Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

People are over reacting to Crowley's errors being pointed out. That takes nothing away form him in an otherwise excellent performance. All of his errors were just bad decisions and are easily fixed in a positive coaching environment which he has. And I think the main point many people are making is that his confidence and courage wasn't dampened by his mistakes. First 6N start away in France and he delivered a very accomplished performance. That is massive for Ireland going forward.

"It was a very encouraging performance from an inexperienced player at this level. In context I don't think it's overstating it to say it was an excellent performance but if he produced the same against England or Scotland I wouldn't be super thrilled" - is this not a complete contradiction?

I'd imagine most people would be delighted if he played to that level again? I know I would.

I think we might need similar performances from a lot of other players more than Crowley. In fact, this Crowley hysteria is already getting silly.

Pretty much to a man, nobody had a bad game in Marseille. In addition to Crowley, the particular standouts for me were McCarthy, Aki, Sheehan, Lowe, Doris and Beirne. Though only the former is filling the boots of a 120+ cap legend. So I wouldn't call it hysteria, more very enthusiastic optimism for what might lie ahead.

We'll need everyone on song again to beat England in Twickenham.

The (not so) great, Crowley v Sexton debate begins..

Actually the crowley criticism kind of crystalized for me.

If sexton was playing and we scored 5 tries, the assumption would be that we did that partially because of his presence. Whereas, we believe we partially did it last weekend despite Crowley's presence.

I'm absolutely sure if you go back to the start of sexton's reign he got the same treatment as crowley is getting. People judge things through the lens of their preconceptions.

I swear this is just baiting people to criticise Crowley? Virtually everyone has said he had a pretty good game with a few errors, deciding those errors are now successes has to be some form of rage bait. Why does everything have to be so hyperbolic? Can he not have just had a 6-7/10 game?

He genuinely had 4-5 big errors in the first half, it happens, he's a new 10.

I’ve a basic concept of rugby admittedly, but from my view his blocked kick, overcooked grubber and missed conversion are about all he done wrong all game? Seems to be getting stick for not a whole lot?

Some of his 'errors' were not 'bad decisions' at all

Kicking the ball dead over the dead ball line was a mis executed kick, so yes that's an error, but was it a bad decision? Well, what was he trying to achieve? When you're looking at a game as a game of strategy and moving assets around a pitch (which is what a great out half does) then sometimes you need to make low percentage plays in order to show your opponents that you're prepared to make those plays, and this changes how they defend against you

If you're playing a really conservative 10, you can ignore him as a direct attacking threat if he always moves the ball and rarely executes the kicks or long passes himself, and this means the defence can focus more on the support players and they'll have less space to run into

Its like in Poker, if you make it really obvious early in a tournament, that you're a 'loose' player, your opponents will play differently against you, so it's a good strategy to gamble on cards you're likely to lose early on, and show them early, in order that people will gamble more when you stay in a hand. If you only ever play the high percentage cards, then even when you get the pair of Aces, your opponents will fold to you and you'll not make any money and will lose plenty of hands that you would won if you had stayed in the game.

If there were really 4/5 big errors, then it shouldn't take much dissection

If there were 3 minor errors, then you might revise your analysis of his performance

TBH, on first viewing of lots of games, Its easy to get a misleading idea of how any particular player performed. Loads of 'experts' were saying Doris, for example had a quiet game but he was actually incredibly good, just not always doing the things that your eyes were immediately drawn to on the first, emotionally charged viewing.

Not really McCarthy had a good game and was praised, similarly Crowley had a good game with some minor errors, was mostly praised and 4 days later we are getting breakdown posts of how great he actually was and naked provincialism from one poster who is obsessed with Leinster and sexton.

This video will be the other way around