Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

It's up to Farrell to be ruthless and make a change in his coaching team.

Eddie Jones does it regularly.

Pivac got rid of his defence coach who he brought with him from the Scarlets.

Farrell already did it bringing POC in and the improvement was evident.

I know Catt is his mate and they worked together before but his record with England and Italy is poor and our attack has gone nowhere in his 2 years here.

I said back in 2020 that he missed a trick not brining Lancaster in. I understand that the dynamic there may be an issue but it's up to Farrell to make a smart recruitments to his coaching team because the buck stops with him. Nigel Carolan would have been a shrewd appointment too. Mike Predergast possibly.

Strongly disagree.

Scotland don't posses attacking talent that we don't.

They are however, well coached by Townsend with structures and attacking patterns to allow them to utilise their skill and pace to create overlaps and break down defences.

Having gamebreakers alone isn't enough. They need to get the ball in space. If Hogg and VDM played for us they'd look average and wouldn't have been picked for the Lions.

Put James Lowe on the Scotland team and he'd have been in South Africa last summer.

How we score tries is only reflective of how we are able to generate those opportunities. If our attacking game as a whole isn’t working then we are going to struggle to generate opportunities in open play. And that will hamper our backs ability to score tries. That means we are more likely to be reliant on set piece like line out, which would likely mean more reliance on kicking for territory that we can’t win in open play, be that through kicking in open play or from penalties etc. That means forwards scoring more tries.

We don’t “favour” our forwards scoring tries like that. We are reliant on it because of issues elsewhere in our game.

We're averaging about 33 points per match so far in 2021 (27 points if you take the USA match out of the equation) so we are hardly toothless in attack. That's without an all signing and all dancing backline (we don't have one at the moment). I don't think we're that far away at all to be honest.

Yes but so can Henshaw, Ringrose, Stockdale, Earls and Lowe.

They all can but don't do it that often in green(Henshaw aside but that's from centre).

Again largely down to tactics but wide recently is not where our strengths in the team are(attacking wise). Could change and hopefully will as competition is getting better

I'm not comparing us to Scotland. I'm comparing our coaches to theirs. If we had Townsend coaching our attack instead of Catt we'd be a much better team. Surely you agree?

Scotland's finishes are down to the fact that bar Italy, they have the worst players. Us, France, England and Wales just have better players than them, that's why they finish where they do. The fact that they regularly come 4th and 3rd is actually impressive as they should really be 5th based on talent.

Ah here, you seriously don't think Townsend would do a better job as our attack coach than Mike Catt? He won a Pro12 with Glasgow playing scintillating rugby and he's done a pretty good job with Scotland who also play great rugby and has gotten some brilliant results with them.

We don't have one sole game breaker but we have a much better set of backs than Scotland. Townsend would undoubtably get a better tune out of them than Catt has.

Where do you think Catt was on Gatland's shortlist for attack coach in the summer? I'd be surprised if he was even on it.

Didn't Ian McKinley say they didn't really have any idea what Mike Catt's plan or philosophy was.

I’m not sure using the Lions is a favorable example to use for Townsend as an attack coach to be honest.

Scotland have to play it through the backs because their forwards aren't good enough to do anything else.

Plus they have Finn Russell who's totally unsuited to any sort of structured game plan.

I stand by that 100%. I think he's a way better rugby player than VDM.

But I only remember us creating one try scoring opportunity for Lowe during the 6 Nations, and it was very close to being a spectacular finish v France.

How many chances do Scotland create for VDM? How many chances does Lowe get at Leinster?

Again, I'm not saying Scotland are better than us or we need to copy Scotland and I know we're better than them at most things. But that doesn't mean that there aren't things Scotland do better than us, and when it comes to attacking, Scotland are miles better than us and the numbers back that up.

And I'm well aware that Lowe is very limited defensively and I wouldn't pick him personally, but there are no denying his attacking abilities. But we aren't able to utilise those abilities.

Naturally, when a teams attack is poor, the focus will be on the attack coach, even if he isn't 100% to blame. And Farrell isn't going anywhere now, so it's up to him to make a change there.

Lowe does tend to get blame when he doesn’t deserve it too aloooof. He was exposed when playing for Ireland, but that then created a bit of a narrative. The Scarlets try is a perfect example of that.

People say that he made a defensive error that led to their first, but I don’t think he did. We got our numbers and spacing badly wrong. See below 5 on 3. Scarlets pushed across to the short side and we didn’t react. Ringrose had to push up on Williams (12) meaning Scarlets still had 3 men (maybe 2 I suppose as Costelow wasn’t much of a threat) for Lowe to deal with. Lowe decided to try and cut off the outside channel but Ringrose wasn’t able to prevent the offload, which was nicely done.

Lowes defence actually looks to have improved this season. He was quite good there vs Glasgow. But there’s a big step up from that to Test rugby.

Did you read my post?

I acknowledged that Lowe is a bad defender and said I wouldn't pick him. This isn't me championing Lowe or calling for his inclusion. It's me pointing out how Scotland get the best out of their attacking talent and we don't. But VDM is a renowned poor defender too.

And I know we're better at defence than Scotland. I literally said we're better than them at most things. I'm not advocating for us to copy Scotland.

I don't understand how VDM's try v England is relevant. It was a great finish, he's a very good player. But as a Leinster fan, if you offered me VDM in exchange for Lowe I'd tell you to piss off

My point was, regardless of Lowe's defensive limitations of which we are all well aware, we didn't get anywhere near the best out of his attacking abilities.

I think Molony was too tight to the ruck tbh. He couldn’t cover Williams and so Ringrose had to commit there. Drifting wasn’t really and option for him, even though he sort of did anyway. He makes a half tackle on Williams but it doesn’t stick. I can’t see him being able to push off that tbh. And with Costelow out the back and both Nichol and McNicholl outside I don’t see any win there for Lowe no matter what he does. If anything, had Ringrose committed fully to Williams then it may have worked. Keenan could have covered if they had drifted but I’d back Scarlets to score in those positions either way tbh. They’re too good at those.

Stockdale would have killed for this level of "micro-analysis" - or indeed, any degree of analysis - of tries conceded when he was involved. The narrative when he was on the pitch, post 2018, was just "he's rubbish, he can't defend". Getting slated for being beaten one on one by Cheslin Kolbe and so on, with zero concern for how well any team played against us or how they created opportunities. People messaging him telling him to kill himself.

The idea that Lowe gets a raw deal in terms of people picking over his defence is nonsense, frankly.