Italy V Ireland Match thread

Lowe should have caught it, but it was still a bad pass.

Would like to know where the hyperbole about Ross Byrne was over the last few weeks?

I think you are being very generous. For the disallowed Lowe try he does a pop pass to Aki who then frees Doris to break the line, there are two more passes to get the ball to Lowe. For the Ryan try he doesn’t touch the ball at all in the phase and it’s Aki again whos pass sets Lowe free to set up the try. His best attacking involvement is in the Keenan try where does a lovely backdoor pass to Hansen who reacts brilliantly to put Aki free. The two involvements for the Aki try are pretty straightforward, the first is a simple ship pass to Henderson that actually puts him on the back foot but Henderson reacts brilliantly with a quick offload to Kelleher to get go forward ball. On the next phase Ryan is the first receiver and he gives a nice backdoor pass to Byrne who follows up with another backdoor pass to McCloskey who gives a flat pass to VDF to set up the try. For the Hansen try Byrne again has no involvement. For the disallowed Aki try you mentioned he was instrumental in, his first involvement is to be second receiver off another nice backdoor pass from Ryan, he then pops a pass to Henderson who is tackled. On the second phase he is first receiver and gives a nice short pass to Hansen who is unmarked and he puts Aki free. For the second Hansen try he isn’t involved in the final phase. His primary role in attack was to give simple pop passes to players outside him, occasionally he gave backdoor passes, he didn’t give a single offload. I can only think of one occasion where he gave a pass that ended up breaking the line and that was to Hansen, who was unmarked, for the disallowed Aki try. I’m not sure you could say he unpicked the Italy defence, Aki was the key man in most of the line breaks with Lowe, Hansen, Murray and McCoskey each popping up to make the crucial pass at different times.

Defensively he was poor. For the first Italy try he is caught in two minds covering the backfield and makes the wrong read and ends up unnecessarily doubling up on a tackle with Keenan which leaves a gap for Italy to score in the next phase. For Italys second try it’s a mix up between Aki and Byrne that causes the intercept, Aki throws a no look pass so is primarily to blame but Byrne looks a step behind where he should be on a pre planned move. Byrne missed a tackle on the Menoncello break where he got absolutely burned which leads to Italy making 20 metres off the carry and a kick which puts Casey under pressure and gives Italy 3 points. He ended with six tackles made and two missed.

I’d say this game illustrated why he was left out in the cold for so long. Offensively Byrne takes very few risks and relies heavily on players outside him to make the key pass to create a linebreak. He is extremely limited athletically at this level and offers absolutely no running threat. Defensively he is a minus. Carbury is as good a facilitator as Byrne but offers a far superior running and offload threat and is a better defender. Crowley will make far more errors with ball in hand than Byrne but will also make things happen himself, and we’ll as being a far superior athlete and defender.

I do think you are being very charitable in your description of the passes! For the Lowe try I don’t think that Byrne released Aki into space, he gave a simple short pass to Aki who was 5 metres behind the gainline. Aki then took the ball to the line and released VDF in contact. Did Byrne play a role in a well worked backline move? Yes. Would I expect any international front row forward to be able to make that same pass? Yes. Most of the examples of him unpicking the Italian defense you gave are mundane functional attacking contributions. In what was an open game at times it’s a pretty underwhelming highlight real.

Athletically you don’t need a wingers pace at 10 but it’s nice when you can offer some running threat.

I think he was poor defensively today and had a role in 17 of Italys points via missed tackles, poor decisions and a misread. He may be a better defender in the URC but International is a big step up and it’s always extra difficult if you have a gap athletically. He was one missed tackle vs three made against France as well.

I think dropping Carbury has been a bit of a strange move by Farrell and based on today I hope it’s one he reverses for the World Cup. I don’t really see anything that Byrne offers at this level that Carbury doesn’t. I think the debate should be between Crowley and Byrne. Like you say Byrne may be the better out and out 10 atm but Crowley covers 12 and 15 very well and can change a game coming off a bench, rather than manage it.

Byrne has certainly improved over the last twelve months. I'm happy with him and I think the more games and experience he gets the better he'll get.

Conan is a fine player but Doris is a better 8 and it's not even close. Somebody said during the match that they should switch Doris and Conan and I fully agree with that.

As regards our performance today. We kicked the ball back to them a couple of times when we had the opportunity to go for touch. Those were stupid decisions because Italy are at their best counter attacking.

Ireland had a lot of missed tackles too which isn't normal.

Overall I don't agree that it was a good performance. It was just okay.

That was Byrnes 3rd start? He wasn't great, he wasn't poor. Carberry was dropped because he's awful. 37 caps and he still isn't getting the job done.

Munster fans calling for Carberry to be moved out of the 10 shirt , not so long ago. Hymmn

I think they'll beat Wales!!! That's delicious if it happens.

Objectively, they should hammer Wales. They are patently a better team at the moment, and I could see them beating Scotland too. It would not shock me if the tournament finished with them being the toughest team we face.

There does come a point where going back further makes no sense.

Whatever our issues were yesterday, attack was low down the list.

More concerning was the loss of defensive shape, and if that's attributable to the changes in personnel, then we need to work harder to get everyone up to speed. Far too many gaps and dog legs.

I wonder what would previous RWC winning teams have put on Italy yesterday and would the game have been in the balance midway through the second half.

Before the game I said we'd probably get the BP win and we did but I really didn't see us being torn to shreds in defence and at times finding the Italy defence line difficult to break. Even with all the changes we should have done better