Sunday, February 05, 2017

Online comments after Scotland v Ireland

A selection of the “keyboard warrior” reactions after the full-time whistle of our featured matches of the weekend.

If you’d like to contribute stay tuned to our Facebook page for our “Feel free to leave your thoughts…” posts which show up around full time after Leinster & Ireland matches.


You can't show up to a fight expecting to win. Disappointed with our arrogance in the first half. Second half was positive but too little too late.

Neil "Keego" Keegan
Always likely to happen once Sexton wasn't in the frame. Proved definitively so in 2nd half. I really don't like being right about Irish Rugby.
Slam & Triple Crown gone in one swoop.
Til next year, folks. ☘

Catherine Kavanagh
Is there anything more Irish Rugby than beating Australia, New Zealand & South Africa in a year and then losing to Scotland in your very first game of the Six Nations?

Conor Murphy
We cant have excuses. Not good enough today. Backs looked inferior on paper and proved it - a lot of flash at 11 and 14 without substance. Rumours of Kearneys demise appear exaggerated. Dylan Hartley will be happy with his day so far

Andrew Bailey
Poor line out, narrow defending, going wide when they should have gone route 1, not enough aggression, lack of accuracy, etc., etc. A reality check. Not good enough and some interesting selections ahead. Congrats Scotland.

James Griffin
Scotland was just the better team today but we can still hold out hope for the championship

Edel Bethel
Too many school boy errors, handling & being sucked in at the ruck , but it's wasn't our best 15 against Scotland's best 15 at home so I'm not going to start getting down

David Sharpe
Tbh I'm not too disappointed. The Scots had to beat someone eventually. We didn't have a good game. If we fail to show creativity, take our chances and defend loose out wide like that in the next game, then I'll be worried. Championship still for the taking

Peter O'Gorman
Scotland deserved it. Savage defence and played well and consistently over the full 80 mins. Ireland looked asleep in the 1st half and hade they played the 1st half like the second we'd have a nice bonus point win to our name, but it does't work that way! Hats off to the Scots. A dissapointing result, but not one ope to dispute.

Martin Loughrey
Our line out was awful, our first quarter incredibly poor, and our mistakes too frequent. Some really poor moments offensively and defensively. And both have opportunity to the Scots who played well and made the most of it and deserved to win

Conor Cronin
Not clear what the attacking plan was for today. The narrow defence made an unwelcomed comeback too and again they paid the price. The line out especially in attacking 22 is a major concern. Turned the ball over way too often and never managed a big turnover of their own. A great game to watch and fair play to Scotland good to see them making progress.

Noel Hewson
blew it in 28 mins. We had scrum advantage and should have took em to yellow card hurt locker there. We just weren't mentally sharp enough. Surprisingly for a joe team. Grand disk blown, triple crown blown and probably championship too

Wayne O'Brien
Outcoached. Not picking Donnacha Ryan left only one lineout operator in our whole pack, leaving the Scots free and easy to pick our pockets. When our exit failed, we gave them a lot of early ball in our half, from which we were always going to score tries.
H/T Vern Cotter. The man got every inch of this game spot on. Hope they do the same to France next week!

Daragh Faughnan
We lost that game in the First half.. Hats of to Scotland they saw opportunities and took them.. The lineout in particular went abysmally wrong today... Kick up the ass now move on...

Monica Keeler
Dreadful slow first half.
No impact in attack from key players and our line out didn't fire. Chances (and tackles) missed - heaslip should've either ran straight and scored, or offloaded to Henshaw.
Banana 🍌 skin... and now the abacus in play. Better work hard for next week... oh and select the form players!

Sandra Dawson
Started poorly and left ourselves a mountain to climb. Reminds me of Wales four years ago, could we end up with the same result?? Plenty of rugby left to play.

