Questioned in recent weeks, accused of being a team in serious decline, players being told in the media they were past their sell by date, line out coach and best lock in Irish history told he was shyte at his job. Then we get the best Irish performance since RWC 2023 and one as unpredicted as smashing France in Marseilles in 2024. Australia absolutely failed to deal with the weather conditions and coughed up a lot of easy possession in the red zone but this was the Irish team giving Andy Farrell and Paul O’Connell a performance they’ve been owed for a while. Despite the absence of lions Joe McCarthy, Van Der Flier, Ringrose and Keenan the team was rejigged into a cohesive unit and its clear there is more depth in the squad than has been thought for a couple of years, players like Henshaw and Hansen look reinvented whilst McCloskey looks to be the most unlucky player in recent history in only getting short stints. Hopefully the team can match this performance again next week and hopefully the BOK evolution hasn’t moved on too much since last summer’s drawn series.
Adrian Hickey
Australia still in shock after the Lynagh/Ioane show last week I reckon. When our very sick, reintroduced fb Mack can help himself to a hattrick out of position says quite a bit. Ronan not cutting the mustard the last bit. Gus on bench at hooker next week to back up Dano or he has to do 80. Kudos to Sambo for the drop btw
Bert McLoughlin
A lot more cohesive this week and apart from poor discipline in the 1st half we should have kept their score lower
Kettlebell Padawen
Sam’s best game in green. Australia were shocking
David Ryle
Sam should have shut his detractors up but no they’re still nit picking his performance.
Rob Gardner (via BlueSky)
JPG could give anywhere between 1-15 a good go.
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Sometimes we love rugby because it’s not simple, but sometimes this backfires.
Pass to Barrett is forward, so he’s offside and not in play, therefore technically he’s obstructing beirne. How this was deemed a yellow baffles me, a red makes me lose faith.
Ireland simply weren’t good enough but my god the quality of officiating was dire.
Tommy O’Brien held back and then deemed to have knocked on, madness.
We can’t be this bad again but world rugby need to do something to get better refs
Cormac Mannion
What exactly do Goodman and O’Connell offer as coaches? Zero line breaks and multiple lineout turnovers tonight. Not the first time either. Our lineout has been muck for several years
Yvonne Dowd
Shit!! Red card?? ‘Dangerous tackle’??
Christy O’Connor
Some serious questions to be asked. Lineout has been poor since the last world cup and NZ were missing 2 of their locks.
Crowley made some poor decisions in the 2nd half but I’d still have him ahead of Sam for the moment. Red card was ridiculous, Beirne was standing still, so how can they say a high degree of danger
Lorcán Murphy
Do we need a change of lineout coach? And does Andy have the balls to ditch POC? It hasn’t functioned the past 2 years and is a key component of our attack. No lineout, no attack
Brian Connell
Ireland … dare I say it … undercooked??
Pearse O Donnell
Ireland were dazzled by the All Black’s footwork.
Those fluorescent boots would frighten the living shīte out of any opponent.
A masterstroke from Razor.🤣🤣
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12. Charlie Tector 11. Andrew Osborne 10. Harry Byrne 9. Luke McGrath (c)
1. Jerry Cahir 2. John McKee 3. Rabah Slimani 4. Brian Deeny
5. Diarmuid Mangan 6. Max Deegan 7. Scott Penny 8. James Culhane
16. Bobby Sheehan 17. Alex Usanov 18. Andrew Sparrow 19. RG Snyman
20. Alex Soroka 21. Will Connors 22. Fintan Gunne 23. Caspar Gabriel
ZEBRE : 15 Lorenzo Pani 14 Mirko Belloni 13 Giulio Bertaccini 12 Marco Zanon 11 Albert Einstein Batista 10 Giacomo Da Re 9 Thomas Dominguez
1 Muhamed Hasa 2 Giovanni Quattrini 3 Matteo Nocera 4 Franco Carrera 5 Leonard Krumov (c) 6 Giacomo Ferrari 7 Samuele Locatelli 8 David Odiase
16 Tommaso Di Bartolomeo 17 Paolo Buonfiglio 18 Marcos Gallorini 19 Giacomo Milano 20 Giovanni Licata 21 Migael Prinsloo 22 Martin Roger Farias 23 Luca Morisi
Needless to say it was a tough wrap, and having already determined that Saturday’s Croke Park disaster reminded me of the Northampton semifinal earlier in the year, we had the added realizations that not only did we host Zebre the following weekend back then as well, but Hugo Gordon also featured on that Saints wrap pod!!!! To be fair, he did a really good job both times highlighting what went wrong while still affording due praise to our southern cousins this time.
Must have been tough for JGP to do an interview so soon after the Croke Park disaster, yet being one of the senior players in the squad it was good to get a sense of where the group is at as they embark on one of the most critical November series for Ireland in a number of years.
Sorry to heap that much pressure on it, but I believe it to be true. After two Six Nations Championships in a row, despite winning another 4 out of 5 this year it was considered a disappointment and with these being the last test matches before the RWC2027 draw, ranking points will be essential, but also it’s about restoring some confidence that we can take forward to the upcoming Six Nations and beyond.
The quote really does give us something to look out for in the Chicago test, we’ll see what it might be.
HARPIN' ON RUGBY 