I watched the France New Zealand game on Saturday night and I knew afterwards that we were going to be stuffed by Argentina. We struggles to beat France for long periods of the game and New Zealand blew them away. In their pool games the only team that challenged them was Argentina. The speed over the ball of both teams and ability to break the line and offload in the tackle is vastly superior to anything we could cope with. I really don’t think we could have won that game, even with a full strength team. Maybe on another day with a different Argentine performance but against that team playing as they did we would be beaten every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
I think Joe is a great coach, possibly the best in the world, but it is disappointing to see how Ireland play in comparison to how his Leinster team played. Leinster played an expansive offloading game where they ran at space and did the basics superbly well. They played like a New Zealand team. The only player who did that against Argentina was Luke Fitzgerald and he stood out in an otherwise underwhelming Irish performance.
I think Joe is a great coach, possibly the best in the world, but it is disappointing to see how Ireland play in comparison to how his Leinster team played. Leinster played an expansive offloading game where they ran at space and did the basics superbly well. They played like a New Zealand team. The only player who did that against Argentina was Luke Fitzgerald and he stood out in an otherwise underwhelming Irish performance.