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Post-mortem

Frankie Sheahan column: stop blaming the ref

The former Munster and Ireland hooker rakes over the ashes of Ireland’s disappointing defeat to France in Dublin on Sunday.

Reproduced with permission from FrontRow

“WHAT A GAME! Hugely disappointing but 100% better than last week, outscoring France three tries to one and taking opportunities this week. Scrum is still king…conceded six points as a direct result…on the balance if we deserved  to lose last week, we deserved  to win this week…one win from two matches is probably fair… Poor Sean Cronin…”

This was what I said in my last Guinness text at the end of the Ireland versus France match on Sunday and it summarised how I felt the game went.*

We deserved to beat the French and I believe outscoring them three tries to one0 showed we were the better side. A few points throughout the match stood out for me. Some points going forward:

Discipline: I felt we worked extremely hard and got some superb scores but before we knew it, we were 12 points to 10 behind. This was down to some unnecessary penalties but we must also give a lot of credit to Morgan Parra whose place kicking was sublime.

If Bergamasco had kicked like that against Italy, we may also have lost that one. We need to tighten up in a big way on unnecessary penalties and if we do give them away, give them away in the opposition half so that they cannot kick them.

Stop blaming the referee: In the scrum or the breakdown, we have developed a culture recently of blaming the refs for decisions going against us. Be it Roman Poite or Dave Pearson, there is no future in this. Do the video analysis on the referee, know that he is also a player and that he will get it wrong  at times but that he wants to play a good game too and they are not out to get us. Sort out the problems yourself!

Consider some bigger men in the backs: Guys like Andrew Trimble, Shane Horgan and James Downey for Northampton need to get more involvement. We could have done with their size at the weekend and against certain teams. New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina and even a team like Georgia, size does matter.

I appreciate two of those are injured at present but James Downey for me would make a massive difference to the Irish squad. I am not suggesting start him immediately but he should at least be in the 22 on a need-to-use basis like Rob Henderson and Kevin Maggs. I could not help but notice the sheer size of Rogueries, Traille. Medard, Potrinout and Jauzion. These guys are all about 6ft 2 and weighing around 15 – 16 stone.

It is not going to get any easier from here. I would like to pose a question. We have three games left in the Six Nations. Would you like to see experimentation with a view to the World Cup, pick three or four new guys that we have not seen and look at different combinations.

Also, we need to use the bench early in the second half, (not for six seconds like Leo Cullen at the weekend). What is the worst that would happen? We could lose all three but we may lose at least two more anyway.

What is the best that can happen? We could find a player/combination that we have not seen before and it could become a serious weapon come the World Cup. We could also give other players great experience, increase competition for places and who knows, may win the matches as well!

(*If you want to get  Frankie Sheahan’s  Six Nations free text updates from Guinness, just freetext RUGBY followed by your name and date of birth to 50422.

Frankie played 29 times for Ireland and played 14 seasons with Munster.

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