RugbyRebels

fivepointer wrote: ↑Fri Feb 20, 2026 9:57 pm That was pretty poor. The lack of ambition is hard to take. Its obvious we've got some talented runners but we dont bother to use them. For crissakes lets just play a bit.

On an unrelated issue its clear that refs at this level are not interested in penalising sealing off. Some of that tonight was farcical.

The one occasion that had me yelling at the screen was a penalty we conceded for not rolling away when the lad was blatantly held in by three Irish forwards. However, having said that, I thought it clear that the Irish had adapted to the referee early on. They did what they could get away with. We seemed not to understand. It may or may not have affected the result but 'street wisdom' must come from the coaches at this level.

I don't know enough about the players to judge how badly they are being coached in tactical areas. Watching them in a few international games only means I can only guess whether this is a less-skilled batch than in recent years. Last night's performance was poor for most of the time and it became shambolic after multiple substitutions when they were chasing the game. Panic at that stage was understandable.

fivepointer wrote: ↑Fri Feb 20, 2026 9:57 pm That was pretty poor. The lack of ambition is hard to take. Its obvious we've got some talented runners but we dont bother to use them. For crissakes lets just play a bit.

On an unrelated issue its clear that refs at this level are not interested in penalising sealing off. Some of that tonight was farcical.

Agree with all of that. I hate criticising refs generally (as a former one myself) but I thought his interpretations were very peculiar. However, we didn’t adapt to that and kept going for jackals at the expense of just counterrucking or fanning out.

On the positive, our first up tackling was largely excellent. It was great Ireland offloading that tended to lead to line breaks, rather than poor tackle attempts. Our seniors could do with more of that!

We really were spoilt by the AOF, Fasogbon, Wright and Sela glory days when turgid back play was masked by the most dominant scrum I’ve ever seen at u20s level.

Our backs are pretty tasty - Lilley, Pater, Pearson, Calouri and others. But we’re selecting others and playing without a cohesive attack., given the players we have.

I thought Ireland 12 looked like a real handful, seemed to break the first tackle every time he got the ball.

Seeing Friday absolutely destroy a couple of players (15 and a.n.other) was pretty sweet as well.

Not sure about the comments on lack of ambition. It’s almost impossible to be ambitious when your pack is incapable of clearing rucks.

Is this group of forwards really that bad or just badly coached? I thought the locks, Staples and Treacey were highly rated.