London Irish Away

[Ian Cant]

Well it was a “ better” performance than last season!
Not playing Reffell was a strange decision.
Would like to see Williams on the wing (and Simmons on the other) as I personally thought he was one of the players who looked decent when he came on loan last season!
I said it before we played a Irish, “ the front row will struggle “and they did.
The line out again was a huge problem and there was a lack of urgency or ability to look up and play what you see in front of you.
Last week, despite Gloucester being poor, surely showed the coaches that a sensible mix of kicking and running the ball back is the best way forward.
We’ve all said it before; pick the players who really will give you 100%; that’s what Newcastle had v Bath and Sale with a refusal to be bullied.
Lastly, the back row has to work harder in attack: there were plenty of carries forward but no back up!

[Dokie]

Well it was a “ better” performance than last season!
Not playing Reffell was a strange decision.
Would like to see Williams on the wing (and Simmons on the other) as I personally thought he was one of the players who looked decent when he came on loan last season!
I said it before we played a Irish, “ the front row will struggle “and they did.
The line out again was a huge problem and there was a lack of urgency or ability to look up and play what you see in front of you.
Last week, despite Gloucester being poor, surely showed the coaches that a sensible mix of kicking and running the ball back is the best way forward.
We’ve all said it before; pick the players who really will give you 100%; that’s what Newcastle had v Bath and Sale with a refusal to be bullied.
Lastly, the back row has to work harder in attack: there were plenty of carries forward but no back up!

100% need a genuine 7 playing. Just like a proper 6 is more effective than Wells.
Also liked what Williams did. Not sure why he dropped out of the team. Remain unconvinced about Potter’s defence and ability under the high ball. With Van Wyk’s injury, hopefully we’ll see Williams return next week.

[Redstripeman]

What are we? Still a team of lemmings rushing over the cliff! Horrific, banal, and guttless display

Bit over the top. Display was bit good enough because we were no where near accurate enough. We just need to tighten up some aspects of our play and we start winning games like that.

Still a definite improvement on last season. For starters the defence was a lot better and bar one miss communication in the first half and one Rona outside break LI never looked like scoring.

Small margins proved very costly. Missed touch finds from Penalties and it could have been a different game as Tigers were getting some go forward.
London Irish had an all international front row and they had the edge in the first half.
Good to see Borthwick make changes at half time rather than wait.
Two games in and a long way to go. Better discipline and execution should put the Team in a better position.

...no guarantee that had he found touch we would have won the line outs!!!
Discipline problems should not be a factor in this team and you have to look at Borthwick for that. Should they perform like this again we could be looking at a troubled season.
We failed to carry any positivity into this game, Irish had done their homework and we did not know how to respond. We managed to get on top for a period but they found a way to lift their game, we need some kind of leadership on and off the pitch.

[Tiglon]

Irish found a way to lift their game late on because of our errors - i.e. the missed penalties to touch. Rugby is a momentum game and we repeatedly handed it back to them. The modern game is all about the following sequence:

1. Give ball to opposition as far into their half as possible.
2. Defend robustly, prevent opposition progress.
3. Force errors and win ball back - return to opposition further into their half.
Repeat 1-3 until you are close to their 22 with possession.
4. Apply pressure, win penalty.
5. Take 3 points if simple, otherwise kick to corner.
6. Win lineout.
7. Maul over the line.
Return to step 1 and repeat.
Occasionally interrupt sequence with back play when an opportunity arises.

This afternoon we regularly failed to accurately execute steps 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 - we also failed step 2 on one glaring occasion which gave them an easy try. When 5 out of the 7 elements of the game plan don't function, you're not going to have a good match, simple as that. Fixing this isn't about fancy stuff from the backs or clever attacking shapes, it's about solidifying the above basics - if we'd executed them well against Irish we would have won comfortably.

Today was not good, but hopefully we've learnt our lesson regarding the lack of a 7 and I doubt Bonilla will ever play so badly again.

I'm not convinced Green can produce anything like his Newcastle form, so I would be curious to see Liebenberg replace him at lock with Reffell at 7 and Taufua at 6. That, for me, would be a more balanced pack. We went for out and out size today and it didn't pay off. Brink and Wiese together felt a bit like playing 2 Billy V's in the back row - having one is brilliant, but two leaves you lacking other abilities.

[johnthegriff]

Disapointed by the performance and the result. I had high hopes of our squad of backrow players but we do need to get the balance right. Our Argentinian international fly half must be a better player than he showed today. Essentially we did not look after the ball, gave away some stupid penalties early in the game and from then on were on the wrong side of the referee. We never looked like scoring a try and we can only improve on that by retaining possession for longer and not continually kicking the ball back to the opposition.

[AngusMcCoatup]

Bonilla needs another chance, this is a guy who steered the Jaguares to the 2019 Super Rugby final, there’s no doubting his ability.

