Ireland finished off their Autumn Nations Series with a late, narrow 22-19 win over former Ireland Coach Joe Schmidt's Australia in the Aviva Stadium.
On a day where the IRFU were celebrating their 150th anniversary it was far away from a vintage performance from Andy Farrell's side as they were plagued with handling errors and miscues across the pitch until the pulled together late on to take the lead through a Gus McCarthy try.
One aspect of the game where many felt the Wallabies had Ireland's number was in the lineout. Ireland lost 4 lineouts and before Gus McCarthy's introduction off the bench, it felt like Ireland couldn't get any attack started as they were losing or sloppily winning their own lineouts, negating the opportunities for launch plays.
The lineout issues have been a theme this November as it was a major factor in Ireland's loss to the All Blacks and former Ireland International Shane Horgan spoke about his fear for Ireland lineout problems.
And the problem and this is a deeper concern for Ireland. You know that phrase "you get a reputation for getting up early and you can lie in bed all day" the problem for Ireland is, conversely they get a reputation for a bad lineout and people are going after it.
Often that ball wouldn't be contested at the two in the way it is and I was just thinking about Joe Schmidt before the game saying that "we're not concentrating on Ireland at all, it's all about us."
We knew he was going to concentrate on Ireland and we know where he did concentrate on Ireland, at the lineout and it was very disruptive in the first half, it's an ongoing issue that predates back to pre-World Cup and they need to get on top of that and they need a long period of consistently excellent lineoutrs which they haven't done since then.
Another off day for the Irish lineout.
Shane Horgan, Matt Williams and Rob Kearney discuss where and why it's going wrong and what Paul O'Connell might do to get it right. #IREvAUS | #AutumnNationsSeries pic.twitter.com/WPbtlwk3wp
— Virgin Media Sport (@VMSportIE) November 30, 2024
Joe McCarthy Explains Lineout Woes Against Wallabies
It was of course a major talking point after the match and lock Joe McCarthy explained how the side felt the lineout went and that they had to dig deep into the playbook at points at lineout time.
There’s definitely improvement to be had, 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.
There were a huge number of lineouts in that match for Ireland yesterday, especially compared to the 9 against Argentina and 13 against the All Blacks so it makes sense that the lineout looked sloppy at points.
With many thinking that Ireland have a big lineout problem, Joe McCarthy was quick to point out that he felt the lineout had been an overall success this year, with a little room for improvement.
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.
There's going to be a bit of change heading into next year with Simon Easterby taking interim charge while Andy Farrell focuses on Lions duties, so it could be the opportunity to change things up with a bit less pressure and expectations on them.
