Ugh... This is going to be tough to write, that was worse than losing to NZ two years ago... Mainly because I was a fool who completely overestimated Ireland and underestimated Argentina.
First of all, the game was won in the first twenty minutes and last ten minutes. Argentina came out all guns blazing whereas Ireland thought they could feel their way into the game like they had the last four games and it's obvious now that they couldn't. Tucelet's try late in the game killed us and the heads dropped from there.
Where did Ireland go wrong? Most people seem to jump straight to the defence out wide, I think that was a result of our breakdown. The intensity just wasn't there when Argentina were on top, we couldn't slow the ball down, we couldn't put pressure on the centres and therefore their back three did the damage that I thought we weren't going to give them the light of day to do. Add missing Payne to that just added to the misery.
The fifty minutes in between were good, Fitz showed Bowe probably shouldn't have started, he had a sense for the try line that we really needed. Unfortunately, we seriously missed Sexton. Madigan couldn't give us te field position we required and poor execution probably have Argentina 6-13 points depending on how harsh you want to be, Murray played his part also when we really needed him to be spot on. We also missed too many opportunities, three (?) trips to the 22 without points, Henshaw twice didn't give passes that would have lead to tries that would have grabbed us the lead. Unfortunately all our players made mistakes but the game was still there for the taking but the pillars of our game, kicking and rucking, let us down the set pieces were there.
The possible match changing decision was obviously Herrera's red card, it was a red no question but considering the citing commissioner believes Ireland should have played last week with 14 players we can't complain.
Well done Los Pumas, we'll be content with being the best of the tier 2 hemisphere for now (even if we only have 5 months more of that). I really hate you lot and was adamant I wanted Australia to dick on you next week 7 hours ago but you may as well just go and do it, show us what we could be with a little bottle.
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