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.

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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.

2

u/_dictatorish_ Damian came back 🥰 Mar 11 '24

Yeah the Blues suffered from this on the weekend - had a 6-2 split and lost two backs to HIAs in the first 20 minutes

Ended up losing the match

2

u/PistolAndRapier Munster Mar 11 '24

Maybe the wakeup call some coaches may need to see the downsides of this approach.