Rugby world cup post mortem

Fine fine margins

i probably sound harsh

The winning of the match was the line out maul with Kelleher held up

admittedly great defence from NZ but for me our hooker should have exercised better control at the back and planted the ball on the line

If he let Murray have it we'd have walked in a try. Look again at the fringe defence on the maul, Murray just had to flop over.

Never wanted us to win as much.. just fell short. That’s top class rugby. So much can come into winning and losing. We had some super play, some ok play, and some poor play; same as NZ. We lost by a single score..it was that tight.

Keeping sexton on for sentimental reasons was criminal. When he tried that chip pass you could tell he was gone. We needed fresh legs. But my god the errors they gave up. Shocking.

Not to mention Sam Cane. The shift he put in was incredible. Will have shut up some of the embarassing punditry comments about him on Off The Ball recently.

That's just your mentality and a lot of fans in a fairy land. It means very little in reality that teams of the past also lost in QF. It's just an anomaly. Anyone who says otherwise may as well believe in Peter Pan.

Not a rugby expert by any mean, but as a fan, its very frustrating to lose to an outfit that (despite not showing it) we're actually IMO considerably better than. By the time the next chance rolls round that won't be the case anymore, they'll have their act together and we'll be minus a number of generational players that won't be easily replaced with our small playing pool. Can only put it down to some mental thing on the big occasion why we didn't turn up last night. Really annoying that we didn't put them to to the sword. but hey ho, it is what it is, nobody died. Really hope SA or France do them in the final though.

We were beat last night by very small margins. It had nothing to do with our other past defeats in the World Cup. Non. Zilch. 4 fecking points after going down 13 níl.

We've talent coming through at underage. Retirements make opportunitys. Let's enjoy the journey.

I hope NZ go on to win it

People talking about a Six Nations GS feeling 'hollow' are just talking too soon.

Come the Six Nations we will be back in the land of hope and speculation.

A GS will feel just like they always feel.

If we didn't pick ourselves up and go again the soccer team supporters would never even get out of bed. They do, again and again and the rugby supporters will be no different.

I know nothing about rugby and all I watched of this RWC was the last 20 minutes of the game last night.

And one thing that I am noticing in this thread is that it's very like what we Mayo people say after an All Ireland final loss.

The consolation that it's small margins, which is true, but what I also notice is the idea that what happened in previous years has no bearing on what just happened.

I'll argue that it does.

What happened last night?

Ireland lost the game narrowly and the overall reaction was that NZ were just better, and Ireland were unlucky, and that they had a great tournament besides and there is always next time.

So because Ireland have always fallen at this hurdle, falling at it again is not that big a deal, the ground work for the disappointment has already been done by previous teams through the years

These guys are no different than the same guys in 1991.

So players come into the game knowing that losing now is nothing new, or special, or that they won't go down in history for losing now.

And I think that is in the players heads, somewhere.

Now look at it from the NZ point of view.

If they lost that match they would go down in history as the first NZ side to get knocked out at this stage, that would weight heavy on the players.

So what went before does have an effect, when a player is on that field looking for that something inside him to put in the extra effort but struggling to find it, somewhere inside him is also the knowledge that not finding it and losing now will not single him or the team out in the big picture of Irish RWC performances.

New Zealand lost in quarters in 2007 so would have been same as then. I see where you are coming from. of course what went before will play a role. natural but how do we change it? Thats the million dollar question....

Thats a bit OTT. Wouldnt say worst loss in history irish sport but yeah very disappointing.

So for next WC we will lose the following:

Earls, Sexton, Healy, Kilcoyne, Bealham, Herring, Beirne?(35), Furlong?(34), Lowe, McCloskey, Henshaw, Aki, Gibson Park, Murray, POM, Conan, JVDF

That a lot of players to replace over the next few years. The front row is going to see huge change

Yep well the team will be in transition. Younger talent needs to be brought through. We're going to lose games for as long as it takes to bring through a new group of players. It's the same in all team sport though. Players retire.

Clear out of who and replace them with who?

What else would you change.

At least 4 years ago. Please stop. thats just ridiculous and cant be backed up with anything close to reality.

he was that good and the others development was stunted by their own ability as much/more than JS

A golden opportunity lost. Get past NZ and the semi final was a gift at this level.

In 4 years time England will be back. NZ will be better, Wales should improve and Scotland are improving too. Australia won't be a mess either. It will be so much harder to win.

We'll not enter the next world Cup as No. 1 and favourites.

The annoying thing is that it just wasn't blind faith - Ireland truly had a good chance of being world champions.

However, they really were not at the races during this tournament and got lucky against SA whose kicking was dreadful.

Now ye lad can have a pop at me as I am a blow in and don't post around here very often, if at all on boards anymore.

But I think Ireland most especially Farrell and his backroom team got things wrong in this world cup.

This is not a great All Blacks team and this was Ireland's best ever team, World No.1 on 17 game winning streak.

We were always told it was because we had lack of depth and that when we lost front line players the other guys weren't good enough as reason for losing 1/4 finals and yes it was true to a huge degree in certain WC where we lost key players in tough matches beforehand.

But who was missing for last night?

Ryan, although he wasn't doing great anyway, and Hansen probably shouldn't have been even on the pitch.

We are supposed to have strength in depth so please explain why it was almost a full 1st team against Romania.

Romania FFS.

You don't get SA, NZ or France doing that.

The team against Romania were:

15 Hugo Keenan, 14 Keith Earls, 13 Garry Ringrose, 12 Bundee Aki, 11 James Lowe, 10 Johnny Sexton (c), 9 Jamison Gibson-Park; 1 Andrew Porter, 2 Rob Herring, 3 Tadhg Furlong, 4 Joe McCarthy, 5 James Ryan, 6 Tadhg Beirne, 7 Peter O'Mahony, 8 Caelan Doris.

Earls, Herring and McCarthy were the only 2nd string.

Yeah play Sexton because he is just back, but FFS it was Romania.

Then against Tonga we had a few changes simply because guys were back from injuries.

15 Hugo Keenan, 14 Hansen, 13 Garry Ringrose, 12 Bundee Aki, 11 James Lowe, 10 Johnny Sexton (c), 9 C. Murray, 1 Andrew Porter, 2 R. Kelleher, 3 Tadhg Furlong, 4 Tadhg Beirne, 5 James Ryan, 6 Peter O'Mahony, 7 J. Van Der Flier, 8 Caelan Doris.

Not enough rotation.

Last night a lot of guys just looked tired and well below par.

The summation has to be that Ireland don't know how to play in tournaments.

Some will say ah great we got within 4 points of All Blacks and beat the Boks so we did well.

That is settling.

We scraped past the Boks who if they had a half decent kicker would have beaten us.

The lineout was a mess and it was not resolved or even a real plan B go to in place for the All Blacks.

Yeah yeah people could argue that the gap wasn't there, the ref wasn't doing his job, etc, but there was still a fair bit of non functioning.

Then as for the game itself last night, Hanson was played when he looked doubtful, Sexton was left on the pitch when a change might have brought something different.

Maybe he was left on for sentiment, but sentiment has no place in professional sport.

Just ask O'Gara.

Maybe ranking points in 6 nations and autumn internationals should be sacrificed in order to built better strength in depth?

Being World's no.1 means nothing it you can't get anywhere in a WC.