Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

And funny enough France arent labelled as bottle jobs despite failing in a worse fashion!

What can Ireland do to learn how to deal with the pressure of a quarter final of a world cup?

And the award for the most predictable reply to a post goes to......clsmooth. Congratulations. 😊

I don't. That's my point. But you do know that.

This time around, I felt they played within themselves. Could have been the plan. There's very little between the top 4.

Well, I agree in that brushing over the issue seems to be the preferred method. You can even see it on threads like this. Discuss anything but the choking issue. As I've said before, you can understand why this is done. It's a difficult topic to acknowledge, nevermind discuss.

As for getting the IRFU's attention, we could type a strongly worded email. Or what are your ideas?

They also think that what’s discussed here is in anyway relevant to what is discussed behind closed doors.

"In sports, choking is the failure of a person, or persons, to act or behave as anticipated or expected"

Before the game, everyone was saying we were the better team and would win by 10 points. Then we gave by far our worst performance of the tournament in our most important game

I think people should read Neil3030's post carefully and they will see what people are talking about. Some players played with fear, no freedom, basic errors, missed kicks, legs going etc. Clear signs of not handling the pressure. We played differently than we have for the previous 2 years. We didn't cope with the pressure, it's as simple as that. Here's Neil3030's post which gives the stats to back this up:

I went back and had a quick look at some attacking stats, ranging from the 2nd test in New Zealand in the 2022 Summer tour, up until and including the QF loss to New Zealand last month. Respectfully, I am not including games against Italy or lower-ranked opposition. I am only looking at games Sexton started.

New Zealand 12 - Ireland 23: Sexton had 27 passes and 2 runs for 30 metres gained.

New Zealand 22 - Ireland 32: Sexton had 12 passes and 1 run for 16 metres gained.

Ireland 19 - South Africa 16: Sexton had 16 passes and 2 runs for 4 metres gained.

Wales 10 - Ireland 34: Sexton had 18 passes and 8 runs for 23 metres gained.

Ireland 32 - France 10: Sexton had 22 passes and 5 runs for 68 metres gained.

Scotland 7 - Ireland 22: Sexton had 27 passes and 5 runs for 20 metres gained.

Ireland 29 - England 16: Sexton had 27 passes and 9 runs for 47 metres gained.

South Africa 8 - Ireland 13: Sexton had 16 passes and 6 runs for 9 metres gained.

Sexton's "pass:run" ratio fell between 3:1 at its most run-heavy (v England in the 6N), and 14:1 at its most pass heavy (first win in NZ). I like this statistic because it normalizes for the amount of times we were actually in possession and not looking to kick.

His metres-gained per carry, for me, is the key. Even into his late thirties, and controlling for outliers, he was good for 4-5m on a carry, which is outstanding. No out-half will come close to this running threat at that age. Especially in tests at that level, and making that many carries per game (robust average of ~4 carries per game).

Defenses absolutely had to take his running threat seriously, and with those runs coming at a robust-average ratio 5:1 across those games, it was a threat that required constant focus by defenses.

Now let's look at the data from the QF loss:

Ireland 24 - New Zealand 28: Sexton had 73 passes and 1 run for 6 metres gained.

Even if you adjust down the 73 passes (at least 37 of them would have occurred in that final drive), this makes 36 passes to 1 run, or a ratio of 36:1. This is two-and-a-half times more than his most pass-heavy game since Summer 2022, and 7 times more than his robust average over that same period. And some might argue that you should not adjust the 73 passes...

But I honestly think you can discount activity in the final drive, and still conclude that Sexton's running threat was practically null for the entire game. We were a pass-heavy and predictable attack. And this policy deviated drastically from our effective performances against top tier opposition in the 18 months previous. Whether it was burn-out, injury, nerves, fatigue, who knows. You will have a hard time convincing me that it was a deliberate tactical decision that they thought would win the game.

Now, you can justly argue that we were nonetheless a Beauden Barrett miracle defensive effort away from reaching a semi-final. So I am not concluding that Sexton's overall performance lost us the game. On another day, we do get that try and probably close out the game. (And probably win the RWC....).

But in the last 18 months, we offered a two-pronged attack and won most games by more than a score (i.e., clear of the influence of these Barrett-like freak moments).

In the game where the data show that we drastically departed from this, we lost.

Note 1: What I mean by "robust average" is taking the exponent of the average of the log transformed data. It controls for outliers, akin to a median, but it's more granular. @jacothelad, I'm sure, can confirm that this is the appropriate measure with sparse and skewed data).

Note 2: Click the scores if you want to look at the underlying data and DYOR (finding matches on that ESPN site is a pain; you're welcome).

What helps Leinster must have some benefit to a likely Leinster-heavy Ireland squad. It's probably the case that all other national sides are looking closely at SA's successes & thinking 'how do we get that into our setup'.

You'd hope it would help but a successful Leinster and Munster hasn't helped in the past at World Cups. I suppose we'll see but that calibre of individual should be involved with our national team in my opinion.

I have and I have previously thanked you for your excellent analysis. Watching the game, it was obvious to me and others that we played within ourselves, some would say we played with fear. It's easy to dismiss a view like that, especially if you don't want to believe it. But with the stats you provided, along with the basic errors, missed kicks etc, a clear argument for nerves getting the better of the players can be made.

I'm not saying this is your view. I'm saying the stats you provided back up that view.

I don't recall everyone saying we'd win by 10. Maybe age is getting the best of me.

The data is significant. It shows that the team played within themselves. I think it's fair to say that strategy wise we fell short. Looking at Sexton's stats prior to this, it's likely the game plan was adjusted.