Ireland didn’t even play all that bad when it came right down to it.
I’ve watched the game back five times now because (a) I’m a masochist as you know and (b) I realised midway through my second watch back that so much of Ireland’s performance in Eden Park looked very similar to what beat the All Blacks back in November 2021 except for a few key differences that make all the difference but also highlight an issue in Ireland’s game that I feel needs to be addressed when it comes to consistently beating high-level opposition away from the comforts of the Aviva Stadium.
Ireland’s great “awakening” under Farrell from the end of Six Nations 2021 against England to this test on Saturday consisted of 11 games where Ireland won 10 and lost one. Nine of those games were played at the Aviva Stadium. When you play at home, you tend to get a few of those refereeing decisions that make winning test matches a little bit easier as well as all the comforts that make home advantage what it is. Winning away from home is way, way more challenging and the mark of truly great sides is being able to do what they do at home on the road when the chips are down.
Ireland aspires to be a team at that level and nothing suggests that you are at that level like beating New Zealand in New Zealand. What result made you believe that the Springboks were back to being the Springboks after a ropey few years under Coetzee? 34-36. Westpac Stadium, Wellington, 2018.
We, as a rugby nation, have scaled a lot of heights since our ascension to being a Serious Rugby Team in the 2000s but we have yet to scale that particular peak.
Winning away is difficult. Winning away at test level is hard. Winning away in New Zealand is almost impossible.
So even though we came into this tour with a 50% away record over the last year we had a real ambition of making a statement series win. Our approach pre-tour suggested this was the aim. You’d imagine that every team everywhere looks at every game they play as “we will win this” but that isn’t always the way, at least deep down. We selected at 100% full strength, for example, as opposed to France who – both this season and last – rotated out their top guys to build depth during their summer tours. We doubled down on what worked in the Six Nations and brought a condensed 40-man squad to replicate World Cup conditions roughly a year from the 2023 World Cup.
Farrell said as much when he was naming the squad back in June;
“You know what? When it comes to the World Cup, I reckon we need around 40 players who are good enough to play knockout rugby. I’m talking about the quarter-final, semi-final, and final.”
Three tests against the All Blacks and two against the Māori All Blacks would squeeze any group, especially with an incoming series packing this much “heat”. Five games in three weeks with only 40 players? We always – always – needed an unnatural amount of luck to get through the tour without waiting a day and a half for players to literally just land in New Zealand, never mind get ready for test rugby of this magnitude.
England brought 36 players to tour Australia with only three games to play. Did we really bring only four more players than England did to play five games? If this is a form of resistance training to build resilience for the World Cup it is particularly extreme given the World Cup is in France not, like, Chile. A player injured in the warmup ahead of a pool game in France could have a replacement in situ by full-time if it came to it. But as Andy said, this is about finding out about ourselves in more ways than one.
So, after the first test, what do we know?
Well, I think I know one thing anyway.
For A High Possession Team, We Don’t Have Enough True Playmakers
My big takeaway from the first test is that we are as dependent on Johnny Sexton as we have ever been for almost all of our offensive framework to work effectively. We were less reliant on Sexton in 2015 than we are in 2022 which is bizarre, really, but I think it’s true.
When Sexton left the field after 31 minutes, all the zip and vigour that Ireland had shown to that point went with him. Joey Carbery didn’t do a bad job, by any means, but he looked like what he is – a stand-in. The way Ireland play under Catt and Farrell demands an active breaking threat on phase play and counter-transition from first receiver. That isn’t someone who can just carry, or pass, or kick – it’s someone who can do one of those at the exact right moment while selling the threat of the other two.
This kind of threat off a set-piece is something that only Sexton seems to bring consistently at the moment.
When Sexton runs in this system, everything is tailored to his game like the ass grooves on your favourite “spot” on the couch. Everything Sexton does fills every nook and cranny of Ireland’s system because it has grown around him.
Screens are built to run on his tempo and the cadence of his line running. It’s at the stage where you only really see screen passing errors when Sexton is off the field because most of the guys doing the passing are used to running their primary playing and training reps with Sexton, not the Sexton stand-in.
Carbery runs differently, so he isn’t where Ryan is used to passing. It’s just one moment but it illustrates how much the Sexton stand-in has to reckon with.
We pay lip service to the idea of other playmakers in the system but they are no more than bots in the system – they automate some of the tasks so Sexton doesn’t have to. Most of the action we see from the non-Sexton outside backs is like automated task fulfilment. They show up at first receiver and pass to the pod while Sexton either gets up from the deck after the carry or moves into the second layer so he can work with a wider screen. They don’t really have playmaking autonomy so much as they are there to cover for Sexton in the moment he’s not in his position or facilitate movement of the ball to where Sexton is.
They stand in that first receiver slot because Sexton is not there, not because they are part of a true multiple playmaker system with split autonomy.
An old criticism of Ireland was that everything ran through Sexton and it’s still true, but now there’s a little more nuance to it. Now everything of consequence goes through Sexton, rather than literally every single pass off a ruck. At times in this game it seemed like once the ball left Sexton’s direct sphere of influence outside the 22, our wider outside backs would resort to literally just slinging the ball into whatever space was left outside them.
