Jeff's All New and Sad Wales Ratings v Ireland

[Jeff the Bear]

15. Leigh Halfpenny – Missed a sitter, and generally didn’t do a lot all round. 4/10

14. Liam Williams – A bit punchy, which is all right if you are bringing you’re A game, but like many others, he wasn’t at the races. 4/10

13. Jon Davies – Another nothing game from Davies. 3/10

12. Owen Watkin – Like last game, marginally better than Davies, but nothing flash. 4/10

11. Josh Adams – Few chances with ball in hand. Some absolutely outstanding one-on-one defending in the first half though when Ireland had the ascendency. 4/10

10. Dan Biggar – If you are going to have 1/2p kicking, then what is the point of Biggar starting? We have a plethora of young attacking 10 options. Much like most of the picks at this stage, his continued inclusion reeks of desperation. 3/10

9. Gareth Davies – Absolutely chronic at the base of the ruck. It says a lot that Llyod Williams, who’s not particularly known for his rapier speed, was light-years faster when he came on. 2/10

8. Taulupe Faletau –Much better than last week. Granted, it was from a particularly low bar, but put in some thunderous tackles, and made the odd metre here and there. 3/10

7. Justin Tipuric – Made his tackles, and worked hard about the field, but couldn’t make any impact on the game. 4/10

6. Shane Lewis-Hughes – Another standout defensive display from the youngster. Another couple of games like that, and he’ll have locked down the blindside spot. However, Navidi is still to come back, and it’s probably him, more than most, that we’ve missed in recent times. 5/10

5. Alun Wyn Jones – Bust a gut for the cause, but it just wasn’t good enough. 5/10

4. Will Rowland – For a big lad, he doesn’t seem to do much carrying. Has been outstanding for Wasps, so it may just be a Wales setup thing. 3/10

3. Tom Francis – For all the (rightful) talk about Carre, when you’ve got a neophyte prop, starting, you need the other prop to absolutely anchor it down on the other side, and he just didn’t manage it. 3/10

2. Ryan Elias – Shit darts. Shit scrummaging. Another terrible performance. 2/10

1. Rhys Carre – I feel for the youngster, and I can distinctly remember Adam Jones getting turned inside-out on a number of occasions when he was younger so there’s hope for him yet. Let’s hope that he takes his medicine and learns from the experience. 1/10

Team Average: 3.3/10

Tactics Talk

Remarkably, the first half of this game was even worse than the Scotland game. However, we looked significantly better in the second half (but when you are starting from such a low base, significantly better still means immeasurably shit).

I fear the ‘Rona is going to fuck Wales over slightly more than everyone else, as my gut feel is the WRU doesn’t have the cash to biff Pivac at the moment. However, he’s got to be on thin ice, and another performance like that (or worse, a loss to Georgia), and there’ll be another carpark firing in the offing.

Complicating things further is NZ’s poor-ish form. We’d likely go shopping in the Kiwi market for a new coach (Scott Robertson etc.), but I imagine all those coaches are now eyeing the top All Blacks job that may be on the market about the same time as the Welsh one becomes available.

With regards to the game, Notwithstanding the terrible set piece (Offside Humphries is another that must be close to the door), we actually managed to keep hold of the ball better this week, and did a lot better at the rucks. Still, it was light years from where we need to be if we want to win games against Tier 1 sides any time soon.

[PlanetGlyndwr]

Pivac has to roll the dice against George bleed some new talent and drop some of yesterday's men imo

[Theflier]

Pivac has to roll the dice against George bleed some new talent and drop some of yesterday's men imo

Changing the layout of the lifeboats wouldn't have stopped the titanic from sinking.

I'd knock one more off carre and elias and add one more for both the flankers, without them, it could've been 40+ easily

[Line6 HXFX]

Nothing positive to say, so bad are we at the moment, you just sound fucking nuts for showing any optimism or enthusiasm.

If you think of rugby in terms of defence and attack, whereby our mission in the first half is to stay in touch on the scoreboard, and then flood the field with attackers when the opposition are knackered from our baby eating defence, we did the tactic ok.
Can't remember the halftime score but I wasn't really dejected at half time.

Problem is the plan didn't work.

Ireland didn't tire and just stood up to it, so good on em.

As our defence gets keener, and we contend the rucks harder, we will tire and exhaust teams more with it then get more change in the second half

So we just need to get our Gatland era defence and our Gatland era ruck dominance back and we will be fine.

[C69]

Down to 9th in the rankings now.
Georgia are going to rip our from 5 a new arsehole. Then we go into the Englandatch beset with injuries before a near record loss.

[Torquemada 1420]

3 for Faletau?

C'mon Jeff. Not sure Adams could have done much else either.