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Irish brought back down to earth with a bump - Andy Goode

By Andy Goode
Andy Goode has sparked takeover rumours at Bath

Maybe we all got a bit carried away on the opening weekend of the season with the sun beating down and a record 50 tries scored. London Irish scored four of those in their victory over Harlequins at Twickenham but have been brought back down to earth with a bump since then.

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The Exiles have now lost three on the spin and are conceding five tries and 36 points per game on average as the harsh realities of a long, hard Premiership season start to kick in.

As a promoted team, your goal is to stay in the league and you have to focus on the real basics in order to achieve that. Defence is the ultimate basic and they really need to improve theirs dramatically moving forwards.

If you’re conceding five tries per game, it’s a simple fact that you’re not going to win very many.

Northampton’s attacking game was very fluid at the weekend and they were accurate but there were some very basic individual errors from Irish. Rob Horne is an experienced player but he’s not a giant and he smashed through quite a few players.

They scored a try right at the end to reduce the deficit to 15 points but it was a cakewalk for Saints from the opening 20 minutes and it did look like first-up defence was a major issue for them.

They’ve got players who can cause other teams real problems but when you get promoted you’ve got to tailor your game in order to stay in the Premiership and that means having the solid foundations of a good set piece and defence. Unfortunately, London Irish are struggling with that at the moment.

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There was a lot of intensity against Quins to start the season, with Blair Cowan and the back row in particular covering every blade of grass and ending people, but that seems to have completely dropped off.

The intensity can drop off away from home and you can understand that at Exeter, which is the toughest of away games, but Sale couldn’t catch a cold against Newcastle and then put 36 points on Irish the following week.

That defeat at the AJ Bell Stadium is an eye-opening one for them because what away games are you targeting when you look around the Premiership if you can’t target Sale.

Sunday’s result will have been the most worrying though because they will have felt that they should have beaten Northampton in front of their own fans and they got completely turned over.

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You can dust yourselves off after an away defeat but it hurts to lose at home and the belief takes a big hit when you get an absolute pasting, as they did at the weekend.

The Madejski Stadium has never been a real stronghold of a place that teams fear going to but I’ve lost there a few times with various teams, including Leicester. They need to defend their home patch like there’s no tomorrow.

The crumb of comfort for London Irish is that they have got one victory on the board already and are four points clear of Worcester but you are looking at both at the moment and wondering where the next win is coming from.

They now go to Newcastle, who are sitting pretty in fourth place in the table having won away at Bath, so it’s an uphill struggle.

The Falcons are fourth in the table, deservedly so, and they’ll go top if they win on Friday…who would have thought that at the start of the season?

They have won both of their away games and even in defeat against Saracens in Philadelphia last week they showed some hard-edged rugby that will stand them in good stead in the tight games when the weather turns.

They finished eighth last season and, with the quality they have now got, their aim is absolutely to finish in the top six in this campaign and they are building momentum, which is giving them more and more confidence and belief that they can achieve that.

They will even start asking themselves if they can be a top four team and the nature of the Premiership so far, with some results that nobody would have predicted in the opening four rounds, means they might not be too far away.

I always look for a standout moment of the weekend and Craig Willis’ grubber kick was it for me this weekend. It was not a conventional grubber kick at all. He has deliberately put a bit of outswing on it and that’s something Dave Walder will have been practising with him when looking at different ways to open teams up.

It was a touch of genius and if Danny Cipriani or Beauden Barrett had done it, the world would be going mad and saying how great it was.

There is quality throughout their attacking setup and they seem to have a steely edge to them this season as well with Mark Wilson, Will Welch and others stepping up. And, they still have Toby Flood and Maxime Mermoz to come into the team as well.

They won’t be thinking about a relegation scrap any more and will only be looking up and that’s great for the club.

They might have had seven days between games but you take a couple of days to get back from the States and a couple of days to reacclimatize and then you have to prepare for Bath and travel down to the Rec, so they’ve done remarkably well to get the win.

A total of 20 clean breaks and 17 offloads away at the Rec tells you that they’re playing an attractive brand of rugby and really taking it to the opposition, home and away and regardless of who they’re facing.

Dave Walder is head coach now and I think he has been given more licence this year in the attacking game and I think the players are really enjoying the environment. When you’ve been in relegation battles there is a bit of doom and gloom around the place but they are in a different place completely now.

People are talking them up from the outside and saying that they can finish in the top six. That filters in to the players and they start to believe it…if they are serious contenders, they should have no problems in getting a comfortable victory over London Irish at home on Friday.

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Jon 8 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

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j
john 11 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

But here in Australia we were told Penney was another gun kiwi coach, for the Tahs…….and yet again it turned out the kiwi coach was completely useless. Another con job on Australian rugby. As was Robbie Deans, as was Dave Rennie. Both coaches dumped from NZ and promoted to Australia as our saviour. And the Tahs lap them up knowing they are second rate and knowing that under pressure when their short comings are exposed in Australia as well, that they will fall in below the largest most powerful province and choose second rate Tah players to save their jobs. As they do and exactly as Joe Schmidt will do. Gauranteed. Schmidt was dumped by NZ too. That’s why he went overseas. That why kiwi coaches take jobs in Australia, to try and prove they are not as bad as NZ thought they were. Then when they get found out they try and ingratiate themselves to NZ again by dragging Australian teams down with ridiculous selections and game plans. NZ rugby’s biggest problem is that it can’t yet transition from MCaw Cheatism. They just don’t know how to try and win on your merits. It is still always a contest to see how much cheating you can get away with. Without a cheating genius like McCaw, they are struggling. This I think is why my wise old mate in NZ thinks Robertson will struggle. The Crusaders are the nursery of McCaw Cheatism. Sean Fitzpatrick was probably the father of it. Robertson doesn’t know anything else but other countries have worked it out.

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