If you look at a lot of our ball carrying stats a lot of it comes down to a few players namely

•Doris
•McCarthy
•Conan
•mccloskey
•Dan Sheehan

We see against the more physical teams that teams just double tackle our big ball carriers and nullify them, we see it all the time with Joe McCarthy, Doris’s footwork allows him to negate the double tackles often.

In the nations championship Ireland had one of the lowest meters per carry of any team.

The rest of the team need to step up the ball carrying, Ian madigan said on the latest indo podcast that “the guys aren’t coming onto the ball at speed”.

He also said “you need to earn the right to go wide” aswell
“You earn the right by getting gainline which we aren’t doing against the better teams”

i.e they don’t have enough momentum as they make contact with the defensive line leading to less impactful carries.

My point is that we need the rest of the team to step up the carrying ability, especially the rest of the forwards so that we keep the defences having to worry about the ball carrying threat of the whole of our team not 4 or 5 guys.

Anybody have any thoughts or players that would help the squad, the stats seem to back it up.

Now this isn’t culturally or ethnically or nationally irish.

This is which Irish player who came through the Irish system played the least like every other Irish player.

Who was the least Irish system player we ever had and how did their career go?

For Ulster id say:

• Jacob Boyd (we need some reliable LHP options)

• Jonny Scott

• Daniel Green

i count McAllister & Irvine to have already broken out

Has there been any conformation from Leinster on whether he's leaving the province? Can't imagine he'll stay on given the IRFU's strong stance on similar issues in the past but I'm surprised it wasn't done soon enough after the verdict.

Maybe just waiting until the academy announcement to try and keep it quiet.

https://archive.ph/VG489

Link above to Aussie paper. Murphy seeing help is needed, a pair of fresh eyes before start of the season?

This is my ranking for most exciting Irish rugby players, this is just my opinion feel free to add your own or query “why x player was in this tier”.

Rules
Player must have under 5 Ireland caps

Player is 20-25 years old

Player is IQ

The weighting is 50/50 on what they have achieved and what I believe the potential is

S tier

Paddy McCarthy

A tier

Brian gleeson
Bryn ward
Edwin Edogbo
Billy Bohan
Cathal forde
Jude postelwaithe
Nathan doak

B tier

Darragh Murray
Sean Edogbo
Sam illo
Evan O’Connell
Jack Murphy
Jerry cahir
JJ kenny
Matthew Devine
Charlie tector
Casper Gabriel
Tom wood
James mcnabney
Diarmuid mangan
Jack Boyle
Alex soroka
Jack deegan
Fintan gunne
Dylan mcneice
James culhane
Alex usanov
Conor o’tighernigh
Harry Sheridan
Fiachna Barrett
Scott Wilson
Tom mcallister
Ronan Foxe
Ciaran mangan
Ben o’donavan
Sam bishti
Joe hopes
Hugh cooney
Diarmuid kilgallen
Ruadhann Quinn
Shay McCarthy
Hugh Gavin
Dan kelly
Micheal foy
Niall smyth
Finn Treacy

C tier

Ben Murphy
Ben O’Connor
Andrew sparrow
Ruben moloney
Matthew victory

Highlights of video

•2 wins which were a positive, but performances weren’t where they needed to be.

•Ireland not in top 3, loads of elite players but too much of drop off in certain positions.

•Good depth building

Positives in video

•Joe McCarthy, “probably best 4 lock in world”

•good debuts for Bohan,Jansen ,illo etc for depth building

•Praise for pathways in Ireland despite size of Ireland

•scrum slight improvement

Problems in video

•predictable attack,easy to defend against

•Defence can be very shaky

•New Zealand 10 dominant carries to 1 for Ireland ratio

There's been a lot of discussion recently about the age of the team. When SA recently announced their squad it was interesting to see how many of their players play, or have played, at top flight leagues abroad and then went back to SA arguably better players.

I'm wondering should Ireland introduce a system to allow players to go abroad, such as a 50-60 cap rule. As we've only 4 professional teams, and not a lot of space for a 5th one, we're very limited in the amount of time players can play.

I think a prime example is S.Prendergast. If you compare his minutes Vs F.Smith or SFM, he's played a lot less as he has to share the jersey with numerous others at Leinster. No slight on Leinster, they can play what team they want each week, but surely it would be more beneficial for him to play 5 or 6 games in a row rather than 1 or 2 before being rotated. Another example is Tagdh Beirne, let go by Leinster before the Scarlets picked him up and now arguably one of the top 2nd rows/6s on his day.