We all have off days, I seem to call George Ford missing touch kicking out of hand for penalties against Toulon and no one called for his swift departure!

So is Bonilla now below Hardwick in the fly-half ratings after that dire performance??
Referee next week is bound to be Exmouth's Luke Pearce again.
We lost the lineouts, we lost confidence, we lost the very poor Referee, we lost because we always kicked our hard won possession away and they loved it! The BT commentators were so pro LI and Dayglo was an embarrassment to the profession.

[westwinds31]

I’m willing to give him time, but we keep hearing about the meticulous attention to detail that is Borthwick’s trademark. Either it’s still taking time to get through or the players simply can’t implement it. Let’s hope it’s the former. It does seem like we’re learning on the job. One of our game changers is looking to move on, Taufua, according to the Rugby Paper.

[wellstiger]

My Goldfish have more bite than the Tigers.
Were not going to improve , nor get near to the top 6 by just trying (poorly by yesterdays performance) to front up in the pack and kick the ball back to the opposition.
I do not like that with trying to find our DNA, we are mimicking Englands style of boring kick chase.
Sorry Mr SB the buck stops with you.
Exeter will stick 60 points on us next week if we play a similar game.

[jgriffin]

Irish found a way to lift their game late on because of our errors - i.e. the missed penalties to touch. Rugby is a momentum game and we repeatedly handed it back to them. The modern game is all about the following sequence:

1. Give ball to opposition as far into their half as possible.
2. Defend robustly, prevent opposition progress.
3. Force errors and win ball back - return to opposition further into their half.
Repeat 1-3 until you are close to their 22 with possession.
4. Apply pressure, win penalty.
5. Take 3 points if simple, otherwise kick to corner.
6. Win lineout.
7. Maul over the line.
Return to step 1 and repeat.
Occasionally interrupt sequence with back play when an opportunity arises.

This afternoon we regularly failed to accurately execute steps 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 - we also failed step 2 on one glaring occasion which gave them an easy try. When 5 out of the 7 elements of the game plan don't function, you're not going to have a good match, simple as that. Fixing this isn't about fancy stuff from the backs or clever attacking shapes, it's about solidifying the above basics - if we'd executed them well against Irish we would have won comfortably.

Today was not good, but hopefully we've learnt our lesson regarding the lack of a 7 and I doubt Bonilla will ever play so badly again.

I'm not convinced Green can produce anything like his Newcastle form, so I would be curious to see Liebenberg replace him at lock with Reffell at 7 and Taufua at 6. That, for me, would be a more balanced pack. We went for out and out size today and it didn't pay off. Brink and Wiese together felt a bit like playing 2 Billy V's in the back row - having one is brilliant, but two leaves you lacking other abilities.

Plenty of comment this weekend, e.g. Nick Tompkins in the Guardian, that the breakdown is the issue, and that the kick tennis is the response to that - as Tiglon accurately notes above.. Ben Youngs said that you don't want to line break these days because you risk being isolated and turned over. The Grauniad's Kitson noted the non-existent offside laws....I think we all could make a list of what is wrong, from scrum formation and feeding onward.

[kk20gb30]

Credit to Irish - when in the ascendancy they turned dominance into points where as our own opportunities came and went due to either bad execution or taking the wrong option.
Away wins are hard to come by and this was an opportunity.I would hope that confidence and belief are not too badly damaged by this display as more than ever next time out we have to compete and believe.

[CrumblingTerrace]

The acid test for any bad performance over the last 5 years has been:

'Imagine if Matt O'Connor was the coach and then think about how you'd describe it.'

Well, that was a stinker in almost every way. Made doubly disappointing because last week we actually showed some fight.

[parvacat]

I blame the shirts!

[ourla]

Don't understand the criticism of Dickson. He gave us 7/8 penalties on the bounce. We just screwed up.

[DingDong]

The Players need to look no further than themselves for that loss, pathetic individual errors and poor judgements and attitude. There's never been a time more important than now for a pack leader and backline organiser to fire up the entire squad when its not good enough. We need a proper leader for the backline in Fordy's absence, and find a pack leader ASAP please!

[OakhamTiger32]

Don't understand the criticism of Dickson. He gave us 7/8 penalties on the bounce. We just screwed up.

I think it was more his first half performance that was frustrating. Letting Irish get away with murder at the breakdown then pinging Brink for a perfectly good turnover (which Irish then scored from). Second half wasn't too bad (although persistent offending by Irish and no card) but yes, we were most certainly masters of our own downfall. Was Dickson the reason we lost, no, was he a contributing factor, I would say for sure. I don't like blaming the officials as it's a poor excuse. We didn't deserve to win yesterday on that performance so let's hope we can move on and put this behind us.