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Shoulder to shoulder It’s do or die for Ireland
this weekend. Having to beat Argentina by more than seven points and score
four tries in the process is the kind of job you’d rather leave
to the likes of the All Blacks.
But having a target might just focus the team.
The Pumas have conceded just 18 points in the tournament so far and no
tries have been scored against them.
It will not be easy to lift the team after the French performance. I must
say that it was a disappointing result.
Ireland played very well in the first-half. Their defence was excellent
and they really got stuck in .
There has been criticism of their discipline which is fair enough as we
gave away too many stupid penalties.
However some of the decisions from the referee Chris White were also questionable
He gave Paul O’Connell a yellow card for coming across a lineout
yet Chabal escaped sanction when he was penalised for pulling down a maul.
It’s hard to say that any one of the Irish players has really played
out of their skin in this World Cup.
Brian O’Driscoll and Girvan Dempsey put in decent displays against
France but Gordan D’Arcy, Shane Horgan and Ronan O’Gara were
poor.
Andrew Trimble’s positional sense was exposed for the first French
try. He looks to be more of a centre than a winger.
The lineout struggled again and its failure to fire is really hurting
the team.
A lot of our attacking moves are based around securing good ball from
touch.
Ireland need to work on their lineout problems by Sunday. Argentina adopted
a very simple game plan against the French kicking for territory and waiting
for the hosts to make mistakes.
Ireland will have to go for broke. Containment is not an option the emphasis
has to be on attack and scoring tries.
Eoin Reddan did well enough the last day and should hold his place.
Simon Easterby had a fine game against the French and is excellent defensively.
I firmly believe Alan Quinlan is the man for this game.
He brings a lot of passion to his play which lifts the players around
him. He’s always good for a try as well and that is the vital consideration
this time around.
You can’t create scoring opportunities if you don’t have the
ball so the tactic must be to build phases. While we were better against
France we still seem to be looking for the killer pass too early.
Ireland have nobody to blame but themselves for ending up in this mess.
Let’s hope they can redeem themselves. |
