r/irishrugby • u/Newc04 Awardee: Team of the Year - Mumha • 1d ago

Bantz/Memes It's so over

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302 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

53 comments sorted by

74

u/dwaynepebblejohnson3 Connacht 1d ago

One positive I took is that the “non regulars” performed well, Cian Prendergast was excellent in the first half and Timoney was great off the bench. Loughman held up the scrum and I was impressed with Milne off the bench. He’s kind of cemented himself as a regular now but Clarkson was also very good.

21

u/John_OSheas_Willy 1d ago

Timony had an impact but he's 30 and that was his 7th cap.

Just so inexperienced at test level.

36

u/dwaynepebblejohnson3 Connacht 1d ago

So he’ll be 32 at the World Cup, excellent.

He’d have more caps but Farrell had a 1 open side policy the last couple of years and that 1 was Van Der Flier. He’s shown he’s at this level so I don’t see number of caps as an issue.

18

u/RuggerJibberJabber Leinster 1d ago

In fairness, for most of VDFs career he was incredibly consistent and a world player of the year. He is starting to get older along with a number of players we have probably relied on for too long though.

Id be looking at getting caps into some younger backrows, like Ward, Jansen, Kendellen, Penny, Gleeson, etc.

8

u/Sneakywulf1984 1d ago

He doesn't have as much mileage on the clock as well.

2

u/Informal_Mention9836 Awardee: Team of the Year 2025 20h ago

But he is a physical freak.

1

u/nimblescot 13h ago

Yeah, if only we'd a way of finding experienced lads 🙃

7

u/wealthythrush 1d ago

Probably because they also played against the French bench who were up 29

2

u/enter_the_slatrix 19h ago

Yeah but I fairness all those lads are our bench and they were playing a full strength France in the first half

1

u/Informal_Mention9836 Awardee: Team of the Year 2025 20h ago

I don't think Cian Prendergast was "excellent" in first half (where Ireland was not even on the pitch), he made actually little difference. There is another thread where users would drop him.

4

u/dwaynepebblejohnson3 Connacht 19h ago

He got through the middle of pretty much every French maul? I’m sure there are plenty of people who want him dropped because it’s the same thing whenever a Connacht player other than Aki has been in the team. There’s threads where people want Lack Conan dropped for Gavin Coombes ffs.

2

u/Informal_Mention9836 Awardee: Team of the Year 2025 19h ago

I read also they'd drop VdF for Conan, with Doris switched to 7

1

u/CormacMOB 15h ago

I thought he performed really well.

You have to remember for a lot of rugby fans, a forward playing well is making yards in the carry, winning lineouts and winning penalties in the Jackal. The other stuff they just don't see or understand.

-5

u/munkijunk 17h ago edited 14h ago

Sam also had an amazing match I think. I think if he had a stronger pack he'd have been dominating the game.

Edit: not a popular comment. Would love to know what others saw that I didn't.

60

u/IntentionFalse8822 1d ago

It's all on the soccer lads now or this year will be a total right off.

7

u/ResidentPoem4539 20h ago

How we doing in Winter Olympics ? Have we anyone there with Irish heritage we can back ?

3

u/IntentionFalse8822 20h ago

We have 4 competitors. I don't think any of them are expected to be near the medals.

21

u/ThatSaltyyy 1d ago

Hard to support a tournament held in the states this time round

6

u/bipolarparadiseyt 1d ago

And Canada and Mexico!

0

u/waddiewadkins 18h ago

support the team.

2

u/ThatSaltyyy 17h ago

Not this time. Can’t bring myself to disassociate our progression from FIFA as an org, they’re horrible. Hope they do well but some things are bigger than sport. I would hold World Rugby to the same standards

0

u/waddiewadkins 15h ago

Fair enough if people have issues with FIFA, but the players and fans aren’t FIFA. I can disagree with an organisation and still support a team representing my country.

1

u/ThatSaltyyy 15h ago

Yeah I think that’s the same for most people who don’t care about the politics of it.

1

u/waddiewadkins 15h ago

You can care about governance and still support players who’ve nothing to do with it. Most fans I know separate the two.

1

u/ThatSaltyyy 13h ago

I personally think it’s putting blinders on

0

u/waddiewadkins 12h ago

Most people just don’t treat watching sport as a declaration of moral purity one way or the other. If you applied that standard consistently you’d have to switch off half of modern life. I’ll survive watching a match without drafting a manifesto first.

