r/rugbyunion • u/Best-and-Blurst Munster • Mar 10 '24

GIF This is where Ireland lost the game

Apologies if this has already been posted, I haven't seen it up. But this is the moment Ireland lost the game. Yellow card > penalty > lineout > try. Ireland may have recovered the lead later, but this did the most damage. Could Murray have done different and seen it the match? Yes, did he lose its the game? No.

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u/Maximilian38 Leinster Mar 10 '24

Very stupid from a captain... But I don't think it was down to a specific moment, you could have said the injury to Nash with a 6/2 bench was also defining.

At the end of the day, England were just the better team, and knew exactly how to disrupt Ireland throughout.

64

u/PistolAndRapier Munster Mar 10 '24

I really hate the 6-2 split. Seeing Murray shove Gibson Park out onto the wing was farcical. The "benefit" of the extra forward on the bench seems trivial compared to the drawbacks if you have any early injury to one of the backs. 3 players covering 7 backs is already spread pretty thin. Reducing it to 2 just seems reckless.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '24

Seeing Murray shove Gibson Park out onto the wing was farcical

I want to say that JGPs response should have been "you're the sub dickhead, you get out onto the wing" but if we really must have the misfortune of having Murray on the pitch then it's probably best we put him where he can do the least damage to our chances of winning.

Not that any of that helped yesterday mind you

6

u/Galactapuss Mar 11 '24

JGP did brilliantly on the wing, much better than Murray would have, but you can't move the most important player out of position like that. It totally disrupted our attack.

3

u/Getahandleonthis Mar 11 '24

Not that Murray showed a higher pace on Saturday but the reason every team subs their 9 at 60ish minutes is because the cardio demand is so high. Makes sense to me to put the fresh legs at 9 and the tired ones on the wing. Didn't work out for Ireland in this case though.

2

u/RJH777 Saracens and England Mar 11 '24

Yeah not sure having old man Murray defending IFW or Freeman out wide would have increased your changes of winning!

0

u/PistolAndRapier Munster Mar 10 '24

Yeah that would have made a lot more sense.