Five takeaways from Ireland v England

Adam Kyriacou
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Following a 32-18 victory for Ireland over England in their Six Nations game, here’s our five takeaways from Saturday’s match at the Aviva Stadium.

The top line

Make no mistake about this, Ireland surgically dismantled England in Dublin, winning 32-18 on Saturday. This was a definitive performance for Andy Farrell, engineered under the hood by the Munster mastermind, Paul O’Connell, and turbocharged by Mike Catt’s clever attacking strategy.

Not many sides beat England in every aspect of the game, but in scrum, collision, lineout, aerial dual and handling, Ireland were in another league to that of the ponderous and rudderless England and, in all honesty, the Red Rose looked like a team that was there to pick up their match fee and that cannot wait for demob day.

Ireland saw CJ Stander off in style, with the adopted Munsterman at the centre of everything positive in the game, alongside the immense Tadhg Beirne and the powerful Robbie Henshaw, and tonight, Dublin will be rocking in lockdown.

Discipline

England have spent so much time training with referees that deliberately penalise their every move that they appear go into each moment of possession with the obvious guilt of a sixth former caught smoking behind the bike sheds.

Their woeful lack of momentum in the first period, despite camping in the Irish half for 26 minutes of the half, was entirely self-induced, with some astonishingly naive penalties conceded at both the breakdown and at the set-piece.

The second half continued in the same vein as England shipped another four penalties in the first 10 minutes. Some of the indiscipline was absolutely farcical and it carried on in the final minutes as England continued to do their best to disenfranchise referee Mathieu Raynal.

In contrast, Ireland’s accuracy in the choke tackle, precision at the breakdown and legality in the scrummage was a model of self-restraint and rugby intelligence, with their defence reacting with brilliant variety in terms of tackle, jackal and support play. Their game was based upon ruck supremacy with a subtle superiority of technique in lineout and scrummage. In terms of the collision and the basics, there was only one winner, and it was the men in green.

Half-back control

There’s no doubt that Conor Murray and Johnny Sexton are close to their autumnal years, but when fit and firing, they are the best pair of half-backs in the British Isles and they exerted a stronghold on proceedings that they never loosened all afternoon.

The variety of kick, the accuracy of pass and miss-pass, gave Ireland so much dynamism and with players with the rugby intelligence of Hugo Keenan, Keith Earls and Jacob Stockdale to support, the Irish backs made sure that every kick was chased and contested, every metre earned was a metre cherished.

Contrast that with England’s propensity to hoist incontestable kicks, to turn over in tackle, to lose momentum through stupidity at every available opportunity and you can correctly conclude that this was a game of men against boys in terms of situational awareness.

Leadership

With players like Stander, Murray, Sexton, Henshaw and Tadhg Furlong littering the Irish XV, they had cool heads and leadership in abundance. They know how to present a picture of legality and of intent that pleases a referee and they know how to take the right options at the right times.

Contrast this with England; their inability to react to situations unfolding upon them is quite remarkable for a team of this level of experience. Nothing summed the match up more than the mind-boggling decision to call for a repeat scrum under their own posts, which predictably was collapsed and Ireland helped themselves to another free three points.

Wind the clock forward to the final moments and England finally have a chance to get over, yet the peroxided Ellis Genge, comically resembling a furious lemon posset, spent two minutes discussing his behaviour with the referee with no focus on the crucial rugby task of actually troubling the scoreboard.

In short, England are at crisis point. They smack of a side coached by rote, without any form of ability to make decisions by themselves. Something needs to change and it needs to change now.

Lions watch

Here’s the deal; based upon the performance we saw on Saturday the only English players likely to see a Lions shirt this summer are Maro Itoje and Tom Curry (only by weight of previous performances), who were far and away the best English players. The rest are shadows of their former selves, with former powerhouses of English rugby like the Vunipola brothers, Owen Farrell and George Ford looking like players that are ready for the knackers’ yard.

Contrast that to Ireland, where we saw the emergence of the likely Lions midfield with Murray, Sexton and Henshaw now nailed on as Test candidates, some massive performances in the pack from both Tadhgs, Beirne and Furlong, and a brilliantly combative display from Earls and Keenan at full-back.

Eddie Jones may rightly point to a truncated 28-man squad during this campaign limiting his selectorial options, but based upon the 26 players England have used on the pitch this season, it’s remarkable that they’ve now only got three sure fire Lions candidates.

by James While

 

England