Brian O’Driscoll: ‘Lazy’ Ireland ‘unrecognisable’ and ‘clunky’ during All Blacks defeat
Ireland players after All Blacks defeat and legendary centre Brian O'Driscoll.
Brian O’Driscoll thought that Ireland were a shadow of the team that became the number one outfit in the world following their defeat to the All Blacks.
Andy Farrell’s men were knocked off the summit after they succumbed 23-13 to New Zealand at the Aviva Stadium on Friday.
It was a disappointing opening to their Autumn Nations Series campaign and O’Driscoll felt that they were overpowered by the All Blacks.
‘Lazy in the rucks’
“Ireland got caught a little bit being lazy in the rucks,” the Ireland legend said on TNT Sports.
“You had this ability to be able to make tackles and then having a second impact. Ireland were piling numbers into the rucks at the end and they were running out of ideas because they just didn’t have the bodies!
“They just got outmuscled in the end. When the purple patch came in you thought they need to kick on from there.
“But too many unforced errors… it was just quite clunky at times. Unrecognisable from what we’ve seen from them in the past.
“So very frustrating from their perspective and ours. But you would imagine they will get better over the course of this November.
“They definitely got out-physicalled. They didn’t manage to kick on from [the try] and build momentum. You just thought we need another quick score or piece of territory, and it didn’t materialise.”
Andy Farrell’s reaction
Over recent years Ireland have cemented themselves as one of the best teams in the world. Going into the clash on Friday, they had won 19 in succession at the Aviva Stadium, but the All Blacks ended that streak.
Head coach Farrell was left disappointed by his side’s performance after they struggled to find that continuity, especially with ball in hand.
“The dressing room, really, it is pretty sombre. The lads are gutted, we’re all gutted together. I thought we prepped well, trained well, I thought we were excited about the game and we were,” Farrell said.
“It’s a funny old feeling because we don’t tend to have it too much in that dressing room. That’s life, congratulations to New Zealand.
“We didn’t manage to put our game out on the field. Obviously the opposition have a big say in that but I thought we compounded too many errors and almost suppressed ourselves a little bit at times. The accuracy wasn’t what was needed to win a big Test match like that.
“We move on, we have to do. We have to find the solutions as soon as we possibly can because we’ve got a hungry side in Argentina [coming up], who are playing some really good rugby at this moment in time. We need to get back on the horse and start it all over again.”
