Watched the match again, from the sofa this time rather than from behind it, and we weren't half as bad as I thought at the time. What really struck me was how brilliantly England responded to the loss of Ewell and they rode that wave of emotion until about the 65th minute, when their superhuman effort inevitably took its toll, and from then on Ireland were superb and finally got a few decisions from the ref. What really struck me was that most of the Irish mistakes happened after they'd breached the English defence rather happening in front of it, which lessened Englands opportunity to counter.
Some of our handling and lines of running were sublime, but too often we tried to force the final pass, when going to ground and getting a quick recycle would have probably got us over the line. In contrast England never once looked like doing anything creative, and relied on a gameplan that was reminiscent of some of our darkest days of moral victories. Without Reynals strange interpretation of scrum laws they would have struggled to get any impetus, and the worry for them next week must be that France will have a full reel of scrum highlights to bring to their meeting with the ref during the week, and they will get nothing like the leeway they got on Saturday. Their defence and bloodymindedness was hugely admirable but it's not going to win them very much unless they can find some sort of creativity in their backline. And tbh I'm not sure Smith is the messiah that they think he is.
I thought our back three individually and collectively were magnificent, with Keenan maturing into possibly the best 15 in the tournament, with Conway making a mockery of his wilderness years under Joe, and Lowe looking like a child at an adventure park every time he gets near the ball. Sheehan, despite the issues at the scrum, was superb once again, as were Doris and VdF. I think the loss of Ryan can't be overstated, because he's become the workhorse of that pack, and at the moment we don't have any obvious replacement, which is a worry.
So, after watching it again, I think there are more reasons to be positive than negative about the performance, and importantly the problems with the scrum are fixable, especially if the ref has an even basic knowledge of the laws. With all the talk about our settled and cohesive side it important to remember were also a side transitioning from a very rigid gameplan to a much more unstructured style of play, and actually doing it very well for the most part, so I'm a lot more optimistic after the second viewing, and a bit less apprehensive about us messing up on Saturday.
