Ireland's pack of eight was fantastic, and I'm not talking about the booze. It's such a shame that to go with all that quality they couldn't have a scrum that held well, Cian Healy was missed dearly…to think this was achieved against the big Springboks without SOB, Healy or Henry, however SA missed Alberts in particular, that's pretty enormous.
Not an overly exciting game by any stretch of the anus or imagination rather, for a neutral (or a Saffer
) but this goes down as one of the big November classics. Reminiscent, somewhat, of France South Africa 2009, in the notion particularly of an all-conquering Boks ultra physical team (were fresh off that Lions series victory) coming over and running into a wall in Europe.
Choking atmosphere, unbreathable smothering and all-tactical match where goal kicks mean everything.
It sounds silly to say this, but I guess "tactically", here it comes: "all you have to do" to beat the Boks is meet them up front. Beat em up, and they'll go down. Get the most physical selection you can find, seasoned men not fresh exciting bachelors, it seems to work, and drop your gameplan a bit (in Ireland's case it was always going to be breakdown oriented) and throw everything you've got at them in the rucks, target one or two of their backs to defend suffocatingly (like Habana was bad/shut down in both this one and the 2009 France one), put the biggest most committed forwards up front and make your 10 kick in the corners and behind the defense whenever possible, play territory=security. Take their mauls VERY seriously, defend with your life (their one try was too soft from Ireland's defense, too bad..). You won't score lots of tries, so make sure you have a Sexton kicking in the points to convert the efforts on the ground into 3's.
SUPERB first try on the maul for Ireland. How do you stop that ?? Watched every replay attentively, he just pops out like a raging cock out of the bush (on a farm, ya perv).
I don't think SA were bad, I think Ireland were better. SA played their game, they were just turned over, out-physicalled even if that's not a word, out hustled, just outbreakdowned. Yeah okay that last one is dubious…put under too much pressure to make anything interesting on attack.
And the BEST thing for Ireland is:
South Africa were back at 10-13 at the 60th, so being who they are typically they would up their level and take the lead minutes into that. Here, exactly the opposite. That's when Ireland continued their efforts and put the Boks to sleep for good. Very impressive...
Lastly, I don't want to make this a trend, criticizing Le Roux, but THAT ***** !!…no, kidding…but that guy's one thing on attack gets figured out pretty quick…he'll keep the ball, keep the ball and give it to someone right when they're about to make contact. He's got to vary, he looked like a one-trick poney the entire show…he can be a deceiving runner, but putting him in the same company as Folau just for the latter's raw quality is ridiculous, and Ben Smith for his utter skillfull brilliance is bunkers.
Seriously glad the Saffa staff were stubborn and foolish enough to let us take Spedding, although he's French now, having played 90% his pro ball in France since he was 21, they still could've poached him back just some months ago
P.S.: Romain Poite has got to stop saying "crutch" btw, surely he can manage to stop saying "crutch" at scrumtime...
