The Dew Drop Inn Virtual Rugby Pub

First topic message reminder :

Welcome to the virtual rugby pub - a place where you can come in for a sly beverage and discuss whatever's on your mind, or just eavesdrop on the regulars if you fancy a break from all the rugby chat.

The only rule in this pub is one of mutual respect for everyone in it, oh and no defacing the Tommy Bowe photo on the bar. That's a banning offence

So pull up a chair....what'll it be?

A the hasn't heard off

What's up with Stodds, not watching the game on Sky

Ahh, McFadden caught out there

Damn! We should've and could have won that game.

Feck mistake by McFadden there! Good try.

Damnit! So f'ing close!

Well done Scotland.

Good try and win Scotland. Score is about right. Really happy with this Irish 2nd-string team. So many positives. Good run-outs for Fitz & Kearney - they played well. Trimble played well - as did Ronan. McFadden and Wallace defended well and had very few opportunities to shine. Fla will need another few half-games. And no injuries. Good stuff.

Now to be fair to McFadden I think that's the first defensive mistake he made in that match. It only takes one, but it doesn't prejudice him. He won't take stick for it, being a Leinster player, but for me it doesn't change his standing in the squad.

Morrison interfered with him as well. It was a great try from Scotland.

McFadden and Wallace did well today I thought. We had very little quality attacking ball but both players were good in contact, recycled the ball well, made their tackles bar one miss each leading to linebreaks. They showed good physicality and I thought when Wallace was needed to kick he did it well.

You know, so many positives in terms of players putting their hands up for selection so- not being too negative. I hate to lose though, and I hate we lost that game. It's a game we could have sneaked home with I thought.

Disappointing result for Ireland. I presume we're not ranked 4th in the world any more? Good to see Kearney and a few others blowing out the cobwebs.

Anyone else worried about the amount of kicking from Ireland? I know it was just a warm up and a 2nd string team but I hoped the Six Nations match against Wales would have taught Kidney a lesson on that.

Notch,

I have to disagree. I thought the centres looked poor. There might be extenuating circumstances but they didn't get on us on the front foot at any point.

McFadden was at fault as well for that try.

Feckless we kicked away bad ball and we kicked fairly well. I think if we had more front foot ball w would have seen a different strategy.

One thing is that we didn't have many targets set up for the forwards or quick ball in attack, and that's a poor show. We never got our attacking game going and the outside backs didn't get a chance.

Our pack was magnificent at scrapping at the breakdown and spoiling but I don't think they gave us the go-forward ball we needed at times. And I don't think we had much structure in our attacking play.

Well, I'll say one thing, the backrow dominance never came about for Scotland.

Yeah I'm pretty happy too. Disappointed with the result and a bit concerned with our failure to create any try scoring opportunities.

Positives for me were Kearney, Fitzgerald, Wallace, Cullen and the pack in general.

Negatives: Not enough penetration and ball carrying. McFadden was disappointing and Leamy really was pretty mediocre. Sexton wasn't great but not too worried about him.

MBTGOG wrote:There might be extenuating circumstances but they didn't get on us on the front foot at any point.

That's the responsibility of the backrow and the pack for me. I think we particularly missed the ball carriers we have in the backrow.

Notch wrote:

MBTGOG wrote:There might be extenuating circumstances but they didn't get on us on the front foot at any point.

That's the responsibility of the backrow and the pack for me. I think we particularly missed the ball carriers we have in the backrow.

True, but the centres still have to do their job and not rely on the back row to always get them front foot ball.

No injuries

Works fine for me. Onto the next game.

I'm crawling into my bed now after 33 hours on the run good night all.

Bottom line is, those 2 are good backup options. But that's it. We need BOD and Darcy fit, if we are to have any hope of beating Oz. More matches to come and in fairness, they were all rusty, so we'll see. Give it more time...

Have a great day regs.

I'm beginning to worry about Cronin. I was expecting him to shine in this game, but he still looks all at sea. And he's getting bumped out of tackles with alarming regularity, you'd swear he was a scrum half!

We did better than expected, but did we honestly ever look like scoring a try?

I'd like to see McCarthy's tackle count, he popped up everywhere in the first half, dropped off when he moved to 2nd row, though. Was at fault for Lamonts big run.

Apart from that, all as expected.

Notch wrote:

MBTGOG wrote:There might be extenuating circumstances but they didn't get on us on the front foot at any point.

That's the responsibility of the backrow and the pack for me. I think we particularly missed the ball carriers we have in the backrow.

And the midfield Notch. Apart from Trimble there was no direct running. Too many people were looking to offload and no one straightening and punching holes. Nice interplay but too much of it behind the gainline. Sexton played very deep too. I actually thought our tight 5 produced some good clean ball so no complaints there.

