User avatar
By Narbia
#36278
Hmm. Methinks this could be an interesting one.

Like some of you, I've seen Tigers at the Madstad many times, but few of those games have been other than arm-wrestles IMHO IIRC. :dizzy:

Tigers, have been regressing to their long-term mean of highly effective performances.

I'm not expecting miracles, but the rugby-gods have deigned that I should be there in person.
Who am I to argue?
By Lazyboy346
#36319
Agreed on the loose defence. Rematch the highlights of all three games this morning and we get stepped through too often. Tight defence from set pieces and kick returns would definitely make a big difference.

Our attack seems to be pretty good though, but only once we've let in a few easy scores. If we could go in at half time within a score, there's a good chance of a win. We really need one from this game if there's a chance of us finishing higher up the table than last season.
By Ruckinggood
#36371
Ultimately its our ability to gift field position through avoidable and in most cases mindnumbingly silly penalties that has been our downfall. Too often we are on an attack and suddenly find ourselves back in the 22 after a pressure relieving penalty. More discipline and we will benefit from our promising attack.
User avatar
By Stevie J
#36372
Agreed. That same article states our tackle completion is actually very good (if I remember rightly). We have given in all three games at times dumb penalties that ramps up pressure and makes the opposition start from deep in our 22.

That will not work against George Ford and the rest of the Tigers.
User avatar
By MattM
#36406
King_Prawn_Bhuna wrote:
Wed Oct 06, 2021 3:43 pm
Looking to come down, can you tell me where the drummers locate themselves these days.?
.
I believe they have their own section somewhere in the north stand. Drop ticketing[at] London-Irish.com an email and they should point you in the right direction
User avatar
By Narbia
#36479
London Irish:
15 Tom Parton, 14 Ben Loader, 13 Curtis Rona, 12 Terrence Hepetema, 11 Ollie Hassell-Collins, 10 Paddy Jackson, 9 Nick Phipps, 1 Will Goodrick-Clarke, 2 Agustin Creevy, 3 Marcel van der Merwe, 4 Steve Mafi, 5 Adam Coleman, 6 Matt Rogerson (c), 7 Ben Donnell, 8 Albert Tuisue.

Replacements:
16 Matt Cornish, 17 Allan Dell, 18 Ollie Hoskins, 19 Rob Simmons, 20 George Nott, 21 Sean O’Brien, 22 Hugh O’Sullivan, 23 Benhard van Rensburg.

Unchanged bar O'Sullivan,Hepetema, Mafi starts ?

Edit: I reckon we can do this. We just have to establish the game we want to play, rather than let the oppo dictate. :thinking:
23:42 Friday.
Last edited by Narbia on Fri Oct 08, 2021 11:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
By shimmieandshake
#36483
Everyone is fit. How rare is that?

I'd go Mafi 6, SOB 7, but it's pretty clear K+K aren't on the same wavelength, for now. With that in mind, this is as good as it's going to get; fingers crossed it can be reflected in a result.
By GHA
#36643
Give the ball to Irish, they'll knock it on eventually

Just keep the ball, they'll concede a penalty eventually

:brickwall:
User avatar
By SixNineOne
#36659
Sometimes it does feel a bit too easy to predict the outcome. We get a penalty, Paddy hoofs it into their 22 and Matt Cornish overthrows the lineout; pass the ball to Ben Donnell and he drops it trying an impossible offload; or one of our wings makes a break, gets tackled and two or three of his mates dive in straight off their feet. Having got that off my chest, I have to say that Leicester looked surprisingly ordinary today, but they successfully strangled the life out of the game, so all credit to them. We seemed unable to find a way of breaking down their defence, particularly once they’d realised that they could advance offside with impunity without being picked up by a very weak officiating team. I’d have liked to see us trying to turn Nandolo a bit more - he looked suspect in defence, and surprisingly ineffective in attack. Watching him on telly, he’d always looked pretty scary, but seeing him for the first time in the flesh, he just looked a bit out of condition. It was also the first time I’d seen a George Ford spiral bomb live - a thing of beauty, made all the better by the way Ben Loader caught it!
User avatar
By Narbia
#36671
Well summed up @SixNineOne.

Add that Parton and Paddy played the game Tigers brought, well. Some others just looked oh so unprepared. :eh:

Tigers in much better shape than a year ago in the same (predictable) match.

Plenty Tigers supporters there yesterday, and the ones around me seemed a good natured bunch. Cracking weather for October.

I think some coaches and managers need to get back to the drawing board if they're to get anything at all from the Gloucester game.

