There’s a scene in Arrested Development where Michael Bluth, the main character, opens up a fridge to see a brown paper bag with “Dead Dove Do Not Eat” written on it. He takes the bag out of the fridge, opens it, and is almost surprised to see that, yes, indeed there is a dead dove in there. He looks disappointed in himself.

“I’m not sure what I expected.” 

When I saw the hysterical reaction of the RTE panel in the aftermath of this handy enough 29-10 win I was reminded of this scene. I’m not quite sure what they expected from the first warm-up game of the pre-season with a disrupted squad full of new combinations against a limited but very physical Italian side. Were they expecting Ireland to toss a 50 point, All Black style beating on these guys, despite the obvious limitations of the game plan, the lack of ball carriers in the pack and the experimental nature of selections all over the pitch? Really? I can’t imagine why former pros would think that.

“It was abysmal”, shrieked Eddie O’Sullivan, who seemed to get more unhinged every time Daire O’Brien went to him. Was it abysmal? It wasn’t a thriller for the ages, sure, but did anyone really expect it to be? It was as scrappy and error-strewn as you’d expect with a handy, facile win in the end as most expected. The result wasn’t important. Even the combined performance wasn’t that important – given the slim chances that we’ll ever see this XV again outside a flu pandemic.

The true fascination of a game like this is always in the performance of the roles given to players who are looking to book a seat on the plane. One look at Ireland’s selection would clue you into the individual battles on show. Scannell vs Herring. Ruddock vs Beirne. McGrath vs Marmion. There were battles all over the pitch, with guys on the pitch and watching at home. McGrath was tangling with Kilcoyne. Farrell was fighting with the concept that you only need three midfielders in a World Cup squad. Some guys were playing to make it past the next cut. We’ll see how successful they were soon enough, but they won’t be judged on not scoring 10 tries in a disjointed selection against an Italian side that are better than they are given credit for.

Luckily for them, Joe Schmidt is more exacting, professional and immersed in the modern game than Daire O’Brien and Eddie O’Sullivan.

Strange, that.

Brakes On

Ireland didn’t really show all that much here, to be clear. There were a few interesting bits and pieces; we didn’t box kick once, for example, and kicked all our contestable kicks from 10. That’s a bit of a departure from the Six Nations in one tangible way, anyway.

I also thought our attacking structures showed some new “chop in” decoy lines from our forwards to help create corners for our 10/12/13 to cut against were a development from earlier in the season.

By far the biggest push on was in Ireland’s use of tactical kicking on the edge of the attacking line from Joey Carbery. The rationale for it was obvious; Ireland suffered at the hands of the opposition line speed during the Six Nations so an aggressive kicking game on the edges of the attack would punish a hard and high blitz.

Having an established kicking threat on edge plays will either widen or narrow the opposition blitz, or negate their hard press entirely.

When Italy pressed up hard on the edge in this instance, Carbery’s last-second grubber kick punished the outside blitz defender’s aggression.

When the ball went into the pocket behind the defensive line, Ireland had a great shot at pressurising the Italian backfield cover. The edge defenders are immediately in a weak position – they have to turn and reaccelerate to track the ball – while the Irish attackers can continue their line, track the bouncing ball and force Italy into a reactive position.

It allowed Ireland to keep good attacking depth and force decisions from the blitzing defenders – do they push up narrow, or keep width? Do they drift to track wider runners? All of these decisions create options for your creative players in edge situations and it’ll be worth tracking this in later warm-up games as the level of opponent increases.

That isn’t to say that Ireland were impressive here; they weren’t. They were functional, at best, in the second and third quarters, but as a final extension of the pre-season goes, it wasn’t the worst. You have to go back to what you could legitimately expect from Schmidt from a game plan perspective with this lineup, in this game.

Would Ireland come in with a perfectly fine-tuned attacking system with a set-piece to match and stick 50 points on Italy despite all the changes, new combinations and guys in try-out positions? I mean, it’s possible, but just not very likely. So, in that context, a 19 point win without working any harder than they had to while getting a real look at some of the guys in a tangle for plane seats was about as good as could be expected.

