This game, played out as it was in the muck and slop of Rosario’s Club Old Resian pitch, was a good example of everything you need to know about this young Irish side.

Relentless, talented, balls like Bengal tigers – you name it, this group has it collectively. But none of that will matter to them today because they lost their 5-8th place playoff game against England and will playoff for the 7/8th spot against New Zealand on Saturday.

It’s the measure of this young Irish side that even talking about a loss – even one found in the last play of the game – feels almost patronising. It shouldn’t. Despite the result and the overall subpar performance, this was an incredibly gutsy display in conditions that wouldn’t look out of place in No Man’s Land during the Battle of the Somme.

When we look back at this game though, I think we’ll look at it as an opportunity missed. Ireland had the majority of the possession, the lion’s share of the territory, more passes/carries than the English and had a man advantage for 30 minutes of this contest but still found themselves coming back from 11 points down in the second half. For me, that came down to England’s greater clinicality and Ireland’s error rate with the ball in hand which was almost double that of the opposition.

The impact of the conditions on that error rate can’t really be overstated but that came down to where and how England chose to kick. With underfoot conditions like there were here, it’s very difficult to manage your footwork under the high ball and on isolated defensive sets.

David Ryan got caught on this one on one in open field off a dominant English scrum.

You can see Ryan losing his lateral movement in the heavy conditions and that gives de Glanville all the space he needed to put the excellent Josh Hodge away for a critical try in this game. Ireland never really managed to generate the same kind of field position or isolations with enough regularity to use the conditions in the same way.

Ireland were more than capable of taking England on up front. Despite the conditions, I’d be hesitant to say that the muck suited England’s bigger pack more because that might imply that Ireland were weaker than them. I don’t think that’s true.

Sure, at this point, Ireland were deprived of all of our first-choice back row – and even some of the replacements – through injury but I don’t think we looked wildly outmatched here despite England’s size advantage. Baird, Ryan, Ahern, Allison, Turner and Watters looked more than up for the tough stuff from the start, while Clarkson, Wycherley and Deeny added a bit of oomph off the bench.

The conditions hurt our ability to play with the tempo of the last two times we played this English side but we were more than capable of retaining ball, we just weren’t ever able to get the type of spacing that we needed to really hurt this English side. Our scrum, too, wasn’t as solid on the opposition put in as it had been earlier in the tournament – how much of that came down to the underfoot conditions isn’t something we can see from the highlights but England’s dominance there lead directly to all three of their tries.

Our main strategy seemed geared towards taking England on in the lineout and we were certainly successful there. Ben Healy’s outstanding tactical kicking and Tom Ahern’s counter-jumping were a potent combination and provided Ireland with the field position that much of our best work came from.

We just couldn’t make the most of it with enough regularity and, by the end, despite clawing back an 11 point deficit, we looked out on our feet – even with a man advantage for the last 10 minutes after (yet another) English yellow card.

The ending was cruel – with a hint of controversy after an English kick – but England had earned their win with some clinical play and excellent physicality when they had the opportunity. They’ll be particularly pleased with their scrummaging over the course of the 80 minutes.

One can’t help but wonder what might have been for this Irish side. They’ll patch themselves up and go again on Saturday against New Zealand but seeing how competitive they managed to remain even while losing key players before and during this tournament

This performance was a strange one in that, individually, I thought we did quite well but the collective performance wasn’t quite what it has been in the previous games. That’s what happens with the level of disruption that this young Ireland side have had in just the 12 short days since this tournament began.

Just the one game left now but regardless of the result, there’s a lot for them to be proud of in this tournament.

The Wally Ratings: England (N)

The Wally Ratings explainer page is here.  

As per usual, players are rated based on their time on the pitch, if they were playing notably out of position, and on the overall curve of the team performance. DNP means the player did not feature and N/A means they weren’t on the pitch long enough to warrant a fair rating given the way the game went. 

Names	Rating
Michael Milne	★★★
Dylan Tierney-Martin	★★★
Charlie Ward	★★★
Charlie Ryan	★★★★
Thomas Ahern	★★★★
Ryan Baird	★★★★
Ronan Watters	★★★
Azur Allison	★★★
Craig Casey	★★★★
Ben Healy	★★★★
Jonathan Wren	★★★
David Ryan	★★
Liam Turner	★★★★
Aaron O'Sullivan	★★
Jake Flannery	★★★
Declan Adamson	DNP
Josh Wycherley	★★★
Tom Clarkson	★★★
John McKee	DNP
Brian Deeny	★★★★
Niall Murray	★★★
Luke Clohessy	N/A
Angus Kernohan	★★

There’s much to cover in this game and I’ll be doing that in TRK Premium all week long with GIF and Video Articles.