball a few feet from the opposing line time after time. This game we saw that just once, and then a fumble lost the ball to Georgia. Other times Ireland looked strong in their running but rushed the execution. Less mistakes this time around but all the same they happened at crucial moments.

Ah Ireland. You’ve got it, everyone else thinks you do too. Come on lads.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2007 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    It was awful to watch alright. I kept expecting us to pull away and score a couple of tries in the second half but when it got to 65 mins I then realised that we were in deep trouble.

    Peter Stringer had an absolute nightmare. His pass which was intercepted for the Georgian try said it all.
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    I think it goes deeper than lack of a game plan Paul. There were times in that match and also the one against Namibia when the Irish players were completely disorientated. Even Stringer, a man whom I would trust to catch my first born, was throwing balls forward and trying to catch with hard hands. There was constant panic and disbelief in the team; losing a ball from the back of the scrum, like what happened to Isaac Boss late in the second half, sent shivers down my spine. The look in the eyes of O'Gara, O'Driscoll and O'Connell said it all - they didn't know what was happening never mind why they were fighting to come from behind in a game that should have been a given. These problems are not coaching related IMHO, there's something wrong but it's not leadership. No manager can make players drop balls or create as many stupid knock-ons as we have seen in recent times. Bad game plans, bad intelligence of other teams and similar, yes, these are leadership problems. The ability to catch a ball and throw it backwards, that's something very different.
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    Good points guys. I do think a simple, strong game plan would have given the boys focus and a natural leader would emerge. The hard hands would grow in confidence and soften, the forward balls would start going back. With no plan though you, on the field, begin to wonder what the point is catching and running.
 

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