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Irish rugby fans know only too well how this story goes, they've seen it over and over and over again.
Ireland's World Cup History
In 1987 the IRFU was so disorganized that we didn't even have a fecking anthem to play. The Rose of Tralee was eventually chosen because it was neutral and one of the players had a copy of the song to give to the stadium announcer. Australia sent them packing at the quarter final stage.
1991 saw the World Cup hosted by the home nations. Losing to Scotland in the pool stages meant that Ireland faced Australia rather than Western Samoa in the quarter finals. Michael Lynagh eventually broke Irish hearts in the final minutes at Lansdowne Road.
1995 saw Lomu destroy all before him including the Irish team in the pool stages but it was France who knocked Ireland out at the quarter final stage.
1999 came with a change in format and a play off to get into the quarter final. Ireland played Argentina in the now infamous location of Lens. We'll always remember the 15 man lineout.
In 2003 an Alan Quinlan try saw revenge for Lens but Ireland and Keith Wood bowed out to France in the quarter finals without ever firing a shot in anger.
2007 was the year that Spala almost replaced Lens as the dirty word in Irish World Cup history. A focus on condition and not even having rugby balls as part of the training came back to bite Eddie O'Sullivan.
Ireland claim their first major scalp of any world cup as they beat Australia in the 2011 pool stages but limp out of the tournament to Wales in the quarter finals.
2015 sees Ireland crippled with injuries in the pool stages and a quarter final against the Pumas is just a step too far for the squad.
While each year has its own story, the pattern stands out to show this goes beyond just the coaches and the players. Nothing epitomizes the IRFU's view of the world cup better than 1987. The players were so under prepared that they had to organise their own training sessions. They hadn't even considered what national anthem to play. Put simply the world cup is not a priority for the IRFU. The IRFU do not have a world cup cycle, they rightly place a priority on continually maximizing revenue through annual performance in the 6 Nations and ensuring they can sell seats in the Aviva.
So what happened in 2019
2019 was to be the year Ireland's fortunes changed at the Rugby World Cup. 2018 saw Ireland deliver a Grand Slam, Triple Crown, a series win in the southern hemisphere against Australia and a victory over the All Blacks in the Aviva. This was to be Ireland's world cup.
2019 didn't start off as planned though. Joe Schmidt had announced his plan to leave in late 2018 and the Six Nations saw defeats to both England and Wales. The goodwill from fans and journalists alike was still there from 2018 and the general consensus was that Ireland were aiming to peak for the world cup.
Schmidt's style of play is based on the requirement of a strong set piece, multiple heavy carriers and a good territorial kicking game. He plays a possession game with Ireland looking to continually challenge the opposition by having strong ball carriers like Healy, Furlong, Ryan, Henderson, Stander, Aki and Henshaw rotate the carries with support players and then recycle quick ball to batter teams into submission. There is a requirement for the carriers and cleaners to be clinical in their execution to keep this going. It also relies hugely on the half backs to manage the game and the attacking structure and patterns to keep the team in the right places. 2018 worked so well because the team were executing the plays with so few errors and the half backs were playing so well.
2019 saw Schmidt lose a number of options for his heavy carrying system. He lost Leavy and Sean O'Brien as well as Henshaw for a number of months. And while it can be said that these guys could be rotated in and out with Van der Flier or Ringrose when Schmidt wished to do so, it is their loss when he needed that impacted most. Teams are constantly reviewing how each other play and their relative strengths and weaknesses but i do think that teams not only worked Ireland out but also had the chance to review and implement those strategies in a live environment. England and New Zealand both got a good look at Ireland's style of play in 2018 and were able to fix things in 2019 to counteract it.
Ireland under Schmidt have been hugely successful but there have always been three concerns.
1- what happens when Ireland fall behind early in games as we don't seem to have the ability to change styles to chase a game. It has to be a methodical build up, a series of gut busting carries or maybe occasionally a strike play to release a winger. At present so many teams are looking at transition plays to score tries and/or gain territory. Its not a new concept but the basic premise is that the best time to counter attack is before the defense has had a chance to set up. Move the ball, run back kicks, exploit the space. Rob Kearney is one of the first names on an Ireland team sheet but he is preferred by Schmidt for his defensive positioning, his skills under the high ball and his ability to run transition ball back to the safety of a support pod to reset play without passing it. He has no licence to counter attack. The plan is reset and the let the decision makers at half back plan the next move.
2 - what happens if Ireland lose the collisions? Irelands gameplan as noted above is to move the point of attack through the patterns of heavy carriers and batter the defensive line into over committing before spreading the ball into space for the backs to exploit. Ireland generally had enough heavy carrying options or alternatives to get away with this. Losing Leavy and O'Brien impacted, Henshaw missing and losing form took away another option but perhaps the thing not spoken about much is how other teams have negated Ireland's box kicking tactics so successfully. When things slow down or stall for Ireland's heavy carriers Ireland went to Murrays box kick as another way to gain territory. It was a contestable kick with a decent chance of regaining possession. Thats no longer the case with teams making use of blockers, shepherding runners and like the All Blacks dropping an extra man or two into the back field to take away the kicking option. If Ireland are stopped at or behind the gain line and the box kick isn't working where to do they go to?
3 - Schmidt's game plan relies on possession. This may sound stupid to say out loud but Ireland need the ball and need to hold onto it successfully to go through their attacking patterns, let the heavy carriers rotate and punch holes in the defensive line to create the space to exploit. What happened against Japan was that they didn't hold onto the ball and when Japan had the ball they wouldn't give it back. Japan's work rate, handling skills and willingness to recycle and move the point of attack continuously was fantastic. Japan effectively forced Ireland and their heavy carriers to work defensively instead of with ball in hand, and when Ireland did have the ball Japan's linespeed, tackling and breakdown work slowed Ireland up and limited the time Ireland could play effectively in the right areas of the pitch that they wanted to.
To me Ireland's game plan reminds me a lot of the old Munster teams. The game plans require the team to play very territorial and if they don't have a significant advantage in terms of ball possession they will struggle to win. Both will have strike moves and plays but without the set piece, heavy carriers, game managers at half back, safety at full back and the handling ability to go multiple phases to grind themselves into positions to score it isn't going to happen. Other teams can play heads up rugby, exploit transition plays and score off the cuff but for Ireland scores generally have to be carved out through hard work and over multi phase rugby.
I think Schmidt became aware of the problems around his reduced heavy carriers and the limitations of the box kicking game at some point in 2019 and tried to change things. It was only in the actual world cup pool games that I saw the introduction of the offloading game. This was a significant change in approach from Schmidt. Schmidt up to this point was totally risk averse. Suddenly in the biggest tournament this changed, players instead of looking to go to ground, reset, look for support were asked to change their mindset and their skillset under Schmidt. No matter how many times this is practiced in training it can only really be tested in a live match environment. This change, in my opinion, led to further issues for the team. Not used to this riskier part of the game plan and not having time to adapt and implement it successfully the results were somewhat inevitable, more handling errors, more knock ons and less possession to work the already struggling gameplan.
Andy Farrell is not going to drastically change this team but it will evolve and how the gameplan evolves, how far he transitions from a pre-programmed robotic gameplan to a more heads up attacking style may well determine how successful he is. Changes to how players are coached to play heads up rugby need to be made throughout the IRFU structure but that will take time to come through.
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