That is the exact opposite of playmaking. It’s Hail Mary buck-passing that looks like creative play but is, more often than not, running defenders onto an isolated target and making hard work for yourself on the ruck reset. It works when you’re 5m out from the try line because all the winger sitting in the “void” has to do is crash over the try line so any attempt to clean the ruck is pointless – the pass makes the moment. Outside the 22, it’s mostly a roll of the dice in the hope that something good will happen, rather than in the expectation of it.
This is a common failing in this Irish side when the levels go up. Keenan and Ringrose are capable of the odd moment of clarity – usually when they are run into position by Sexton – but too often, and certainly in this game anyway, they were found wanting creatively.
You can see all the elements here. Shipping the ball on, blowing passes, slinging passes into the void, hanging onto the ball as if they need a written note to kick it through and all of that got worse when Sexton left the field. Carbery came on to replace him and tried to run the system the way Sexton does but he can’t – it’s Sexton’s system, not Carbery’s. Carbery can look effective at this level but in a system that suits his skills and attributes.
At his best, Carbery is an elusive runner, an agile screen runner and a strike playmaker who would thrive in a system that put the ball in his hands with space outside him.
Sexton is a heavy inside runner with a perfect combination of heavy carrying potential, kick variation that he disguises so well in his pre-carry stance and really good pass accuracy and range off both sides. You have to respect Sexton on the tight carry, pace or not because he’s got the power to beat you inside. Carbery doesn’t, the opposition know this, so the base threat that Sexton has and our attacking framework relies on doesn’t work when the primary playmaker doesn’t have the same skills Sexton does. Why does Carbery’s passing look clunky? All too often he’s passing to compressed spaces because the opposition doesn’t rate his carrying.
Handré Pollard could run Ireland’s system the same as Sexton. Owen Farrell could. Dan Biggar could. Richie Mo’unga could not. Romain Ntamack could not. Paulo Garbisi could not.
It isn’t about ability, it’s role suitability.
Carbery didn’t really work in this game off the bench for Sexton because our radiating options off him were undermined by his lack of tight ball carrying and the fact that, without another playmaker, he was rarely in a position to get “free” on the outside where he can actually be dangerous. Our system does not produce those looks for our #10 because getting free on the outside does not suit Sexton.
So if it felt like we had a tonne of possession that we just couldn’t seem to use properly outside the first 15 minutes, it’s because we didn’t have a framework to take advantage of it. All too often, the ball died on the edges of the attack because we lacked the creativity to make something of it. It isn’t just turnovers – it’s the processes that lead to situations where turnovers are more easily made.
Our forwards played pretty well, for the most part. Outside of Ringrose and Gibson-Park, I don’t think any of our backs had a particularly poor game but this game was a real example of a team choking to death on too much possession and not enough outlets for it.
That comes down to role division and, in my opinion, we need more playmakers on the pitch that can actively make decisions in the wider spaces. Ringrose isn’t a playmaker. Keenan isn’t a playmaker. Lowe isn’t either and Henshaw isn’t used as one in this Irish system. They can facilitate a pass at first receiver, as I’ve said, but that isn’t playmaking.
We need to get another #10 on the pitch or close enough to it to evolve beyond our current state, both in the medium to long term and on this tour.
As it stands, everything still flows through Sexton to the point that he’s in contention for test #2 despite suffering a concussion in this game. Why? Because we know Carbry can’t work to the level he’s capable of consistently in the system we run, have run and will run for the next year. So Sexton has to be ready.
It’s easy to say that turnovers and errors cost Ireland here but it’s the environment that leads to those errors that concern me. We’re looking for evolution but, to me, that can only come with a key change in the backline and, most likely, a change in our back five pack build. We need another playmaker – Carbery at #15 or Frawley at #12 – to open up our options and funnel the possession we use into more effective areas of the field. If we continue to use Aki/Henshaw/Ringrose in midfield OR Keenan/Larmour at fullback we will likely lose all three tests. Ultimately, we don’t just need another playmaker we need to move the system we have now into one that can use the depth and wide possession we generate and put it in the hands of two players with a flyhalf-like role.
Is that at fullback? Or is it in midfield? Leo Cullen’s signing of Charles Ngatai – a creative, pass-dominant #12 with an underrated kicking game – shows you what he’s thinking for the Stuart Lancaster system that Andy Farrell’s system is so dependent on.
Can Farrell adjust on this tour?
With test two looming large it’s hard to see how it can happen but we live in hope.
The Wally Ratings: All Blacks (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 |
|---|---|
| Andrew Porter | ★★ |
| Dan Sheehan | ★★★ |
| Tadhg Furlong | ★★★ |
| Tadhg Beirne | ★★ |
| James Ryan | ★★ |
| Peter O'Mahony | ★★★ |
| Josh Van Der Flier | ★★★ |
| Caelan Doris | ★★★ |
| Jamison Gibson Park | ★★ |
| Johnny Sexton | ★★★ |
| James Lowe | ★★ |
| Robbie Henshaw | ★★★ |
| Garry Ringrose | ★★ |
| Keith Earls | ★★★ |
| Hugo Keenan | ★★★ |
| Dave Heffernan | N/A |
| Cian Healy | DNP |
| Tom O'Toole | ★★★ |
| Kieran Treadwell | ★★★ |
| Jack Conan | ★★★ |
| Conor Murray | ★★★ |
| Joey Carbery | ★★ |
| Bundee Aki | ★★ |
