Simon Easterby has confirmed that the decision to opt for a clearance to touch by Conor Murray from an Irish lineout with less than two minutes remaining in the penultimate play of last Saturday’s defeat at Twickenham was made in the coaches’ box and relayed from the sidelines.
Easterby also admitted that their much-lauded defence — which had conceded 13 tries in their 13 previous Six Nations matches — was too passive and reactive against the sharper English attack. Ireland conceded three tries to two, as well as eight line breaks to two, while missing 25 tackles in Saturday’s 23-22 defeat.
Murray, who was playing his 123rd Test match, has been criticised for opting to find touch after Ronan Kelleher’s long throw to the tail found Iain Henderson.
Ireland's Grand Slam dream dies at Twickenham
There had been a break in play as the English replacement Chandler Cunningham-South received treatment for a knee injury before that Irish line-out for options to be evaluated.
There was the high-risk strategy of running down the clock with pick-and-jams or one-off runners, which could have led to an English penalty in the frenzied Twickenham atmosphere (and the home side would have two penalty advantages in their final, match-winning drive).
Alternatively, Murray or James Lowe could have kicked long or found touch. Easterby confirmed that the call for Murray to find touch had come from the coaches.
“Yes,” said Easterby, when asked specifically at the squad’s first media day of the week in the IRFU HPC in Sports Campus Ireland in advance of next Saturday’s finale against Scotland at the Aviva Stadium.
“Listen, you know what, those decisions will always be reflected and hindsight’s lovely isn’t it? ‘It was the right decision because we didn’t concede.’ ‘It was the wrong decision because we did concede’.
“But we back the call. There’s a conversation between the coaches and the players and then it’s ultimately players that go, ‘okay, this is what we’re doing’.”
Noting that the inexperienced 23-year-old English replacement hooker Theo Dan had not been on long, Easterby said: “The context is, we back our lineout D to go after them, we back out defence to stop them getting to where they got to.”
But Ireland didn’t contest in the air. “Then, when they got wide we had a situation where we thought we’d held them up, They get to ground and we don’t hold them up and we don’t react accordingly when they get the ball to the edge to [Immanuel Feyi-] Waboso. It’s such fine margins. Had we kicked it long and they’d broken us and made 90m then you’d say: ‘Well, you should have put it out’. You can pick holes in every decision,” argued Easterby, not unreasonably.
Easterby or Andy Farrell have been running Ireland’s defence since 2016, and in that time it’s hard to think of Ireland’s kick-chase system being so easily and swiftly outflanked as England did — not once, but twice.
The tries by Ollie Lawrence and George Furbank looked like pre-conceived counter-attacks and asked if Ireland deviated from their system or England worked it out, Easterby admitted that after Calvin Nash had suffered a head injury in shooting up on Tommy Freeman: “We should find a solution.”
He added: “There’s been plenty of times (in the past) when we’ve been scrambling and we’ve survived. But when they get a try out of it, it obviously highlights that we were probably just a second or two, or just a couple of metres behind England at times in those situations and ultimately they’re good enough to expose us there. On another day that might not have been the case but unfortunately, it was.”
While repeatedly giving crediting England’s performance, Easterby said: “We didn’t play anywhere near our best, certainly without the ball. We were off it and it came down to the last minute. We can pick holes in lots of things and we do that when we’ve won as well. So, it’s important that we stay true to what we believe and focus on Scotland.”
Both Nash and Frawley went off for a head injury assessment in Twickenham. Somewhat surprisingly, Easterby said that neither had been ruled out of consideration for the Scottish game. But if Nash is ruled out, Easterby signalled that they are more likely to opt for a specialist winger, ala Jordan Larmour, than Garry Ringrose, despite his quality and versatility.
“Certainly we’d prefer to play out-and-out players in their position, which would be right-wingers like Jordan and obviously Nashy if he’s fit.”
There’s also a desire to retain faith in this team after just a second defeat in 22 Tests, an example being Peter O’Mahony.
“He’s been excellent so far. I don’t see any issue to be honest. The penalty and the yellow card is him trying to do something for the team and we know it’s the wrong decision but it could have been anyone in that situation trying to make up for a line break.
“So, he’s disappointed like everyone is but he’s proved time and again that he’s a big-game player and it’s not always what you do in a game but how you respond to the week before that we’ll see the true Peter this week.”
Ireland are still odds-on favourites to retain the championship next Saturday, while Scotland also arrive wounded after their loss in Rome but with the prize of a first Triple Crown since their 1990 Grand Slam.
Noting Scotland’s early control before Italy came back to earn “a thoroughly deserved win”, Easterby said: “Scotland, like us, will be disappointed that they let that early lead slip and they didn’t come away with the result that they would have liked. Yeah, I’m sure we’ll see a reaction from them as well.”
