Rugby world cup post mortem

So much focus on Sexton, when I'd put the larger factors contributing to our loss being poor play by our scrumhalves and the pack not performing. We let NZ dictate the physical battle in a way we didn't in the summer series. JGP really had a mare of a game unfortunately, some of the key moments of failure for us directly stemmed from him, which I hate to say.

Games like this are ones I wish we could hear from the team what the plan was going into the match. The cross kicks were an obvious tactic, that we were close to pulling off, but why have a forward looking to field them over a back? Why be so aggressive without an advantage and end up wasting field position?

We played poor. Park was poor. Doris wasn't very good. Imo and the back row failed to get on top. Factor in the line out pressure and the scrum problems and, there's the end result.

How do we not recognize it as "an in game decision"? What does that even mean?

"based on what the coach thought was best"...the whole point being made was that people disagree with his "thought" based on the evidence before our eyes during the game.

Why is it arrogance to propose that AF decided that it was less risky to stay with Sexton. Its always easier to stay with the incumbent, but that doesnt make it the right call every time.

What about the fact that others such as Ronan O'Gara have said it was the wrong call? https://www.planetrugby.com/news/ronan-ogara-believes-blunted-johnny-sexton-should-have-been-taken-off

Are you so arrogant to believe you know better than one of the best out halves we have ever had who is also currently a top tier coach? Shame on you.

Finally, who is going further than disagreeing? Are you somehow suggesting that posters here are waging some sort of war against AF in real life? If so I suggest you take a step back and realise that this is a discussion board and what people are doing is discussing the game and the decisions made and not made. Thats the whole point of the place chief!

2 cents podcast is hardly cutting edge analysis. He basically just reports what happened in the match and very very rarely makes any judgement calls on whether the referee or management, or player decisions were correct or not

Which is fine, but we alreadly know what happened in the match. What is interesting, is why those things happened, were there any mistakes made, and whether we can learn from any of those mistakes?

We can all point to the dropped balls or botched tries and say 'well, they shouldn't have given away that penalty or should have passed that ball better..." but I think the players are not the reason we lost the game. The coach built the team, and the team the coach built lost the game, and a big part of that, was trying to see out a RWC QF with a 38 year old Out Half who was IMO, exhausted by 55 mins in, and then not replacing him for the final 20 minutes when we could have had multiple opportunities to go and win the game with a fresher and more impactful out half on the pitch.

I called him on this months ago. That relying on Sexton to play every minute of the important games would cost us the RWC. I was accused of all sorts of nasty things for making that call.

I fail to see the relevance to my post

Im positive if you check every thread for the last 10 years you will find people posting that sexton should be taken off no matter how he is playing.

It probably took you longer to type out the fact tat you 'didn't bother reading the rest of my post' than it would have taken you to actually read it.

You are claiming

If that doesn't smack of arrogance, I don't know what does.

Does it dawn on you at all that he may have had other reasons, like some of the one's outlined?

People have said emphatically, we lost the match because of it...not 'suggesting it'. Here's yourself:

*The meaning of 'having to make in-game decisions' BTW is that he wasn't sitting on his sofa or on the sideline, he was making decisions on the spot which had consequences. So maybe, just maybe he had more to consider than what he was gonna write on a thread on boards.ie.🙄

“Watching that quarter final back, Johnny Sexton was borderline miraculous to still be on the field late on but he was blunted by fatigue, so even for a change of pace Crowley was surely the play.

We don’t know how the Munster man might manage the knockout moments because there is no point of reference for Ireland beyond the quarter final. But it was surely time to find out.”

I guess that reads differently to you than it does it me?

And I'm not hanging onto anyones words, the argument has been that we are just arm chair "supporters" who should let the professionals do their job. This is an example of one top tier coach who also happened to play in the position in question. I think there is some weight to what he has to say on the matter?

you can’t even read your own posts correctly.

You had a swipe at the ‘old guy’ and used the word ‘and’ to link him to the loss.

Stop being dis-ingenuous. Read the thread for the other reasons,.

Except the number based on World Cup before this is the team that won didn’t rotate, outside the odd non essential group game

The layout of the tournament for Ireland was the last warm up game was the Romania group game, then we had Samoa, SA, Scotland so really the Samoa game was the rest game but the Romania game showed the team was not ready and thats why they got started v Samoa. Majority of players got swapped early in second half in this game. Then South Africa…all guns blazing….then Scotland which ended up over at half time with the main players swapped out again

If the games or group was different I would expect more rotation but to most,including me, it made sense.

Compare to SA for instance who had sent a squad to one game in the rugby championship while keeping another squad at home for another rugby championship game, totally different exercise plan and game plan

at start of competition the NH team would say the biggest issue they had was the team was coming from holidays while SH was coming from intensive games, that hasn’t changed

Someone pointed out that the SA 23 all ended up on similar minutes.

One of the legacies of participation in the tournament I reckon. Fear of getting turned over by a minnow or in a game we should win.

I agreed with the squad pick for the Tonga game etc so it would be churlish to criticise now.

Something to work on for future tournaments for sure - trust the squad more.

So now we did lose because Sexton played the whole game?

Pick one position and stick with it?

He simply wasn’t out on his feet. That is an exaggeration. We were making ground and Sexton was with the move right through the 30+ phases.

If you are not saying we lost don’t say that we played the old guy for 80 minutes * AND we lost, I guess.

* can’t be bothered going back to quote your deprecating remark but that’s the gist of it.

Greenbo said it here:

He might want to step away from that remark now, but he definitely typed it and pressed 'post comment'.

Exaggeration again. Not remotely the whole thread, only since people got upset about their exaggerated reasoning being called out.

We lost for many reasons and to try and reduce it to one person's input or lack of it, is wrong.

I mean, we could hang Kelleher out to dry for getting white line fever after the team (including Sexton) had done massive work to get the ball across the line if we want to point at individuals.