England v Ireland. Twickenham. Sat 9th Mar, 16:45. RTE2

You mean the France game from round 1? I thought we played well enough that game but France were about as bad as I can ever remember. Played right into our hands and were down a man.

We haven't been playing badly or anything. I just think we have been leaning heavily on our organisation and structures this tournaments. We got dragged into a game we didn't want to play today and were only just about beaten. I'm sick about it but I could smell it coming over the last few performances.

That's pretty accurate, God I'm frustrated

That’s a cop out. We were strong favourites. Winning the 6N next week will be another fine achievement but don’t pretend that there isn’t disappointment with that performance and result today. Codding yourself.

Agreed. Kicking wasn’t necessarily the wrong thing to do perhaps but kicking from that position was an horrendous mistake. Move it into a better position and then pin them back in their 22 if you’re going to kick it away. We bottled it. No two ways about it. We bottled it which is disappointing because we wont always have the abundance of talent that we currently have.

Already been through this but he did miss a tackle on one of the tries that could have been made. He also had one pretty basic error.

People want to drop Murray (i'd agree with this but not for this game) and POM mostly based on one mistake, so... that seems to be the bar. Yes, that does mean we are dropping most of the team which should be fun.

Yea but he made a mistake so should be dropped. He's also over thirty.

Have you not been reading the thread?

Unfortunately I agree. A few residents on the rugby pages here though seem determined to pretend to ignore that. They have done fantastic work in Irish rugby but particularly with the opposition in European rugby below par right now it was a fantastic opportunity to lay down a marker with being the first team to retain the Grand Slam in the 6N era. I think that they will have regrets when they look back but also of course there has been achievements and progress as well.

Bottled the first fifteen or twenty minutes of last year's world cup quarter final, the biggest and most ring fenced match of the last 4 years.

Murray blew it today with his stupid box kick. When we had control of the ball in the last few minutes and we are going to kick it, why use the shortest kick option available?

Give it to Lowe to launch it downfield and I to the stand. Let England bring it back up error free.

Well that was a depressing watch and yes the forum tonight is just Murray this and POM that and sure yes big mistakes they made......but Baird should have been on at 45 mins for POM and that is on the mgmt and Murray is done and Casey or other options are worth the gamble. Crowley has entirely changed our attacking shape, he just seems incapable of taking it to the line and plays so sideways , he folded today under the quick line speed and bar his kicking was a disaster offensively and defensively, some of his tackling was atrocious. Farrell seems to have gone all in on him and finally 6:2 caught us out today....again not a POM or Murray issue.

Sometimes you just have to say de management made a few clangers....

Disappointed.

Record is atrocious at bringing them through

Most will be stuck in a Leinster 3rd team

Look at England today

Martin, Chessum, Cunningham Waboso all playing because of getting club games

I don't think its as easy to diagnose as you think to tell immediately after sprinting after someone to cover a linebreak, make a tackle and then immediately know how much you should be trying to slow the ball down. Its a lot trickier spot than you think it is. Also, its weird that ZERO blame is on the missed tackle there.

Ireland lost for various reasons. Many were unavoidable because England played better than expected in crucial moments. Others were avoidable, such as Murray kicking away possession when another minute of going through the phases could have seen us home. I feel much worse about the latter than the former.

I was surprised that there was no review of the hit on Furlong, my initial reaction was there had been an illegal contact. Some odd goings on with TMOs over the last couple of years and what they will review or what they have been fed to review We don't know what angle he was given if any at all