Ireland Samoa 9th November

[JSRF10]

The new era is here for Ireland, Joe Schmidts & John Plumtrees first game in charge and it is a potential banana skin. Ireland are sweating on the fitness of Sexton, POC, Cian Healy and Sean O'Brien. Schmidt hasn't chosen a captain for the series yet either. Ireland's international form has been very poor for a couple of years now and a few start was needed, hopefully there will be some variety in the attacking game not just plan A,B and C being give the ball to SOB and hope for the best.

At this stage I'd expect an Ireland side of:

Kearney, Bowe, BOD, Marshall, McFadden, Jackson, Murray, Heaslip, O'Brien, O'Mahony, Tuohy, Toner, Ross, Best, Healy

Cronin, McGrath, Archer, POC, Henry, Boss, Sexton, Earls

That line up won't strike much fear into the Islanders and they'll fancy themselves, should be a cracking game for the neutral especially if Schmidt is planning his "total rugby" style of play he had Leinster playing.

 

[Blue]

Banana skin. Island style.

Are the best Samoan players available or are they having another administrative meltdown?

 

[Budgie]

I'd like to see Ireland win this game.

They seem to do better at home than on tour.

With samoa. it depends who is released for Test duty by their club.

 

[tigerland12]

Samoa probably has their strongest squad (minus Kane Thompson) for the EOYT.

Most likely side would probably be....
1- Taulafo
2- Paulo
3- C.Johnston
4- F.Paulo
5- Tekori
6 Fa'asalavu
7- Lam
8- Levave
9- Fotuali'i
10- T.Pisi
11- Lemi
12- Leota
13-G.Pisi
14- Leauia
15- Williams

Pretty strong side, especially the back row and halves.

 

[Bairdy]

New Zealand A by 5.

 

[Bardon]

Keith Earls joins the long list of Irish injuries and he's out of this one with a knee injury.

This is probably the one game most Irish fans expect us to win. But with a new coach and very poor performances at test level over the past couple of seasons I don't think we have the right to expect to beat any Tier 1 nation.

This one is going to be hard work and I'd be very happy if we scraped a win out of it. Not sure how much change Joe will be able to make in these games as his and Kidney's rugby philosophy are polar opposites.

Would expect more ambition but as a result more handling errors.

 

[Dan54]

Well Bardon, I hope you are happy with result. I must admit to only seeing the last half hour or so, but Irish looked reasonably sharp to me, and seemed to spreading ball quite well, and with purpose. Not sure if it just Samoans no good or Irish were going well. Hope for your sake Irish went well and Schmidt is having positive affect on team.

 

[Bardon]

Ireland went well in the 2nd half. 1st half was very scrappy and the scrum was the only real positive with Jack McGrath putting in a MOTM performance on his debut.

In the 2nd half we improved and pulled away from Samoa. But Samoa were without some of there regulars and lost more to injury during the game. It's a positive start but there's still a hell of a lot of work to do.

In the first half especially are defence was very ragged and there were huge gaps, especially in the centres. If we defend like that against Aus we could ship a lot of points.

Peter O'Mahony had a great game at 6 and Chris Henry was really doing well at 7 until he had to go off injured. Paddy Jackson had a solid game and it's good he has that under his belt after all the stick he's taken.

Things improved vastly in the 2nd half and I was glad to see Dave Kearney and Ian Maddigan have very positive impacts when they came on. I thought Reddan really sped things up when he came on.

Was very impressed with Schmidt after the game as he acknowledged all this. We went better than I expected us to and it's only Schmidt's first game. But there's a lot to work on during the week for us to be able to give Aus a game next weekend.