The pause says it all.
Another bad day at the office for the Irish rugby side came calling today, as England blew Andy Farrell’s men off the pitch in possibly the most one-sided 12 point margin win you could ever see. Ireland were second best to Eddie Jones’ side in every facet of the game, and were lucky not to see a repeat of the hammering dished out to the them by the same team at the same venue in August of last year.
Speaking on Virgin Media’s coverage of the game, former Ireland and Munster outhalf Ronan O’Gara was asked what the most worrying aspect of the Irish performance was. The fact that he struggled to speak wasn’t because he was stuck for something to say, he just didn’t even know where to begin;
“It’s hard to know where you start in terms of how you review it. It just seemed a mismatch in a lot of departments. Even though the scoreline doesn’t reflect that. 24-12 is probably a good day for a lot of previous Irish teams in Twickenham, but there’s new standards.”
New standards that Ireland failed to get anywhere near today. When ROG got going though, he had plenty to say on where things need to change;
“I think where we are attacking space or how we’re trying to get the ball into space would be something that I think needs to be looked at. Because physically, when you have the Vunipolas, and they weren’t there today, but you’re going to have teams like that when we get to World Cups again, we have to mix it up a little bit. I think it’s probably a bit of an ‘out there’ suggestion but the way Japan kind of change the point of focus with multiple threats, we need to get our passing game better. There was a clip there probably summarised it when we went to widths, and I think it was Peter O’Mahony stuck Jacob Stockdale and he had to turn around 180 to catch the ball? At this level, we can’t do that. Watching it, I think it was… England will be very disappointed in the fact that they lacked the killer instinct. I think where you start to kind of, I suppose, build it back up will be difficult for Andy.”
Ireland face Italy at home in the Aviva Stadium in two weeks time, before a daunting trip to Paris to face Grand-Slam chasing France on the final weekend of the Six Nations.
"It's hard to know where you start to review it."
ROG reacts to that Ireland performance in Twickenham.#ENGvIRE #GuinnessSixNations #VMTVRugby pic.twitter.com/G2jeduVSMu
— Virgin Media Sport (@VMSportIE) February 23, 2020
