Ireland have room to improve, Springboks the side to beat

Ireland got their World Cup off to a flying start with their biggest ever win at the tournament.

It was a shaky start for Ireland, conceding the first try to 19th ranked side Romania. There were errors littered throughout the game and if you were to scrutinise the Irish players, there were a few too many uncharacteristic errors.

When there's a gulf in ability between two sides, it can be a bit difficult to find the right decision at times. There was a moment when Furlong received a pass from Sexton after the ball was swept from the first Irish pod.

Ordinarily, the opposition would be quick to confront the second forward pod in an attempt to close Furlong down in that situation. You wouldn’t expect a team to get three passes away in attack before being met by an onrushing defender. In this instance, Furlong had a bit too much time and tried to find another pass which was picked off by Romanian centre, Tomane. It’s just one example of a mistake we didn’t expect to see, but it’s typical of these sort of games where the favourites make too many errors and stop their own flow in attack.

There were many handling errors when Ireland made line breaks. James Lowe had two misplaced offloads when a try was looking likely had the pass gone to hand. Keenan’s pass to Aki later in the second half went astray as well. It’s very tempting to try to score in every phase when there’s such a gap between the teams and Ireland would have been frustrated going in at half-time, despite the 33-8 scoreline.

There were some kicking errors too, Lowe and Keenan both sending the ball out on the full and Sexton not providing cover after he kicked diagonally along the ground for Earls. The dimensions on the pitch have nothing to do with Romania’s ability.

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