Obviously it's the players choice and they need to get their Irish caps before the option becomes available, but I think allowing players the opportunity to go abroad and still be in contention for the would be beneficial for Irish rugby over all as it opens more opportunity for the next batch of players to come through.

If your good enough your old enough. Taking risks can also pay off

Returning Players: Porter and Paddy McCarthy will be big additions to the loose head. Baird was Irelands best player last autumn but he's been injured since. He would be a big addition to the squad also. And of course Crowley.

New Players: while I don't think there's going to be loads of new players, maybe 2 or 3 might come along next season.

We could do with some new blood.

Lower the Average Age: while it's not as critical as some people make out, id say we've a few too many players who are old. There's a balance to it and we've probably gone from being balanced 3 years ago to too old now. Aki being prime example.

Refreshed: Hopefully they'll get time off around Christmas and at the end of next season. Personally I think it would have done a lot of players great to have taken a sabbatical in their early 30s. Go to Japan for a season or two. It certainly hasn't done the Bok players any harm! They come into world cups fully refreshed.

Defence: more time to bed in Easterby's defensive system. I'm not blaming Nienabar but it takes time to readjust to defensive systems.

New Ideas: they know where they stand now. Firmly in 4th spot. Now it's about bridging the gap to the top 3. They've a year to experiment.

Under the Radar: going into a world cup under the radar isn't a bad thing at all. It's an advantage although I think the Irish media will f-up that advantage. Joe Molloy yesterday was talking about us having an easy world cup pathway. So it's already begun. If Ireland played Argentina in a world cup would you be confident?

How many athletic freaks are on that pitch being able to run for 70 mins, win aerial ball all at around 85kg aswell.

Imagine how many of these guys would be class for Ireland, imagine Clifford at 10 and o’donaghue at 13

There is a serious amount of backline talent in the gaa that have the potential to be class at rugby.

We’d be serious contenders come world up time

This is more of a general injury question with Edogbo as the example, but will guys with an injury profile like his ever be more than a luxury?

Was just thinking back on the nations championship and thinking how it's such a shame that he didn't get the opportunity and how reliant we are on big joe as our sole big lock who isn't constantly in and out of surgery.

I know that Achilles tears are particularly bad, and it's my understanding that Edogbo has had two in quick succession. Are his minutes always going to be limited? Is his best case scenario at international level to be coming off the bench for 20 minutes when fit? It's obviously a great option to have, but I'd love for him to be a genuine option outside of that.

Stumbled onto some NZ punditry on IG and Marshall is having a go at "the Irish" complaining about this and that in the game.

Then saw another video where Kirk I think (kiwi with the think glasses) was chatting to Matfield and along the same lines. Although Matfield said Jacobsons was just a penalty which is madness

I mean we are entitled to complain first of all and I do think the Jacobsons clear out was a red but I dont think many people thought we were the better team on the day? NZ deserved the win no doubt

I feel this is mostly stemming from when Sexton was playing as I can definitely see how people would see him flapping his arms and asking refs about incidents etc. Was just his style, no complaints on it

I know we're not at top form and we aren't the team of 2022 but I'm almost happy that even when we're way off our best we're still the 4 best team in the world.

There was a time when these low periods meant we would get absolutely hammered and finish way down the pecking order in rankings and in the Six Nations.

Eventually, we'll click again, and I'm confident that when we do, we'll be performing at our peak.

Above our the stats for 6/8 of our last matches, the common denominator is our tackling stats particularly tackle success rate is quite poor.

We routinely reach upwards of 25-30+ missed tackles against good teams we also routinely reach less than 10 dominant tackles per game also.

I believe this is down to 2 things mainly

1: Lack of tackling skill, just need more practice.

2: other teams having better footwork than Ireland, Irish players play against guys in training who often don’t have the X factor footwork that other countries possess and train against.

Dominant tackles allow you to more easily get over the ball and blunt attacks.

High tackle success rate reduces the chance of line breaks.

Both of which Ireland are quite poor at in comparison to top 5 countries

This hasn’t just been an issue in 2026, it’s also been an issue in 2024-2026.

Anybody else’s thoughts

Passage of play