This was Ireland at their brutal, efficient best.

The scoreline illustrated that, somewhat, but it didn’t fully show the extent of Ireland’s utter dominance in this game. Let’s be clear – Samoa showed up to play here and they brought a physical, imposing edge to their defensive work that sometimes pushed beyond the envelope but they ultimately had no answer for Ireland’s relentless phase pressure and clinical set piece execution.

When Ireland play like this, they can make any team look very, very ordinary and while events elsewhere dictated that we’d be tangling with the All Blacks next weekend, I think Joe Schmidt will be quietly pleased with Ireland’s 80 minutes here.

Ruthless. Relentless. Professional.

Sure, Schmidt won’t be happy to lose Bundee Aki if, as expected, he sees a tournament ending ban for his red card challenge in the first half but that has to go in the uncontrollable pile for now. What was controllable was how Ireland reacted in the aftermath of the red card. Being down a player for 50 minutes is far from ideal at any point but it’s only really a problem if you let the opposition have the ball for prolonged periods. After Ireland stabilised in the aftermath of Aki’s dismissal, we dominated possession for the rest of the game.

And by dominated, I mean 80% possession in the second half with 86% territory.

When Aki was red-carded, Ireland had three of the four required tries. There was a danger that the game could have slipped into a quagmire where we would end up limping to a pyrrhic bonus-point win.

But that would have been completely out of character with the game to that point.

Dominating Sequences

Ireland’s two opening tries were built on near-perfect attacking sequences. In previous articles, we’ve discussed how Ireland like to build into a game. Gain positive territory, work close range phases to gain ground, penalty advantage or a positive angle for Sexton to work with, and then striking with a phase strike move to get a linebreak for even more territory or, ideally, a try.

Ireland won an early tactical kicking battle and, from the resulting lineout maul, won a penalty that gave us a 5m driving opportunity.

We coughed up this throw against Japan a week or two ago but nailed it here.

Our launch was uncontested but we peeled around the Samoan front for the opening try. The initial launch pod did a great job of setting the swivel point, with Stander having a key role in leading the peel around the corner. That made it 7-0.

Another close-range lineout planted Ireland firmly into the Samoan 22 and when we retained possession on the throw, we just battered Samoa into powder. Rugby looks very easy when you can hit your tighthead prop 10m out from the tryline and watch him run through four defenders.

The accuracy of the Irish carry and recycle off 9 and the power of Furlong running onto the ball was impossible for Samoa to resist. Ireland take a bit of flak from some quarters for our work off Murray, but when you have a scheme that keeps working, why wouldn’t you keep at it? 14-0.

I suppose the issue comes when Ireland are losing the gainline but even then, Ireland’s style of play isn’t massively dependent on earning huge amounts of gain line. Look at this example, albeit while Samoa are down a man to a yellow card.

There’s very little gain line earned on these initial two wide carries in Q3 but each carry demands defensive attention and demands a defensive cluster at the ruck. The depth on our narrow carries means that Samoa has to respect Ireland’s power and, more importantly, commit defensive resources to stop it.

When the time comes to release the ball to Sexton – remember our preferred sequence – he has multiple options to choose from and Samoa have multiple, credible options to worry about, even when the ball heads to Aki in the second layer.

Samoa slapped this one down – and were lucky not to see yellow, in my opinion – but you can see how it would have stressed the edge defence. Sexton, as he tends to do, made a perfect decision to release the ball and we were a Samoan knock on away from a critical linebreak. These little details were absent against Japan, where I thought we were flat and predictable. You could say that this sequence is equally predictable but when it comes to the release, there are five radiant options to hit off of #10.

When Sexton sees that space, he goes for it. I think this one was meant to be a play that got Earls attacking around the edge of the Samoan “overhit” by running a loop between Sexton and Henshaw.

An error from Henshaw prevented that, but you could see Sexton setting Henshaw up before the ball ever left the ruck.

We didn’t need huge amounts of gain line to create this opportunity – all we needed was hard carrying off Murray and an invested defence to create a picture that Sexton could work with.

A few minutes later, off some more narrow hard carrying from Aki and Stander, Murray got the ball to Sexton in a similar position, this time with Jordan Larmour to work with.

Sexton sees a big #8 on the edge of the defence and knows that Larmour has the pace and agility to make the linebreak. Sexton ran through the gap expecting an inside pass and was not disappointed. He saw it before it ever happened.

