Ireland - Scotland

[darkside lightside]

D4 - quite, and your last sentence is the telling one...

[Article]

Agree with D4...but the furure is bright U20s showed the depth is there..some shadow performances tonite mainly from Management IMO and the Leaders.

[bogboy]

Two things were wrong about the Irish fans view prior to the match

Firstly we underrated Scotland because they were beaten by Italy away from home totally ignoring the fact they nearly beat Wales in Cardiff and held England to a draw in Scotland ( but of course all those teams are crud -- because we beat them) forgetting we we won even though we had very little possession or territory in most of those games. Which of course identifies our second mistake we have over rated ourselves.

Scotland have a decent pack of forwards and an excellent kicking outhalf the scottish forwards also came into the match knowing exactly how the Irish line out operates they all ( scottish forwards ) play in the magners and had the benefit of watching Irelands previous games -- to beat us they had to disrupt the line out -- they knew it and did it.

it wasn't that Ireland throw the ball badly or the jumpers were failing -- it was because Scotland had done their homework.

The scrum penalties are basically down to who the ref is watching at the time but if you thought for one moment the Irish scrum would have it easy then you seriously underestimate the scottish front row.

In hindsight I think the biggest mistake of the day was DKs failure to bring on Cullen early in the second half he being the lightest second row and the easiest to lift and make safe the lineout.

My major conclusion from the match is not so much that Scotland won it--- but that Ireland lost it ie if we'ed kicked the penalties we would have won even if it was to by virtue of a dodgy try or two -- but the fact remains Ireland are playing with a couple of players who are past their best and find it hard to play to Internationals in 10 days.

[AndyB]

Don't think anyone came out of the game with a lot of credit (Scotland excepted of course!).

Gameplan was totally wrong in the first 20 mins of headless chicken rugby.
Scrums were under pressure all day - shows how bad a prop Buckley is that he didn't get on until the end.
Lineouts - Rory has to take some of the blame - but not all of it. The Scots seemed to know where the throw was going and were getting men up in front of our jumpers esp. at the back. Then Rory started to overthrow and crooked throw. We needed less ball to the tail and more simple ones to 2.
O'Leary passing was poor again - once he hit healy (I think) in the face from 4 metres away.
Sexton - needs to up his kicking rate - his work for the first try was excellent.
Murphy showed why he lost his place - his attempt at tackling Beattie was pathetic - he didn't even slow him up a wee bit.

Backrow were 2nd all afternoon.

Overall a bad day at the office all round - but hats off to the Scots, they should have beaten Wales and could have won against England.


A last thought - I thought the worst performance of the day was by Kaplan (bad for both sides) until I saw Bryce Lawrence in the France England game.

[fermain]

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thanks to colinh

[Snipe Watson]

the furure is bright U20s showed the depth is there.

I hope you are right. We have a tradition of great players and teams at U20/U21 but they don't make the next step.

[Ardglass2]

So complacent. We tried to blow them away in the first 15 mins and when that didn't work we had nothing to fall back on.

Totally undercooked in my opinion - missed tackles, Scotland broke the gain line so many times. From 1 to 12 no one turned up - except possibly Wallace.

Hayes is a busted flush. Healy was mauled. Best had a mere, D'Arcy missed more tackles than he made and Ferris probably had his worst game in an Ireland shirt. Was Heaslip on the pitch ? Sexton needs to sort out his kicking otherwise we will have to play ROG

For the first time Kidney needs to put his hand up and say I screwed up we were ill prepared.

In truth you cannot keep winning with 40% or less possession. We did it against Wales and England but eventually it will catch up with you - it did big time yesterday. Without a steady lineout we were clueless

[Rooster]

Ireland thought they had the right to win but Scotland wanted to win.