Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Answer me this. Would you ever see the main public broadcasting service in NZ, SA, France or England, label failure to get past the last 8 as "good enough"?

The attempts by the mainstream media to spin our latest World Cup failure as some valiant, heroic effort is comical and embarrassing

I think there is a real lack of analysis on why we lost the NZ game in the media.

However, it was undoubtably a successful year overall.

Not on the ones i listen to. There has been more analysis on random urc games than on why we lost vs new zealand on the 42 podcast for example.

It says he’s not going till august

I'd rather they labeled failure as failure. Of course I'm not advocating for personal abuse of the players, but don't try to dress up failure as success, as they have been doing. And maybe the fact that the NZ team were actually criticised after 2007 gave them motivation to succeed in 2011, which they did. Not one Irish player or coach has gotten any criticism in the media after their failure at the World Cup. So why should they aim to do better in 2027? They'll be treated as heroes no matter what.

All during the World Cup when Ireland won it was always said with the "but we have done this before"

After the World Cup the majority I listened to said at least we put up a fight in the qtr, had a great win v SA but in the end we have got no further than before and this hurt more because we felt we could have wont he competition. So it was a failure and no other way to see it.

But we probably finally got the prep right for the World Cup but some tweaks instead of a complete overhaul whcih we had post most other World Cup

Oh God no! Please!!

We're on to Australia 6N

I mean leg width to lose a game is not analysis. That’s the thing. If we had won that game by 3 points, the analysis would not have been we would have lost if his leg was wider.

I didn’t say critical. I said analysis of why we lost beyond ‘well it was close and sometimes you lose by small margins’. There was lots of interesting things to talk about that were just not talked about. Like NZ mirroring our style and our abandonment of the game plan we used on tour as the game progressed. How NZ won the kicking battle. Exactly how did they change up their tactics?

Every podcast was just ‘shrug, small margins’ basically. If we had won by 3, it would have been a lot more in depth.

I don’t pay, fair enough. I listen to the 42 and i swear they have spent longer on urc games than actual analysis of strategy in that game. Kinsella was extremely reticent of saying anything that could even be construed as negative.

I get that to an extent but i don’t want to hear how we are terrible. I just wanted some chat about how NZ changed up their strategy.

Perhaps they do, if the captain is going around saying shite like "we lost, but we won". No, they just lost.

Maybe they actually believe it when the media and fans tell them they're heroes, regardless of the result, which without fail, is failure. 10 World Cups, 10 failures to get past the quarter finals. But according to RTE, that's "good enough"

I thought Ireland were average in the qf. They failed once again at the crucial stage. It's mind-boggling sometimes. The try off the line out was poor. Still, we could have won.