Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

I'm thinking this could be a bad tour for Ireland. I worry that we will be handily brushed aside. The players look to be on the decline since the world cup and I can't see how a team mostly made up of players that had another failed year for Leinster can muster the performance required to play South Africa in their back yard.

I reckoned post World Cup that we'd have a bad year and if we look at the 6 nations objectively we were poor overall and France were a shambles in the first game which papered over the cracks in my mind. All performances post the France game were poor. I think the real regression will start to become evident this weekend.

I really hope I'm way off the mark but I haven't felt this negative since the end of the EOS and Kidney reins.

Oops dominate

Well this is at least a TV panel discussion involving former players and coaches, so a certain degree of "hot takes" is to be expected.

The former Golden Lions backline coach exclaiming Ireland are "third or fourth at best" is dripping in George Hook / Eamonn Dunphy energy and can be immediately disregarded. Though I'd have some sympathy for Matfield here. He's a 130 cap Springbok, former captain and RWC winner, and I actually saw this more as an insight into a true champion's mentality. It bothers him viscerally that his team are not considered the best in the world. Even years after he stopped playing for them. With Sexton gone and POM likely retiring soon, I think Ireland's biggest problem moving forward will be our dearth in this exact single-mindedness leading the team.

Also, while Warburton isn't Irish and the comments were made months ago, if Ireland had just won the RWC and, the following February, someone like David Pocock claimed that New Zealand (who had exited in the QFs) were still the best team in the world, I'm pretty sure we wouldn’t take too kindly to that. It would at least get filed away for later use like when we'd next play New Zealand surely.

They were wrong to say Sam never played in an RWC semi-final though. Albeit, he only saw 19 minutes of action…..

"I’ll tell you now that Ireland side is three or four (in the world), if they’re lucky.”

I honestly don't think that's much of a hot take at all. There's very little between the top 4-5 sides in the world right now in reality. I could see any of them beating the other with home advantage probably being a decisive factor. England (5th) deservedly beat Ireland a few months ago. In our last 6 games, we've lost 2 of them to NZ and England. And we were far from convincing in our 17-13 win over Scotland on the final 6N day.

Unfortunately, I think Ireland have dipped slightly and are at the beginning of another phase. In the longer term, I think JGP being absent is of benefit to Ireland. Crowley is going to have to run the show here and take ownership of the attack. It will hopefully accelerate his development as a leader within the camp and someone that drives the team forward.

For this tour, I just don't see SA being worried at all about us in reality. They desperately want to beat us but I don't think they doubt that they will for a moment. They've managed to build a complete siege mentality in relation to the game based on not having beaten Ireland in recent years but it's very much a fabricated mindset not hugely based on actual performances of late. Yes, Ireland won the 6N but, the longer the tournament went on, the less impressive and more disjointed we became.

I don't think it's the end of this team, far from it. I think we're just in a transitional period where we're going to regroup and refocus but I don't think we'll see us back to our best for another 12-18 months.

So was theirs in fairness sa rugby was at a real low. We should have won that

It's not an excuse first off, but he is a big loss

The decision was right IMO, why wouldn't he try to win a golden medal at a Olympics?

SA team

I do suspect SA will win on Saturday (I’ll wait until we get official team selections before making my final prediction) and going into the tour I was pessimistic but now I’ve a feeling a lot of posters are suffering from confirmation bias. It seems these posters are only looking at the negative factors affecting Ireland and the positive factors affecting SA and making a prediction based on that, there seems to be little to no objectivity in the analysis to the point I’m starting to doubt the credibility of it. 

I just know if this was Ireland and we were first in the world with a new attack and defence coach playing our first game of the season at home versus the number 2 side in the world I know we would be going into this series with doubts and would at least mention this as a reason to be cautious…but here not a peep (I suspect if SA lose it’ll be used by posters as a method of damage control though). 

You've been absolutely f****ing painful about this point.

Why is it when you say "I do suspect SA will win on Saturday" that is somehow based on your definition of objective analysis, but when others say the same thing (and provide their reasons for doing so) they're suffering from "confirmation bias" and "only looking at negative factors"?

Which point exactly? If you consider it painful then you are easy to annoy.

Well because SA are at home and are ranked higher than Ireland, the objective view point at this moment is to back SA to win. The issue I have is when I look at the analysis written here I've seen little to none done on the issues facing SA, which are actually legit reasons to have doubts about their chances, but then will back against Ireland because they are tired, based on nothing more than just the fact its been a long season rather than anything we've seen from the Irish players.

If fans wanted to be objective they could just look at facts such as this is ultimately a big clash between two heavy weights where SA will likely come out on top because they are at home and are the current world champions…but nope, we must go into hyperbolic nonsense that I wont even bother repeating just because Ireland lost their 2nd game in 23 matches and these fans can get over the pain…at the end of the day the bookies have this as a 1 score game for a reason.

All I'm saying is if Ireland win I dont want to hear any crap such as "SA were in transition" from the said wingers on here, they've had their chance to mention it and they blew it.

I'm saying that about 5 times now on this thread, you've gone off on this bizarre thing of accusing anyone who says they feel Ireland will lose of not being objective, but now you yourself are saying you also think Ireland will lose.

I thinj itd be an impressive win by ireland rebuild or not

Is it time yet?