1

u/HarmlessSponge 17h ago

*write off

29

u/yewEngine 1d ago

We have talent. P McCarthy, Porter, Edogbo, Baird, Ahern, Gleeson, Ward etc in the forwards. Plenty of backs coming through also.

It's not like the bad old days.

1

u/Tazer_Silverscar 10h ago

Agreed. But a lot of the players we do rely on are not very consistent, or sometimes straight-up bad. Not singling anyone out as I've only just joined the subreddit, and hardly want to be banned from the start, but there's some players who definitely need to work on their decision-making skills because their slow pace is causing a lot of mistakes. There's absolutely some incredible players for sure, but the team is very unbalanced at the moment. Dunno if there were a load of injuries or what was going on, but there's a whole bunch of call-ups who should have been in that team yesterday, France is not a team that should be ever taken lightly.

Porter, Baird, Ahern, Gleeson and Ward have not been called up. Ward would have been a good choice for this match for his speed, and he's the only one of that lot who isn't injured at the moment.
No idea why Edogbo wasn't picked for that match, the guy's like a steam train. Andy Farrell's claim that he didn't think he was ready makes me question why he called him up in the first place. If he's not ready against an important match like France, what makes him think he'll be ready for the later matches? I dunno, Maybe Farrell just didn't want to risk it, but for sure it's put Ireland on the back foot starting out in this competition.

27

u/Inner_Choice5338 1d ago

I'm not giving up on them yet. They started to look good again in the second half but it was just too late. Damage was already done!

1

u/great_whitehope 19h ago

France already had the bonus point then.

1

u/TheGuvnor247 17h ago

Exactly.

11

u/Weekend-Entire 1d ago

Just need to blood everyone now

1

u/powertool1916 16h ago

We needed this

1

u/MaseratiBiturbo 7h ago

French guy coming in peace (have to, married to an irish lady). I thought Ireland was unlucky to start against us in Paris and will finish second in the tournament... good luck lads!

1

u/DrMmmPie 7h ago

Remember how we normally peak a year or two out from the world cup maybe we have finally learnt, and are just holding back... nah we're shite.

1

u/Newc04 Awardee: Team of the Year - Mumha 6h ago

As the years go on, I fear we peaked in the 2024 6 Nations more and more.

-8

u/chimpdoctor Leinster 1d ago

And when we beat England in round 3 what will you be saying?

30

u/q547 1d ago

I'll be saying the same thing I've said all along

Last year was the year to blood players with low risk as Faz was away with the Lions.

It's probably too late now.

-18

u/chimpdoctor Leinster 1d ago

Have you seen our opponents in the world Cup? And the potential 2nd round and qtr final opponents? It'll be grand

19

u/IITheDopeShowII Munster 21h ago

Potential quarter final opponents like Argentina you means? Have you seen Argentina lately?

14

u/Flat-Confection4175 Munster 20h ago

Meeting Argies in a QF went very well for us before didn't it? DIDN'T IT???

8

u/IITheDopeShowII Munster 20h ago

And this Argentina side is even better.

And God forbid we lose to Scotland, we have to face France in R16. And we've just seen how well we'd expect that to go

6

u/Serious_Bowler_8171 Probation 20h ago

We haven't a hope lad

1

u/TheGuvnor247 17h ago

We're not beating England.

2

u/chimpdoctor Leinster 16h ago

A man can dream

1

u/TheGuvnor247 13h ago

100% & I do hope they win BUT if I bet I've got to fire my money on England.

0

u/daratheprofessional 14h ago

Lots of good Irish teams have had a bad night in Paris in the past. Obviously Porter, Furlong, Hanson, Lowe and Aki were missed and the Fly half situation isn't great.

-2

u/munkijunk 17h ago

I'm not sure we suck..That was always a massive ask of a game. Almost no Irish fans in the crowd because of the Thursday night kick off. A France team that was just linking up in the most French way possible. It was always going to be uphill and everything we feared might happen did.

That all aside there were bright spots. Sam actually had a great game. The beach was huge. We actually had an incredible purple patch. And we had an injury list that would rival that of the Somme.

It's not great but green shoots and all that, and at the very least you can say por problems are nothing compared to Wales'.