On The Bubble

When we assess this game, we have to look beyond the collective. With little to no match time together and without pre-built combinations in the pack, the squad’s cohesion in a matchday environment would be a big barrier to an impressive collective performance.

We can’t look at the backrow’s performance as a unit, for example, because there wasn’t much to look at in that context. Did Tommy O’Donnell play well and possibly enhance his prospects of going beyond the next squad cut? Perhaps. I thought his work rate on both sides of the ball, defence in particular, was seriously impressive. Did Rhys Ruddock show that he can be relied on as a primary ball carrier? At times, yes, although you’d wonder about his ability to fill for O’Mahony defensively in the wider areas if that is to be his role as blindside cover. Did Jordi Murphy impress as a ball carrier, support player and lineout option? Not really – but he did show that he can turn his hand to all of those roles and, in that regard, is probably a safe bet to travel as a cover player for three positions.

Dave Kearney took his try well but didn’t do enough for me to move ahead of anyone he’s competing with for back three positions. Haley had a decent cameo but looks to be up against it to make it beyond the next cut. Conway’s excellent performance will have given Schmidt pause for thought on his depth options beyond Kearney, Earls, and Stockdale but we’ll have to see how he stacks up against England and Wales if he gets the opportunity.

I thought Chris Farrell showed why Schmidt probably can’t afford to leave him at home in a few weeks. His ball carrying was another standout, especially off the set-piece.

His defence was pretty good too, outside of a few early misalignments with Ringrose and our back row finding their feet positionally. The big thing is “impact tackles” and he made a good few of those.

Ultimately, he showed himself to be a live option at #12 from a physical and ball-playing perspective.

Joey Carbery was the stand out performer up until his injury early in the second half and we can only hope that his injury isn’t serious enough to keep him out longer than a few weeks. We’ll wait for the scan.

Jean Kleyn came in for a lot of criticism post-game from the RTE pundits. It was almost surreal – had they been watching the same game? He was Ireland’s second top tackler with 16 big stops, including a few of those impact tackles that Schmidt called out post-game.

I’ll be covering Kleyn’s performance in more detail during the week but his work rate, physicality and set-piece work (in the scrum, lineout lifting and maul building in particular) was exactly what you’d want from a tighthead lock.

His scrummaging was a big plus.

The power transfer coming through on the tighthead side of this scrum is something else, and I think it won’t have escaped the attention of Schmidt, Easterby or Feek. Neither will his hugely effective lifting and jumping in the lineout. He made two errors, as far as I saw – one knock-on close to the line that he’d want back and one poor shoving decision on a maul when tracking the break was the better option – but as senior debuts go, I think it was an excellent showcase of what he’s good at and what he might offer as a heavy tight forward should he make it to Japan.

For me, the stand out player in this game by full time was Garry Ringrose. His line running, handling, footwork and ability to find a break are hallmarks of very special players. His status on the plane to Japan is assured, barring injury, but we knew that before this game. Ringrose is a Rolls Royce player. He was superb.

This was far from a perfect Irish performance but there was enough detail in here to help Schmidt make a few more tough decisions in the coming days.

The Wally Ratings: Italy (H) Guinness Summer Series

The Wally Ratings explainer page is here.  

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.

Names	Rating
Jack McGrath	★★★
Rob Herrying	N/A
Andrew Porter	★★★
Devin Toner	★★
Jean Kleyn	★★★★
Rhys Ruddock	★★★
Tommy O'Donnell	★★★
Jordi Murphy	★★★
Luke McGrath	★★★
Joey Carbery	★★★★
Dave Kearney	★★★
Chris Farrell	★★★★
Garry Ringrose	★★★★
Andrew Conway	★★★★
Jordan Larmour	★★★
Niall Scannell	★★★
Cian Healy	N/A
John Ryan	★★★
Iain Henderson	★★★
Tadhg Beirne	★★★
Keiran Marmion	★★★
Jack Carty	★★★
Mike Haley	★★★

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.