Ireland v Italy Six Nations Round 3 Sun 27th Feb

First topic message reminder :

Ireland v Italy

Aviva Stadium, Dublin

Sunday 27th Feb, kick off 3:00pm

Ireland team

the usual suspects
Lowry; Hansen, Ringrose, Henshaw, Lowe; Carbery, Gibson-Park; Porter, Sheehan, Furlong, Beirne, Baird; O'Mahony, van der Flier, Doris

Replacements: Herring, Kilcoyne, Bealham, Treadwell, Conan, Casey, Sexton, Hume.

Italy team

the less usual suspects
Padovani; Bruno, Brex, Marin, Ioane; Garbisi, Varney; Fischetti, Lucchesi, Ceccarelli, Cannone, Ruzza, Pettinelli, Lamaro (capt), Halafihi.

Replacements: Faiva, Nemer, Pasquali, Sisi, Zuliani, Steyn, Fusco, Zanon.

It feels like a no win situation. Not a real no win, 5 points are expected for Ireland, but that is why it is a no win.  5 points is expected as a minimum, but how many tries will be needed for it to be more than a "meh, well it was only Italy" situation?  No disrespect to Italy but that is where things seem to be. If they get 2 tries they will have done better than Wales ( ).

Personally I think Farrell should go full developmental, there are few enough other opportunities before the RWC, but that isn't going to happen.

Views?

https://twitter.com/italiansrugby/status/1498062431691722759?s=20&t=gYLUZGPzMyoY8b8oIInogQ

Context is an issue but suspect Ireland got very lucky here.

I remember seeing this at the time and thinking it might be reviewed. I thought Italy were a bit unlucky with their red as it was similar to an incident in the Ireland v Wales game for which Wales got a yellow.

A mitigation for the incident in the clip in my view though is the tackler is stationary, he doesnt hit the player with the ball but rather the player with the ball runs into him so the force comes from the tackled player. Its not that obvious from that clip though as the image follows the Italian guy.

Very hard to tell just from that clip. I remember the TV commentators remarking on that incident and assuming the TV match official would be looking at it in the background. Baird(?) appears to be completely upright and it is hard to tell if the Italian just runs into him or not.

On the red card incident I was surprised Sheehan didn't come off for an assessment given it was contact to the head/neck area. There has been a lot of rightful indignation about the Welsh prop, but could an on pitch assessment (as I assume happened) really be adequate?

On the game, how can a 50+ point win feel so frustrating? The Italian forwards were immense, hopefully we will have taken some lessons from our breakdown lapses, they could be a lot more significant against England.

Yeah it was very frustrating but in our defence NZ, France and England all found Italy's defence hard enough to unlock too. We should have done much better though.

Collapse2005 wrote:I remember seeing this at the time and thinking it might be reviewed. I thought Italy were a bit unlucky with their red as it was similar to an incident in the Ireland v Wales game for which Wales got a yellow.

A mitigation for the incident in the clip in my view though is the tackler is stationary, he doesnt hit the player with the ball but rather the player with the ball runs into him so the force comes from the tackled player. Its not that obvious from that clip though as the image follows the Italian guy.

The tackler was not stationary unless other players were all going backwards!

It should have been yellow at least and probably red.

They were all running backwards.It was from a spoiled lineout. If you watch a better video you can see it better. The refs probably could have reviewed it but it probably would have been a penalty at worst as he was stationary so no force and may even have been a penalty against the Italian for leading with a forearm.

The first half one of the Italian props was wearing yellow and blue tape on his headband, a very nice touch. In the second half it was two blue strips of tape though, was he told to remove his support for Ukraine?

I see plenty chatter on head contact collisions. In general what were peoples thoughts about the referee? I myself thought he had quite a strong game for first time in the middle for a 6Ns fixture, if coached and brought on correctly I could see him becoming a key neutral referee for important fixtures in the years to come. There were times where the two line judge/ref assistants/whatever they are meant to be called were trying to stay out of camera shot but pass important guidance to him during breaks in play. I hope he matures into a ref that calls his own game. And for the assistants, its good that they work as a team, they don't need to do it 'off camera', they just need to make sure that the assistant 'assists' the referee in performing his role.