England 15 Ireland 32

Ireland keep the show on the road

It was a weird enough game but one that showcased Ireland's quality, even if it took 70 minutes to break down England's resolve to the point that a crucial bonus point could be achieved.

Match Importance

Match Quality

Match Intensity

Standard of Opposition

5

The scoreline both does and does not, give you the full story of this enthralling Irish victory at Twickenham. It was Schrodinger’s Bonus Point except this event can be measured.

England were, at once, resoundingly and deservedly beaten by a classy Ireland side while also somewhat hard-done-by after a gutsy, backs against the wall performance that showcased the Old England, as opposed to Eddie Jones’s New England. It flattered them and didn’t do them justice, all at the same time.

This weird juxtaposition is compounded even more by England taking the role of “brave losers” in the aftermath on social media and in the post-match interviews.

Not a fan of the old brave losers vibe but I think circumstances today probably warrants that, proper proud of the group, thanks for support ☕️

— Gengey (@EllisGenge) March 12, 2022

I mean, is this really England? Maybe Eddie was right. Maybe they are the plucky underdogs. Personally, I don’t think it suits them, whether it’s a “mind game” or not. That isn’t the English rugby I know.

England will point to the red card and the loss of Sinckler and Curry during the game but the hard reality is that England never looked like scoring here outside of the penalties they won at the scrum. Maybe it’ll all come together for them in 2023 – in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised – but for now, everything is looking muddled, too reliant on individuals for moments of magic and off-tempo for what I think they are trying to achieve.

That England’s best work came from Springbok-like kick pressure is either an indictment of New England’s attacking structure or lack thereof or a smart adjustment to losing Ewels inside the first two minutes.

I think it’s the latter, personally, and while it was certainly rousing and familiar viewing, England will need more if they want to do what Eddie Jones has visualised for them in 2023. This version of England are every bit as physical as described, but their game based on Smith’s qualities as an unpredictable attacking threat were impossible to read on this game’s evidence.

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There was a lot of focus on the scrum in this game, and rightly so because it’s a wild outlier in the context of the game over the last few years. The average number of scrum penalties per game in 2019 was 3.7, the lowest number since the 2011 World Cup, where the average was 4.8 penalties per game. Ireland conceded six scrum penalties in this game, which is wildly above average based on the last few years of the game as a whole and for Ireland specifically.

There were massive discussions online and on trad media in the aftermath of the game as to the legality – or lack thereof – in England’s scrummaging and I’m not sure I buy that Ireland were, in essence, “cheated” out of multiple penalties by refereeing errors or shady tactics.

Looking back at the game, there was one scrum that I felt should have been a reset at the very least. It was this one midway through the first half where it looks like England are wheeling the scrum around.

At this stage, Raynal had already awarded England multiple scrum penalties so you can understand how he would see this as a further illustration of something he had already decided – that England were on top, even with only seven forwards and that Ireland were struggling badly to contain England on their put in.

The first scrum, ironically, went Ireland’s way with a full penalty from Raynal. Even on this Ireland “win” you can see the principles that England were looking to exploit at the scrum in this game on their put in.

What were those principles? I think England wanted to shift the scrum in by attacking Healy and Beirne at an angle so that Sinckler could scrummage with most of his forward pressure onto Dan Sheehan, which would leave George and Genge to double up on Furlong with Sheehan removed the equation. The English pack would look to double down on that movement by stepping towards the tighthead side in unison. If all that went well, you would see the Irish scrum lifting and wheeling and, even better, this tactic would work even with seven forwards + one winger against eight Irish forwards.

That angled slide bypassed Healy and Beirne, allowed Sinckler to attack Sheehan at an angle who, in turn, would not be able to resist George levering more upward pressure onto Furlong’s left shoulder as Genge did the same on the left shoulder all while the English locks drove through and around onto Furlong to exaggerate the effect.

In all of these examples, you see Ireland losing the spine of the scrum under pressure on the loosehead side. Healy loses the initial contest with Sinckler, Beirne can’t stabilise him and loses his feet which wobbles Doris and Henderson and this is all in an environment where England are driving past Sheehan and directly onto Furlong who doesn’t have solid pressure coming from behind to compensate.

Healy and Sheehan needed to be our primary break on this and we conceded free kicks and another penalty for early engagement and not using a brake foot respectively, such was our need to get the jump in the English scrum. They were trying to drive laterally on us so we tried to do it them first.

You can see the general principle of England’s strategy illustrated perfectly on this scrum in the second half where England are laterally stepping through on Furlong as a unit.

Sheehan and Healy were replaced four minutes later. It wasn’t just on Sheehan and Healy though. The new unit struggled to live with the same lateral pressure on their first scrum a few minutes after coming on the field. Was it legal? Well, England were “boring in”, I suppose you could say but they also shifted the parameters of where they engaged with the scrum and our loosehead side and Dan Sheehan weren’t able to respond to that “shift”. I think the first responsibility comes on Healy to dictate the height of the engagement on Sinckler and Stuart. When he wasn’t able to prevent them slipping inside onto Sheehan, that allowed Jamie George – an excellent scrummaging hooker – to go to work on the inexperienced Sheehan and then onto Furlong, who was getting overloaded by Genge and Lawes at an angle.

On the whole, I think it was good scrummaging strategy mixed with a referee who tends to reward dominance and positive scrummaging matchups. I think Sinckler and Stewart are probably too strong for Healy at this level of the game at this stage of his career and, when you pair him with an inexperienced, tall hooker up against an operator like George, this kind of thing can happen.

It’s not an indictment of the coaching, or their reputation as scrummagers either, it’s just one of those things that happen against a well-drilled unit. What will be interesting is how Scotland look to exploit this performance next week.

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That scrummaging kept England in the game but it was allowed into the game through Irish inefficiency, overplaying and poor passing. Ireland made 19 handling errors, the second-highest of the tournament for us by some distance. The highest – 22 against Italy – shouldn’t come as a surprise as that was also the game where we played against an opponent who was down on numbers due to red cards.

I think that can be attributed to trying to get “shortcuts” to where we expect the space to be because the opposition is depleted, as opposed to playing the game that we know works for us. As against Italy, we seemed to force the ball wider than was sensible. With Ewels and Curry out, perhaps we felt that we didn’t need to engage the opposition at close range where they might slow us down but, without committing them physically, we turned our usual attacking efficiency into an easier to defend version of itself that demanded more complex final passing as England tracked our runners across the field and flooded the passing lanes.

For me, Murray’s introduction in the last quarter brought more of the tighter structure that narrowed England and forced the compressions and rapid ruck structure that makes Ireland’s attack tick. This should have been a try but for the last connection between Doris and Murray, but you can see the benefit that solid structure and cleaner pass quality produced.

There’s more of the same for the try that finally broke England’s resistance on 71 minutes. I’m not arguing that Murray needs to be a starter, but there’s no doubting his impact off the bench when Ireland needed someone to bring us through the gears, almost, as opposed to Gibson-Park’s relentless foot to the floor tempo.

The end result keeps Ireland on track to win a triple crown and, with a bit of luck in Paris, a Six Nations title that would represent an excellent return from what has been a fairly good Six Nations at a weird point in the World Cup cycle.

The worry is that Ireland are peaking early, once again, but we’ll only know that for sure next year. Onto Scotland, and the challenge of facing an opponent with four full games of video to work on. That will be a challenge of Scotland’s forward quality and Townsend’s analytical ability.

The Wally Ratings: England (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.