As Farrell turns to Lions, Ireland have plenty to improve for Six Nations

IT’S ONLY NINE weeks until Ireland open their Six Nations title defence against England in Dublin.

Saturday 1 February is already looming large for Simon Easterby, who will now step up to be the interim Ireland head coach as Andy Farrell checks in for Lions duty.

Asked yesterday about leaving Ireland for the next eight months or so, Farrell couldn’t resist a joke.

“What do you mean I’m leaving? I live in Sandymount, 10 minutes away,” said Farrell. “I’m not going anywhere.”

In fairness, you’d have to expect that Farrell will continue to work with Easterby on planning and plotting for Ireland, even if it is all in the background as he prioritises his Lions job.

Farrell and co. will review this autumn campaign in the coming days and while they’ll be happy with three wins from four games, they’ll be reflecting on how Ireland need to improve if they are to win their third Six Nations title in a row. No one has done it before, so expectations must be measured against that fact, as well as Ireland’s form.

It’s unlikely that Ireland will be reinventing the wheel before the Six Nations.

The players will be straight back with their provinces next week as the Champions Cup kicks off next weekend. Ireland will have a pre-Six Nations camp in Portugal but even that means only nine or 10 days together, with just four or five pitch sessions so there won’t be much time to change things.

Still, they’re going to be eager to burst out of the blocks on home soil against the English, who beat them at Twickenham in this year’s Championship. 

One of the frustrations for Ireland this autumn was that they started poorly against New Zealand, opening with a defeat and a sloppy performance.

“We didn’t start how we wanted to, so a big focus will be going back to our provinces, keeping good habits going, keep improving, and we’ll try and start fast and fly into the first game,” said second row Joe McCarthy last night.

Andy Farrell and Joe Schmidt. Dan Sheridan / INPHO Dan Sheridan / INPHO / INPHO

The reality is that the sloppy edge from that New Zealand game was there in the second half against Argentina and particularly the first half of yesterday’s narrow win against Australia.

Ireland had lots of possession and territory in the opening 40 minutes against the Wallabies but couldn’t convert as they strung errors together in clusters.

“There were a number of mistakes, inaccuracies, some due to the pressure they put on us and they’d obviously done their homework around some of our set plays,” said captain Caelan Doris.

“But some were definitely in our control and we need to be better.”

The Wallabies, so well prepared by Joe Schmidt, did make excellent reads but Ireland had basic handling errors under less pressure on other occasions, so this is a theme in their play that they need to iron out.

At half time yesterday, Ireland spoke about how people were “in their own head a bit” and discussed being more direct.

“That was one of the messages at half time,” said McCarthy. “It was the forwards with our carry trying to dominate, maybe with our tip passes opening up on the back of that and the space would open up.

“That was very much a message at half time, the forwards being direct and trying to get a bit of momentum with our carries.”

Again, you sense that message will be repeated before the Six Nations. Ireland are at their best when they combine brutal ball-carrying and smart kicking with their easy-on-the-eye interplay. At times this autumn, it felt like they were overplaying.

The lineout is another area in which they will be chasing improvement. Forwards coach Paul O’Connell will be putting more pressure on himself than anyone in this regard because Ireland are generally effective when the platform is good.

They had a remarkable 24 lineouts against Australia – McCarthy reckons they usually have 10 or 11 in a game – so there were plenty of opportunities to make errors.

Bundee Aki, Sam Prendergast and Mack Hansen. Billy Stickland / INPHO Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO

The official stats say Ireland only lost four lineouts on their throw but there were some other scrappy wins in there that were difficult to play off.

Ireland scored all three of their tries from close-range lineouts, with Josh van der Flier, Doris, and Gus McCarthy dotting down. That means that 10 of Ireland’s 15 tries this autumn originated at the lineouts in the opposition 22.

“There’s definitely improvement to be had,” said McCarthy. “Today was a bit crazy, there were 24 lineouts so I think we were, on the run, trying to make up some new lineouts and we had gone through all of them about twice.

“We’ve got good success, we had good mauls throughout the year, focused very much on good drill and things like that but we probably slipped away from that in a few games, leaking a few lineouts, a few sloppy bits, but I think it’s been relatively strong enough.”

Ireland’s defence has been good again this autumn, conceding only five tries against some dangerous attacking teams, and the truth is that they’re still doings lots of excellent work in all areas, but there have also been notable errors in nearly all areas too.

They showed their grit in tight battles against Argentina and Australia, two teams who have improved this year, while blowing Fiji away with a strong eight-try performance. They’ve admitted that the New Zealand display was a big disappointment.

“The message initially was that we need to see improvement, we need to keep evolving,” said Doris of Ireland’s aim this autumn.

“Other teams are getting better, we need to as well. That’s been the message throughout.

“You’ve seen it in the results, probably saw it in the first half against Argentina, saw it last week [against Fiji] and against a better side today, we saw it in parts, definitely not in full.”

It’s not the worst place to be but there won’t be too many bullish predictions about Ireland sweeping their way to another Six Nations title at this point.

That might make it all the sweeter if they can pull it off.