48 points we got last year. not looking likely at the moment.
By M_W
#36672
Oh well. Competitive again, but came out with the L. Makes the Gloucester game fairly important as the fixtures certainly get a little less friendly after that. Would be easy to lose sight of any silver linings if we continue to fail to win close games and add a few heavy defeats into the mix.

I actually found the game a little less frustrating at the end as it was a pretty even game, where as the last two we'd actually been the better team over the 80 imo. There was still an inevitability about Leicester wrestling back control at the end though. A few random thoughts:

- Donnell was looking very good at the end of last season, but it's not really happening at the moment. If they see SOB as an impact player I think it's probably time to give Izzy, ICH or Cooke a shot.
- Will get lost in the post mortems, but it's still nice to see our scrum looking so solid. Just the one pen against WGC and it looked like a 50:50 call.
- Leicester only looked like scoring off the back of their maul and tbf that's all they needed at the end.
- Still conceding too many pens in safe areas of the pitch under no pressure.
- Could really do with Coleman's injury not being serious.
shimmieandshake liked this
User avatar
By Stevie J
#36714
There was a sort of slow, crushing inevitability with games like this. As a London Irish fan they are like a warm, reliable blanket. As the Tigers bench deposited Van Staden, Montoya, and Wigglesworth we were unable to wrestle control back. The final, best shot to win really was that Cornish overthrow after we won a 50:22. We didn't have a sniff after that.

On the plus side we've shown to be close: despite some horrific starts (not Saturday, thankfully) we can be there or thereabouts with top teams. But to make the next step up we need to win these home games. Gloucester next week is massive.

We still for my money continue to do the flashy things quite well and the basics horribly. That's coaching. We tend to mismanage game situations, such as the penalty we won close to halftime. If you kick for touch, you can attempt to gain a foothold in the Tigers half maybe gain a shot to goal to finish the half further up. If you mess up its likely halftime. Instead we try a cross-field kick, execute badly, and Phipps is offside resulting in a Tigers pen kicked into our 22 which amazingly they let us off the hook with.

These are not fixable, individual errors. Things like that seem to be the game plan.

Others have mentioned the lack of attacking Nadolo. Quite why you keep kicking to their England quality fullback and not the injured bulky winger I do not know. And I feel for Ben Donnell. He's a young up and comer but he's seemingly bulletproof right now when he should be working on some things outside of a game.
M_W liked this
By Florida
#36718
So here's where I'm at with all this at the moment. Incredibly frustrated by the lack of a win, especially given we've been in the position to win a lot of those games and blown it or blown it at the start and fought back to nearly winning.

With that context out there I'm with MW on this one, it was less frustrating, we had a good fight against a good Tiggers side. Yes we did some really daft things (as Stevie mentioned that crossfield kick), but we didn't give them a massive head start and then try to claw our way back in.

We are making improvements, constantly. It was only a few short months ago I was crying out to hire an attack coach as we were clueless, now we're running some lovely attacking plays. Some of the more vocal folk were calling for the head of our new forward coach as our scrum was getting turned into mincemeat constantly, but now its pretty stable and even winning a few penalties. We've all been begging the team to stop gifting the opposition a massive lead, last weekend we stopped that (hopefully we continue with not gifting them points). That said, there's still a whole heap of things to fix.

Donnell has been pretty ineffective over the last 4 games, but so has the rest of the starting backrow. Against Tiggers though both Tuisue and Rogerson looked to have upped their game, Rogerson in particular looking much better and making more meters than usual (probably more than he's made since the Championship). I'd stick with him for one more in the hope that Rogerson and Tuisue up their game again and he does likewise. This of course means the coaches will now jettison him and bring in someone else.
M_W liked this
By M_W
#36721
Yeah, even before Saturday there was a sense that something probably had to change in the back row.

With Coleman possibly injured (so Mafi still required at lock) and Rogerson's improvement in performance, Donnell looks like the vulnerable one.

I guess ultimately we also need to decide who our second choice 8 is. Rogerson, SOB (filled in there on Sat) or one of ICH/Izzy? None of whom are remotely like for like. Tuisue had a much better game here, but we are still pretty vulnerable to him either losing form or getting injured.
User avatar
By SixNineOne
#36753
I too thought Rogerson had a better game on Saturday. I then started wondering if it was partly down to the change in headgear. With a white scrum cap, I was able to spot him and see all the good stuff he was doing much more easily than when he was wearing his black one. Perhaps this is the answer - give Ben Donnell a bright yellow scrum cap!!

Forest

Covid Repayments

Bearing in mind it is our (taxpayers) money that[…]

Team vs Exeter

Pedants of the world unite!

I had assumed that when focus on attack was mentio[…]