It shows how much we rely on our back row and also D'arcy to get us over the advantage line.

MBTGOG wrote:

Notch wrote:

MBTGOG wrote:There might be extenuating circumstances but they didn't get on us on the front foot at any point.

That's the responsibility of the backrow and the pack for me. I think we particularly missed the ball carriers we have in the backrow.

True, but the centres still have to do their job and not rely on the back row to always get them front foot ball.

I thought they did. Recycling bad ball well when they went into contact only for us to do nothing with it. Problem was a lack of continuity, going through the phases and turning slow ball into quick ball. Everytime our centres got the ball the whole team was on the backfoot.

To be honest, that late try annoyed me but shouldn't take away from how the rest of the game went.

The only real negative was how poor we were when we went to phase ball rugby. When we turned ball over, the hands were quick and the tempo high but how slow were we when we were going through the phases?

roddersm wrote:

Notch wrote:

MBTGOG wrote:There might be extenuating circumstances but they didn't get on us on the front foot at any point.

That's the responsibility of the backrow and the pack for me. I think we particularly missed the ball carriers we have in the backrow.

And the midfield Notch. Apart from Trimble there was no direct running. Too many people were looking to offload and no one straightening and punching holes. Nice interplay but too much of it behind the gainline. Sexton played very deep too. I actually thought our tight 5 produced some good clean ball so no complaints there.

It shows how much we rely on our back row and also D'arcy to get us over the advantage line.

I thought on a few occasions Wallace did take the ball into contact, but the reality is we weren't make too many yards that way. I would have liked to see Trimble picking lines off our 10/12 for that very reason.

MBTGOG wrote:To be honest, that late try annoyed me but shouldn't take away from how the rest of the game went.

The only real negative was how poor we were when we went to phase ball rugby. When we turned ball over, the hands were quick and the tempo high but how slow were we when we were going through the phases?

I think we're on the same page here Munsty. Thats what I mean when I say the centres had bad ball, because we as a team we're so slow in our phase play. We lacked ball carriers all over the park. I feel Trimble was misused slightly in this game.

FT 23-19.

I am so annoyed with myself. On SG I had England down to win by 4, but I couldn't actually face not backing my own country so I changed it to Wales by 4. Oops.

Not to disappointed that we lost, there were a lot of positives to take, especially Priestland's performance. Just gutted for Stoddart, horrible to see him stretchered off, can't help but think his world cup dream is over

Notch wrote:

MBTGOG wrote:To be honest, that late try annoyed me but shouldn't take away from how the rest of the game went.

The only real negative was how poor we were when we went to phase ball rugby. When we turned ball over, the hands were quick and the tempo high but how slow were we when we were going through the phases?

I think we're on the same page here Munsty. Thats what I mean when I say the centres had bad ball, because we as a team we're so slow in our phase play. We lacked ball carriers all over the park. I feel Trimble was misused slightly in this game.

I agree with the Trimble point. This though shows the problem of playing a second five like Wallace.

greybeard wrote:I'm beginning to worry about Cronin.

I though Cronin had an excellent game actually. Line out went well and he was physical in defence. He does knock on a fair bit though and missed a couple of tackles but I was very impressed.

Notch Wallace and McFadden didn't work for me. McFadden didn't have the penetration I hoped he'd have so there wasn't great balance there. Nice passing from Wallace but there was a lack of ball carrying there.

Yeah, it's a problem if you think he's Kevin Maggs. But then, if we picked someone like Downey we'd have a whole heap of other problems. It's not a problem if you use your back three well. And you have at least one or two ball carriers in the backrow.

The point is, in Ulster Wallace is essential to us because we use our backrow and back three as strike runners in the midfield. Ireland have exactly the same resources in big, strong wingers and ball carrying backrows.

Seriously, there was very little effective ball carrying from anyone in the pack. They need to do their jobs before the centres can do theirs.

It's not a problem if you use your back three well. And you have at least one or two ball carriers in the backrow.

Yeah but we didn't.

Notch wrote:Seriously, there was very little effective ball carrying from anyone in the pack. They need to do their jobs before the centres can do theirs.

I'm wondering if that was the game plan for today, to get to the backs early? We had enough posession but seemed to avoid the up the jumper stuff. There was maybe one sequence of of concerted pick and go.

What's Kevin Maggs got to do with it? The point is if you play a 2nd 5/8th like Wallace you need strike runners who can play off him.

We didn't have any apart from Trimble so we really didn't threaten the Scottish defence. Nice interplay but ultimately we had no option but to kick the ball away.

The only 3 line break in the game were by Scotland.

Morgan Stoddart has broken his ankle

dreamer

Stodds looked pretty good until the injury. Didn't look to great what with being stretchered off, but fingers crossed for him. Very strong last 20 from Wales.

