Ireland 26 Scotland 5

A procession and a slog

This game was, at once, confirmation of Ireland's place in the top two of the championship over an outclassed and outplayed opponent while also, simultaneously, showing us the hinges and limitations of the style that has brought us to where we are.

Match Quality

Match Importance

Match Intensity

Quality of Opposition

3.6

Ireland have been getting gradually less and less effective as the Six Nations has progressed. That sounds very hot-takey in a kind of Straight Shooter, Tellin’ It Like It Is kind of way, but I think it’s true. No one has managed to slow down our ball on the floor to the level of a generationally talented French side – a French side, by the way, who I think have the capacity to dominate this tournament for the next three or four years – but everyone from Italy (for a time before going down to 13 men), England (for 70 minutes after their red card) and now Scotland have managed to deal with our League Style attacking framework for a time before falling away.

Maybe the Wales game, where Ireland arguably played as well as I’ve ever seen since that first half against England in Twickenham in 2018, was something of a high watermark when it comes to maxing out our attacking efficiency and, to be plain, straight-up dominance. But then again, knowing what we know of Wales now, maybe that performance was, itself, overvalued.

You can see it when you watch the games and have that nagging feeling that things don’t look like they did against New Zealand and Wales but you don’t know why. When Ireland were flattered by the scoreboard in Paris, hassled by Italy until they went down to 14 and then 13, when we laboured against 14 man England until they gassed out and then, on Saturday, when it took the full 80 minutes to break down a flagging Scottish side for the facile bonus point exclamation mark on the season – what you’re seeing is the slow “nerfing” of Ireland’s game by opposition analysts. Every game since the Welsh game has illustrated what happens when the opposition slowly works out what you’re good at and tries to take it from you.

What Ireland did in this tournament was pretty good for the most part. We are a good attacking side as it currently stands with some questions about efficiency but we have progressed to the point where we are ahead of the curve when it comes to the fundamentals of attacking play in 2022 for primarily on-ball teams.

In some ways, France – who will be our primary antagonists in this tournament over the next few years – are an inversion of Andy Farrell’s Ireland this season. We pass the ball more than anyone, France pass the least. We handle the ball more than anyone and carry further than everyone, France handle the ball less than everyone and carry for the fewest metres. France kick further than anyone, we kick the shortest.

I think you get my drift at this stage.

When you are an on-ball team, as we are, you give the opposition more video ammunition to use against you but it allows you to control the game if you’re a light-heavyweight side, as Ireland are relative to teams like France, South Africa and what Australia and England aspire to be. Light-heavyweight sides can stand and trade with heavy-weight sides for a time but cannot hope to play them like for like.

Heavy-weight sides are best suited to playing off-ball rugby. They don’t have to approach it the same way. France and South Africa both play a form of kick pressure but they approach it in different ways but both do it for the same reasons. The bigger you are, the more you need to be efficient with the ball you carry. France have perfectly min-maxed this. For example, France pass the ball an average of 113 times per game and carry an average of 93 times per game. Ireland carry the ball an average of 138 times per game and pass an average of 209 times per game.

That illustrates the difference in approach, at least between these two sides.

It is a misnomer to assume that heavy sides grind down the opposition with the ball in hand – they don’t. They do it in defence, at the breakdown, in the air and at the set-piece and they usually rotate large swathes of their front five to keep the pressure up in the areas where they win games. Heavyweight sides are usually reliant on kicking, but they don’t give the opposition too much to work with ahead of the game. You are focused on stopping them, as opposed to attacking them.

Light-heavy weight sides at this level have to dominate possession and play a game based primarily on the ruck to pin the opposition in place. France don’t concern themselves with this too much – they pick and choose their engagements on the ball. Ireland have to play a lot of phases and a lot of rucks to generate the looks we need.

When you play this way, you give the opposition a lot of phase maps to dissect. They see your deep looping wingers, they see your use of multiple playmakers and layered runners and they see the reliance you have on producing quick ball. France chose to deny us this at the breakdown and had great results.

Scotland chose to attack Ireland’s attacking framework in two ways – with the heavy poaching game of Schoeman, Darge, Watson and the Fagersons while also committing a lot of energy to choking Ireland up in the tackle, almost to the verge of conceding a penalty for not releasing.