Andrew Byrne
Simply we need sexton, he doesn't allow that rubbish

Chris Mcdonnell
Some atrocious performances from our more senior players. Pedestrian ball all game. Mentally switched off after we took the lead. It'll be a very uncomfortable debriefing. Ringrose will learn from today but Kearney was dire. Badly missed POM and D. Ryan in my opinion.

Cormac Mannion
Defended & attacked too narrow which is not surprising considering the style of the two wingers who always come inside.
Too many easy turnovers but at least the penalty count conceded was low.
We cannot expect to defend a one point lead for 10 minutes by box kicking or putting it down the throat of the back 3. You need to hold onto the ball to score points & be imaginative when you use it. I felt we were just too predictable today.
A lot to learn from playing a Glasgow squad!

David White
The second half makes this game much less worrying, but far more frustrating. 17 points to six in the second half, 2 tries to none. That's what the stats say the full match should look like, but all our mistakes came in key moments. Willing to bet all 3/4 of the line outs that misfired were in their 22. Knock ons largely, and all intercepts came in our 22 or theirs. Far too much self inflicted, and ruthlessly punished by a Scotland team who played their part perfectly.

Dónal Foley
Sluggish un dynamic start..... better in the second half but needed to control the ball better when they got ahead. We don't become a bad team because of one bad performance... just a bad day at the office. Bonus point could be important come March 18!

Keith Mongan
Big names letting us down at important times won't win games. Heaslips awful pass, standers knock on, RKs awful pass to zebo, sob NOT passing all at exceptionally crucial times.

Philip Ellis
Well played Scotland. I had a feeling that this was coming today. They are an underrated and we'll coached outfit with a lot of very good players. If they played their first choice front row today they would have beaten us out the gate.

John Hyland
1. Ireland outplayed in 1st half.....
2. FAR to many unenforced Irish errors in 1st half ....
3. Good (not great) 2nd half by Ireland.....
4. Wasted opportunities to win by Ireland (e.g. Irish lineout on 68mins when only 5 Metres from the Scottish line??)
5. Scotland in 1st half were exceptional at speed and exploiting the wide channels....
6. Very few occasions did Ireland have a man on the runners shoulder....
7. Attrition rugby with no vision of width or speed
8. Ireland failed to deliver and better team won!

Move onto Rome!

Joe Sheppard
Inexplicable to the neutral that Ireland were thrown a lifeline after a slow start, took it to an extent, then went back to sleep. Ireland are a better side than that. Scotland played out of their skins and got the bounce, but in the final assessment Ireland winning that would have been a travesty.

Hywel Davies
Beating NZ & Aus didn't make us champions. Losing today doesn't make us a bad team.
You learn the lessons, refocus and move on to the next challenge.
Scotland have been building towards that performance for some time. They said it. They backed it up.

Barry Cunningham
Didn't use our scrum
Dominance enough. Basic defence errors, slipped tackles and just way too narrow in defence generally. Oh, too many turn overs as well. Moan over, well played Scotland. Not to end on too much of a negative, good come back, sadly not good enough 😊

Shaun Magill
I said it before the game Ireland its media and supporters were thinking of March 18 th while Scotland were thinking of Saturday . Plus more zip in the Leinster half backs

Andrew Potts
Its not a battle of Leinster v Munster Connacht or Ulster it was a six nations game against Scotland and whats clear and has been for some for a while is that more than one of the seasoned players are All Out (and in many peoples opinions hard to justify selection for quite some time), whilst some of the relatively new guns still remain just ever so narrowly green. Its still hard to see how Ireland didnt manage a win in the end but also clear is the fact that every international team do their homework before a match and that Joe Schmidt has no monopoly on this. That some point to Sexton absence is lazy nonsense analysis. All said its push forward a good team does not go bad overnight but hopefully during the campaign we could see different options at 2. 4. 5. 8. and 15. regardless of their provincal status

Derek Nagle

Many thanks to all who offered opinions.

Look out Monday for our match writeup JLP

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