MONDAY’S REVIEW OF Ireland’s latest Six Nations win will have been a strange one. A bonus point success and record score in Twickenham all suggests progress and positivity, but there was no escaping the fact that Saturday’s defeat of England was far from the perfect performance.
The big issue to arise from that 32-15 win was the scrum, an area of the game that continues to contain it’s fair share of grey areas and dark arts.
So, what went wrong, exactly how much went wrong, and how much of a concern should it be?
“We’ve had a look and reviewed it all, and been out on the pitch today doing bits and pieces,” explains Iain Henderson, who entered the action after just one minute following James Ryan’s early head injury.
“We’re confident that if we stick to what we’ve been practicing, what we’ve put out there prior to last week, we’re confident we still have a good scrum.
“There are a few variables that maybe didn’t go our way, but we have to manage that better, better understand that when things aren’t going your way not to continue trying to beat it with the same stick. We have to look at other ways to fix it, and get better communication with the referee. We looked at other areas like that.”
Ireland’s issues around the setpiece also saw the penalty count creep up, the visitors conceding 15 in total – six of those coming at the scrum – with Ulster lock Henderson responsible for two of those. It’s an area Ireland are keen to address ahead of Saturday’s final day showdown with Scotland in Dublin.
Obviously myself especially, there were a few really stupid ones in there, getting a bit excited and carried away trying to force things to happen rather than sticking to our game, doing what we do, sticking to our gameplan, what we’ve shown we can do throughout this campaign.
“In other aspects of the game we did that too and gave England a few ins.
“When a team goes a man down, their backs go against the wall, it definitely galvanises you. For us, if you think back to games we’ve played, South Africa away (2016), we go a man down with a red card early enough, and we go on and win it. The wins you get when you’re a man down are two-fold, and it raises everyone’s spirits.
“I think that was something we had to be wary of with England, but we stuck to our gameplan and got back on track with what we had to do. It was pleasing to see that when they got it to 15-all, we could continue to plug away.”
Other lapses in Ireland’s performance won’t generate the same sense of frustration. As they dominated possession in London, Ireland clocked up 19 handling errors as they tried stick to their exciting, free-flowing new brand of attacking rugby. With a desire to keep the ball alive and trust your instincts on the pitch, it’s always likely some passes will either be spilled or fail to find their target.
And while 19 handling errors represents a significant figure – they had 22 against Italy and 12 against both Wales and France – Ireland won’t be ripping up the script.
“We talked about this, we looked at the few examples,” Henderson continues.
“Faz is massive on making sure that, even though it might appear like it’s a last-gap attempt at throwing the ball away, to be able to see where you’re passing, that’s massive, look before you pass.
“A lot of the time it might seem like such a basic thing but so many times that doesn’t get done and no-look passes means they can be half a foot behind or half a foot in front of where they should be, which then leads to… Like what happened in our game or potentially happened to Jonathan Davies in the Wales game (v France) and the ball goes down there.
“So being able to see where you’re passing and if you’re looking, you’ll know if the pass is on or not. I think we’ll learn, that’s something we’ve looked at this week.
I don’t think there’s any part of Faz that will be like – ‘don’t throw those passes’, ‘never throw those passes’… But to be able to gather as much information as you can, albeit by hearing the chat earlier, having a look or seeing the pass before you give it. All those things will give you more information to make a better decision and have a better outcome I think.”
That faith from the top down is clearly rubbing off on the squad, Ireland trusting their gameplan even when the going has got tough in this championship. They head into Saturday’s meeting with Scotland odds-on to land a first Triple Crown since 2018, with a potential Six Nations title also on the cards should England upset France in Paris.
“I think there’s been a huge amount of buy-in in the last 12 or 18 months into what we’re doing,” Henderson adds.
“We know why we’re doing it. The understanding is there amongst all the players and that understanding coupled with the belief is why we can see things clicking into place and things starting to look good.
“It doesn’t just come in attack, it has to be in attack and defence, it has to be both sides of the ball and if one doesn’t work the other isn’t going to function too well either.
“We see it on the training pitch, we train really well, at a high intensity, and the guys see it working on the training pitch working well. The pictures we get shown in the video review, we can see the evidence is there for the belief, so the coaches have a very clear message which make it easy to believe in I suppose.”
Ireland internationals Devin Toner and Lindsay Peat were our guests for The Front Row’s special live event, in partnership with Guinness, this week. The panel chats through Ireland’s championship chances ahead of the final round of Guinness Six Nations matches, and members of the Emerald Warriors – Ireland’s first LGBT+ inclusive rugby team – also join us to talk about breaking down barriers in rugby. Click here to subscribe or listen below:
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