This allowed Scotland to slow Ireland without exposing themselves to too much treatment at the breakdown. In that regard, Scotland did really well and when Townsend said that this was the best that Scotland played all-tournament after the game – something he took pelters for in the media since – I actually agree with him. Defensively, this was much closer to what Scotland have been looking to do and they got the balance between choke tackles and breakdown entries pretty spot on.

Even then, Ireland still managed to have Lightning Quick Ball on 69.4% of our rucks. So why didn’t it look like it did against Wales?

Because Ireland made a lot of handling errors and turnovers, something we’ve done consistently this Six Nations. We have 81 turnovers conceded, which is 23 more than the next side – Scotland. That pairs well with our tournament-high 82 handling errors, of which there were many examples in this game. Sexton, Lowe and Gibson-Park combined for 10 in this game alone, which was only five less than all of the Scottish team combined but this would be expected if you handle the ball and pass more than anyone.

Ireland’s average number of handling errors per game over the tournament was 16. It was 17 in this game and, for reference, it was 12 against Wales and France where you could say we played some of our best stuff, despite both those games looking wildly different. It was 19 handling errors against England and it was 22 against Italy, but it didn’t really matter against 13 men.

That error count is a key part for Ireland’s attacking structure but it’s almost baked into it when you need to play with that much possession.

When Scotland were able to pressure our passing lanes in the layers – their midfield and flankers were quite good at this – in combination with those just on the verge of legal choke tackles, they spooked us into bad passes and handling errors.

This is what you saw when Ireland were labouring at 14-5 until the lip of the fourth quarter. A lot of errors, theoretical quick ball but the players running off that quick ball were moving into packed defences who knew our layer structures – it made for a frustrating evening… right up until it wasn’t.

You know, I wonder what way this game would have gone if Stuart Hogg had managed not to butcher what was a 4-1 overlap less than 5m out. That would have put Scotland right back in range at 14-12 with 48 minutes on the clock. Who knows how that next 10 minutes plays out with Scottish tails up and energy pumping.

But that didn’t happen and, to be perfectly honest, watching this game back a few times didn’t really enlighten me much about anything. Scotland were good, but they are deeply limited and horribly incomplete. Ireland could have played 25% worse and still beaten them because, for now at least, they are not in Ireland’s league. That sounds hubristic but I don’t mean it to be, I think it’s just a statement of fact. Scotland have talent but seem in bad need of a reset of sorts. Despite playing well here, they are a side who seem confused as to what they are and, as they figure that out, they are playing a hodge-podge of everything without anything to really hang their hat on. They’re good on transition on both sides of the ball, sometimes, they have players capable of creating a minute of magic every now and then but they are still inconsistent at the set-piece and they seem to have issues off the field that need resolving.

As for Ireland, we are a good side, who play good rugby and who don’t really have a tonne of glaring weaknesses beyond an overreliance on Sexton for almost everything that we really want to achieve, depth issues at loosehead and in the second row and a slightly sinking feeling that heavy-weight off-ball teams are this teams kryptonite unless we develop the personnel to become a heavy-weight ourselves. At times, it seems like we’re seeing the skill tax that even the All Blacks are struggling to pay to be a dominant, light-heavyweight on-ball side at test level in 2022. I think the All Blacks will spend the next 18 months trying to unearth front five monsters so they can implement the lessons they learned in 2021 up north.

When Ireland get Porter and Kelleher back, we will be a close match for anyone but we need more – more power, more size, more set-piece brawn – to avoid codding ourselves in 18 months’ time when we will have to play the Springboks and, likely, the French if we want to win a World Cup.

Between now and then, we will have to add more layers to our attack because, if we think that teams have a read of it today, it’ll be nothing to what the All Blacks will decode before we travel to the Land of the Long White Cloud this summer for a three-game series that will showcase our ambitions at the very top table.

Only the very best sides win a series in New Zealand and if that’s what we aspire to, we have to do the same. This is rarified air we’re breathing now. We’re the second-best team in the Six Nations by some distance, we’re playing modern, progressive rugby and have the air of a coming team with talent coming through all over the island.

Are we a top team or not? Are we World Cup winners in waiting or not? Or are we happy where we are, tucked in behind France and happy enough to claim a big scalp in the Autumn?

The next few months will tell a lot.

For now, we have a well earned Triple Crown, we have good vibes but this isn’t even the beginning of the climb to the top of the mountain. For Ireland and Andy Farrell, the real Big Game awaits.

The Wally Ratings: Scotland (H)

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.