Gutted to lose, but full credit to a great Irish performance.
I thought the kicking game was sublime, and Murray and Sexton put us on the back foot constantly, Bowe and Kearney were both massive and are really the perfect outside backs when playing with the kind of game plan Ireland came out with today.
When we tried to play at Irelands own game we got punished and they consistently made more out of their kicks or executed their up and unders effectively when ours were merely giving away possession.
Additionally they defended like Trojans and although ground was made by the South African ball runners the lack of out and out breaks just left us looking like we had no cutting edge. The Irish forwards were also superb in the loose and slowed down our ball well, as well as protecting their own (very important as our most explosive attacks of late have come from turn-over ball which just didn't happen due to good breakdown management).
Basically due to a solid Irish defense we lacked much penetration from regular phase play, and without any turn-overs we just didn't have those massive counter-attacks we have managed to pull off in the RC.
Unfortunately the errors (God I will have nightmares over all those knock ons) and some poor decision making at times certainly didn't help our cause, hopefully this gets shored up or we are in for a very rough tour indeed.
Don't get me wrong it's not all bad, I thought a select few players were decent (Coetzee, Serfontein) and our set piece was much improved but we looked blunt, rusty and over confident. I'm choosing to look at this in a positive view and hope to see the lads bounce back next week.
Well done Ireland.
Edit: I thought Poite was harsh, but ultimately fair as I can't point to that many calls which were blatantly wrong just harsh. In any case there is no arguing with a 15 point margin.
Edit, edit: Hougard was utter S%#&.
