I try to use this website to try to tell you things you don’t already know.

So when I start off this Green Eye by telling you that Ireland must win this game – something so obvious and cliche that my taxi driver last night said it to me 30 seconds after ranting about foreign drivers – you’ll have to accept my apologies. I know that Ireland must win every game. They’re a professional sports team and that’s, like, the whole point in the job but there are some games that you can afford to lose, even at the very top level, based on the context of where and how you lose. This game against Scotland is not one of them. Lose two weeks in a row, right after that chastening loss to England, and the mutterings about “Plan B” that we heard this week will turn into a cacophony of screams that has the potential to derail the international season. If you can go from heroes to zeroes in one weekend – like last weekend – you can go from zeroes to bums with a second loss in a row. Losing to a combination of English physicality one weekend and Scottish pace and tempo the week after would set alarm bells ringing in Carton House loud enough that you could hear them on Valentia Island.

Nothing but a win will be good enough.

But you already know that.

Weather:

Projected high winds (45 km/h) around kick off with no rain and a damp top on the pitch. I’d expect the wind to be a huge factor in this game.

Referee:

Pascal Gauzere. Ireland were last refereed by him in the final test of the Australian series in 2018.

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Collisions

Ireland roll into this game with an injury list longer than Devin Toner’s back and it’s one that the Leinster man finds himself on for an extended period. Garry Ringrose, CJ Stander, Robbie Henshaw, Iain Henderson, Tadhg Beirne, Devin Toner, Luke McGrath, Keiran Marmion, Andrew Conway and Dan Leavy. That’s a hefty list by anyone’s standards and it’s meant a few changes and rearrangements that Joe Schmidt won’t have wanted to do. In my opinion, the loss of Henderson and Leavy from last week’s selection was a key part of Ireland losing a lot of the collisions they’d normally expect to win. Add those up, divide by a fair bit of attacking inaccuracy and multiply it by the square root of surprisingly low energy and you’ve got an equation that I can’t write up on a sheet of paper but goes some way to explaining how and why England lost and Ireland won. The injury losses for this game aren’t as game plan critical to how Ireland would want to approach this game against Scotland as they were against England and, while you want your best players out on the pitch, I think Schmidt will be relatively happy with the options he has available to him.

The challenge posed by Scotland is different from the one posed by England last week.

England were big in the carry and very heavy in defence, which Ireland’s reduced roster of heavy ball carriers found tough to generate either gainline or ball speed against.

When we look at who Schmidt has selected against England in the previous two victories against them (2017 + 2018) we can see a pretty standard pattern when it comes to his selection policy.

2018: Healy, Best, Furlong, J Ryan, Henderson, O’Mahony, Leavy, Stander

2017: J McGrath, Best, Furlong, D Ryan, Henderson, O’Mahony, O’Brien, Stander

Two heavy ball carriers in the back row each time with Henderson selected ahead of Toner both times. That gave Ireland

Compare that with last weekend:

2019: Healy, Best, Furlong, Ryan, Toner, O’Mahony, Van Der Flier, Stander

Our heavy carriers were frontloaded in the tight five with only one mobile centre-field ball-carrying option in Stander, who had a tough day at the office carrying ball with a fractured cheekbone. The game in 2017 was tight, the one in 2018 where Ireland fielded five heavy ball carriers in the pack was dominant. 2019 featured one heavy carrier in the back five with most of our heavy carriers working in clustered screen roles which narrowed our usual possession chain.

Ireland

When you look at our roster of centre-field carriers against England’s big centre-field defenders, you can see how we lacked variation and, coupled with an unusually inaccurate day of passing and aligning, it lead to Ireland getting very little gainline and slow speed on the recycle.

Here are the aggregated carrying positions from last week’s game;

James Ryan carried the ball 16 times, Stander 11 times, Healy 9 times and Furlong 8 times. They were our primary heavy carrying outlets in this game. O’Mahony and Van Der Flier carried the ball 9 and 6 times each, but it was mainly in the flank area and usually in a disadvantageous position.

Rory Best (1 carries) and Devin Toner (4 carries) didn’t really feature on the ball that much and were mainly second line ruck support options in the middle of the field. Bundee Aki had a pretty big game for Ireland too, acting like a 9th forward at times with his ruck support in the wide areas and carrying in the second channel.

This week, our ball carrying roster will be changed quite a bit.

Quinn Roux will be important here. He’ll be floating between centre-field ruck support and a carrying role himself. I’d expect to see him top out with 6/7 carries. The rest of our carrying options are more evenly spread between the lines.