For Asbo

yeah really happy with the last 20 Hound, our fitness really showed, chuffed with that. Even happier that all our tries came from our wingers and we out scored England 3-2 on tries. Still not clinical enough, we wasted 2 other clear cut try scoring chances also.

Lots of positives but still loads to improve on which is good. Just really upset for Stoddart.

rugbydreamer wrote:Morgan Stoddart has broken his ankle

I'll reply to you and Blydi Micks trying to takeover the pub - AGAIN !!
Flip, Flip, Flip, and Flip on Stodds had been really impressed by him the season just gone. Will settle in and watch the match (recorded the game and watched the SCO v IRE game which I enjoyed) Apparently, the much maligned Welsh attack scored 3 tries and Phillips had a good game

Phillips was good in the first half and for about 10 mins of the 2nd half Penfro but no more then that, i'd ahve brought Knoyle on sooner.

yeah we scored 3 tries, but we were still so slow and predictable for a lot of it I feel. A lot more composed then in the 6N's though and we almost scored another 2 tries as well, v close. Enjoy watching it! Am going to watch the Sco v Ire match now.

Bennett actually played well. Still in a bit of shock about that.

Ah - I see. Will report back after I've watched the whole thing, which will be after the Tour of Poland which is on in HD now. Bennett had a good game , need to check if we have smelling salts before I watch it !!

Afternoon, all.

A close defeat, but a defeat all the same. I was chuffed to see us try a backline move so early on and we didn't look as one-dimensional as we did in the Six Nations - there was some spark about us at times and Rhys Priestland did admirably well considering he wasn't expecting to start at ten, but there are still two fundamental problems about Wales:

The centre pairing of Roberts and Davies doesn't work. They don't complement each other.

Time and again we saw forwards taking the ball standing still. Why aren't they running on to it?

Also, I haven't seen a second row as lumbering as Bradley Davies in quite a while.

dreamer/Penfro - there were a lot of errors from both teams, but it was a nailbiting last 20. The subs worked better for Wales I thought, but I expect another tight game next week.

We had a good mix of Welsh and English fans in the pub, and handshakes all round at the end of the game

Lucky, our forward play improved considerably in the last 15 mins, with Knoyle screaming at them what to do, but I agree with you, so frustrating again to see them receiving static ball for a lot of the time.

I think for Roberts and Davies to work they need to swap positions, with Roberts at 12, Davies never sees the ball, he didn't until Williams came on at centre in the 2nd half, hugely frustrating.

Hound - ah that's good to know, tis how it should be in a pub

dreamer/Penfro - there were a lot of errors from both teams, but it was a nailbiting last 20. The subs worked better for Wales I thought, but I expect another tight game next week.

We had a good mix of Welsh and English fans in the pub, and handshakes all round at the end of the game

I didn't watch the Wales game cause I'm waiting for the highlights later - after the GAA. Shame about Stods. Nikki Walker got injured as well but I don't know how serious it is or not.

We heard you the first time, Hound!

I have to say that Huw Bennett had a good game. I'm not his biggest fan and I've slagged him off enough in the past, but he was solid enough today. Our lineout was a bit dodgy at times, but it wasn't a disaster.

Mike Phillips played better today than he has for a while, but he's still too slow in getting the ball away and that affects everything that follows. Why Rob Howley hasn't taken him aside and showed him how to pass the ball off the floor, I'll never know.

But definite signs of improvement from the Six Nations.

What impressed me most with our line out was that we rarely lost one in the England 22. Usually you could guarantee that as soon as we get a lineout in the opposition 22 we'll lsoe it, so glad to see we improved on that.

Lucky - agreed, lots of improvement from the 6N's which is all we can ask for really

Very true, Dreamer. I'm never happy after a defeat but it's much easier to take when we've given it a good tilt and played some good rugby.

yep yep, definitely.

I see Monty had another good game for Scotland (or he has in the 25 mins I've seen so far). Pleased for him.

roddersm wrote:What's Kevin Maggs got to do with it? The point is if you play a 2nd 5/8th like Wallace you need strike runners who can play off him.

That's the point I'm making.

I'll say this, we should pick that centre partnership again against France will the full strength pack given D'Arcy and BOD are out. I would pick Earls at fullback and move Trimble to the opposite wing with Bowe coming in.

Sorry - I didn't think the first post 'stuck'.

Another close one next week I think. That's bad news for Stodds though; poor sod has had enough injuries.

Terrible news, Hound. He's had such a good season.

I know Hound and he's been in such good form too:( And if I was a more suspicious person I'd ask what the Welsh camp is doing again, Scarlets are dropping like flies (although Stodd's was just unlucky today)

Do you ever wonder what the world will be like in fifty years? It's a serious worry.