Ireland looked to bounce back from their shock defeat to Japan with a game against the second lowest team in the tournament, the Russian bears. However whilst the Irish were expected to win big, they were far from convincing.
They started well deploying this typically Joe Schmidt move from the break down. The run from the Mcgrath pulled across two Russian defenders. This opened the door on the inside for Rob Kearny able to accelerate through the gap.
With the ball passed from Mcgrath to the onrushing forward, Russia’s eyes are pulled even further away from the break down. However, the real strength lies in the simplicity of the move. With Kearny running on the inside you’d expect Russia to have folded defenders around and whilst the first defenders eyes are averted. Any move from the ruck is stopped with Ireland pinning in the Russian blinside and not allowing him to push around the corner.
However whilst Kearny was arguably greedy when he finished the score not passing the ball, and instead backing himself, it was the way Ireland finished which gave the game a positive outlook at the beginning. However, this sort of clinical ruthless edge became lost in the game.
To see this, let us compare the Irish chances of scoring based on field position with that of host Japan.
As you can see in the graphic, Ireland have converted almost 10% of their chances to scores. This is taken by looking at all the time points scored, compared to the amount of overall platforms. So of all the attacks Ireland had them scoring on 10% of them with 0.7 per attack is not a bad rate.
The problem instead lies when we look at their forward momentum. As you can see against Russia they exerted great pressure and were able to advance up until the 22m line, then for some reason they just stopped. Whether through a lack of creativeness, or plan Ireland just stop dropping over 50% in their progress.
If we look at the Japanese stats, their figures remain constant across all Zones of progression. The column on the right showing Japan, whilst that on the right yet again showing Russia. So against the same opponent Japan remained continuos showing levels of fluidity and constant attack. Whilst Ireland were bashing into a brick wall unable to open a small crack which to force themselves through. This in the end leads to an interesting statistic where Japan scored 60% of the time they were in Russia’s half, Ireland on the other hand managed only 18.8% not even a third of Japanese production.
This should be a worry for Ireland fans as even against weaker opposition they struggle to convert good positions into points. Whether Schmidt and Sexton are hiding their play book is speculation not to be discussed here, but nonetheless the staggering difference between Japan’s conversion and Ireland’s lack of is startling. Even in the game against each other, Japan managed a conversion rate of 27.3% whilst Ireland managed only 10.5%.
The Analysis Guy 