2019 v Scotland: Healy, Best, Furlong, Ryan, Roux, O’Mahony, O’Brien, Conan

I think we’ll see Jack Conan mix it up between hitting hard up the middle of the pitch and cycling into a wide carrying area where he’s very effective for Leinster. If he’s having a good game, I’d expect to see him get 10+ carries, along with Ryan who’ll be our primary centre-field hitter. How Sean O’Brien performs in his heavy carrying role in the second channel will be really important to our structure. I want to see O’Brien hitting the line off the first receiver, rather than hitting it up close to the ruck as part of a screen.

This is where I’d like to see O’Brien carrying the ball mostly. It’s where he’s probably most effective at this stage in his career and it opens up his offloading game on either side. If Sean O’Brien is mainly carrying up recycle phases in the Hammer Zone, things won’t be going well.

Chris Farrell will be an important part of our structure too. His carrying on release phases and centre-field rucks will have to get us gainline because if we get it from Farrell, it’ll allow us to reset our forwards and really get Scotland thinking about our ball carriers across the entire openside.

Look here at how Scotland defended against Italy;

This is straight from the kickoff but these series of phases are something that Ireland will look to recreate tomorrow. Two hit up phases and then a release to Chris Farrell so he can attack the likes of Johnson and Jones to set a wide platform for us.

Scotland play with a modified 12 up defensive system, with Russell and Hogg usually in the backfield to act as kicking options or transition runners and Laidlaw floating behind the ruck point.

Scotland do use Wilson in the backfield on certain kick returns at times and may want to use Strauss in a similar role here. Scotland will probably use this structure here as Ireland are likely to kick quite a bit with the wind and I think that Townsend’s dropping of Kinghorn has to do with the decisions he would have to make on the wing, as I think they’ll expect Sexton to be probing around the narrow spaces behind their defensive line. That’s why the experienced heads of Seymour and Maitland are in, I suspect.

Scotland’s defensive alignment has to be narrow in this defensive structure because it’s incredibly vulnerable if it gives away gainline up the middle of the field. I think this is why Scotland moved Toolis to the bench and brought in Gilchrist – Gilchrist is a bigger, more aggressive hitter in defence and they’ll need that alongside Struss and Gray because Scotland look a little light everywhere else in the pack. Wilson, Richie and McInally are good players but they aren’t noted big centre-field defenders. Dell and Berghan aren’t massive hitters (relatively speaking) either. Scotland get around this size issue by keeping their lines compact and movable, which allows them to double up on the tackle and, when they have the likes of Watson fit, get a jackal over the ball. That usually prevents offloads up the middle but they can end up ceding a lot of ground if they have to defend against a team who can array a lot of heavy firepower beyond their last forward defender.

Look at the space that shows up in midfield when Italy structure two pods of forwards off the first receiver;

If Italy had a second pair of hands behind the first screen, Scotland were in a world of trouble because they had completely angled in on the three-forward pod which left a lot of space up the middle of the pitch.

That showed up on a lot of big openside plays and you can imagine Schmidt has a few options in his locker to attack Scotland if they zone in too much on a three-man of Furlong, Healy and Roux. The Sexton loop off that three-man pod can be super effective against this kind of defensive system even if it is the oldest trick in the book.

Accurate tip on passes are really effective against Scotland’s narrow defence, especially if they come with a bit of space from the previous ruck.

This is a good example, even it is from garbage time with Scotland pulling up. Look at the ground Italy made with a shifting of the ball.

Look at the space that opened up for that heavy runner – O’Brien or Conan would be perfect there – and Schmidt won’t have missed Johnson giving up a dominant carry after the tip on pass exposed him outside the last forward.

I think we’ll have a good crack off Scotland on the setpiece, as they’ve taken to hiding Russell on lineout defence.

They have Johnson and one of the wingers defending in the 10 channel with Russell defending deeper. I think this puts a lot of stress on Johnson, their inside centre, in particular, and it means Wilson, McInally and Ritchie have to cover a lot of ground off the tail of the lineout on full seven-man schemes.

I think Ireland will shorten the lineout to force Scotland to move some of their lighter – but weaker – forward defenders into midfield and bring Russell back into the line. Scotland are a little vulnerable at the back of the lineout too, with the way that Wilson and Ritchie have to shoot out to take the space. They can get separated from the tight five a little too much and that leaves isolations for Irish runners coming against the grain. Italy tried something similar but fluffed their lines a small bit.

There are definite cracks for Ireland to go after on phase play and off the lineout. Scotland’s scrum could be a little vulnerable without Nel but with Gauzere reffing, I wouldn’t hold my breath for death by scrum penalties.

If Ireland can hold onto the ball and challenge the Scottish out to the last forward, I think we’ll win and win well. If we rack up 60+% possession, I think we’ll crack Scotland early and often but it’s easier said than done. The wind will play a part with handling, goal kicking and on some kicking plays but Ireland have the game that when done well over the last few years, grinds down Scottish teams in the end. We’ll see how it goes.