Aki took a red card a few minutes after a Samoan try and there was real potential for destabilisation in the aftermath. That would only be an issue if Samoa had the ball, so Ireland denied them of it.

In the 38th minute, Ireland attacked the Samoan flankers speed off the side of a 5m scrum. How did we earn that position? Lineout, heavy phases off #9 in the 22 until we found a seam that Sexton could attack – Larmour again – and Ireland were held up over the line a few phases later.

Ireland’s scrum angled Samoa away from the touchline and increased the space that the Samoan scrumhalf and winger had to defend.

Stockdale and Sexton advanced at once to draw the winger, Murray’s body language held the scrumhalf and that created a lane for Sexton to attack.

That was the bonus point, wrapped up in the first half with a minute to spare. All we needed to do from there was win, and a bruising performance from the forwards – all 13 of them – ensured that would be the case. Down a back? It’s not a problem if the opposition has only 20% of the possession and 18% territory for a full 40 minutes.

Ireland added a few more scores, as the possession and territory usually dictates, and that would be that for the pool stages of Rugby World Cup 2019. 

Where are we as we head to Tokyo to face New Zealand? Not where we thought we were last year, but maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world. I love the idea of facing the All Blacks in a quarter-final. Why? We’re either good enough to beat them here or we’re not. Ireland aren’t chasing a semi-final, we’re after the Webb Ellis trophy so, for me, we either face them here and now, or in the final. We’ll probably have to beat the All Blacks to win this tournament so the timing in the knockouts doesn’t matter. Go hard or go home. That’s all you could want.

After the pool stages, no one will be looking beyond an All Blacks win. Ireland are the underdogs once again, and with a chip on our shoulders for added classical values. As is always the case in the Japan of myth, beware the wounded Big Green Monster heading towards Tokyo with nothing to lose.

The Wally Ratings: Samoa (N) Rugby World Cup Pool A

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
Cian Healy	★★★★
Rory Best	★★★★
Tadhg Furlong	★★★★★
Iain Henderson	★★★★
James Ryan	★★★★
Tadhg Beirne	★★★★
Josh Van Der Flier	★★★★
CJ Stander	★★★★★
Conor Murray	★★★★
Johnny Sexton	★★★★★
Jacob Stockdale	★★★
Bundee Aki	N/A
Robbie Henshaw	★★
Keith Earls	★★★
Jordan Larmour	★★★★
Niall Scannell	★★★
Dave Kilcoyne	★★★
Andrew Porter	★★★
Jean Kleyn	★★★
Peter O'Mahony	★★★
Luke McGrath	★★★
Joey Carbery	★★★
Andrew Conway	★★★

Notable Players 

I thought Tadhg Beirne had a superb game here and all but guaranteed himself a spot in the 23 for the quarter-final with a great day of lineout work and dirty ball carrying.

Jordan Larmour looked really good here and took advantage of the excellent positions he was put into by the halfbacks. Will he start against the All Blacks? I don’t think so – but he’ll almost certainly feature somewhere.

When Conor Murray plays at his best, there’s not a better scrumhalf playing the game. I’m not saying he was back to his very best in this one, but he had all the signs you’d look for. Constantly threatening the defensive pillars, long-range accurate passing, top-end decision making and elite kicking. Exactly the man you’d want coming into form with the All Blacks looming.

Tadhg Furlong spent his 44 minutes on the pitch chewing up the Samoan forwards one on one in open play and in the scrum. When he plays like this – and he’s never far away from this level – he makes the game look easy. Need a try? Just give it to Tadhg and watch him batter the other lads out of the way. Gargantuan. ★★★★★

It doesn’t matter how many times you doubt CJ Stander, he’ll always show up and go to work. He’s turned into the complete backrow forward over the past few seasons and he showed why here – he’s a lineout option, he’s a mauler, he’s a defensive hitter and he’ll hit the opposition like a sledgehammer for 80 minutes wherever he’s needed. Quality. ★★★★★

There is Ireland with Johnny Sexton, and there is Ireland without Johnny Sexton. When he plays, we just make the right decisions more often than not and that is an invaluable quality to have on the rugby field. There are #10s that are faster than him, there are #10s with more “x-factor”, but there isn’t a #10 playing the game that can move his team around the field with Sexton’s authority, experience and intelligence. Outstanding. ★★★★★

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.