Matt Burke tells Adam Ashley-Cooper to get selfish

[TommyM]

X2

Also agree on O'Connor RE: the B'OD try.. was clearly out of position on the replay.

In what sense is he out of position? He was playing at 15. His opposing fullback was (presumably) out wide (where he came back in from in the shot after the try). If he had been defending between 12 and 13 and Ioane had not pushed out there would have been an overlap out wide. It was a clear man-on-man defensive situation. Not sure from the footage how you can say that he was out of position. How could you presume to know what the Wallabies defensive structure in that situation is anyhow?

PS- Having played almost all of my own rugby at 13, I can tell you that I would never presume my fullback was covering my opposite 13 requiring me to push wide when you're on the goal-line. It's man-on. Anything else is too risky

[mudskipper]

Absolutely - in that situation, you'd have to wonder whether any single player could have done the job. It was one of the reasons I had to laugh when I saw this crap from Bret Harris, which can be summarised as "Smith should have been injected into the game for the last 10 minutes of the Test in Dublin at inside centre in place of Quade Cooper." and "Not only would the Wallabies have stood more chance of repelling O'Driscoll with Smith defending in the midfield, but they may have stopped the Irish from getting into a position to score in the first place". All possibly true, but can you imagine the baying for blood that would have erupted if Smith had let through (or more probably been unable to stop) the try that denied Australia a potential grandslam when playing out of position?



Even if he isn't at fullback, he'd walk in on the wing if he only plays as well as he did last year injured.

But JO'C wasn't there so we'll never know...
Smith covers the inside backs of the scrum very well which have put more pressure on O'Gara's pass the BO'D. Centers should have covered it with support of the fullback to hold him out... Well its all history now... The Irish got the better of themin the last minutes...

[James]

But JO'C wasn't there so we'll never know...
Smith covers the inside backs of the scrum very well which have put more pressure on O'Gara's pass the BO'D. Centers should have covered it with support of the fullback to hold him out... Well its all history now... The Irish got the better of themin the last minutes...

From the scrum, Smith wouldn't have been fast enough to stop BOD. That came straight out of the scrum and straight to him. I don't think JO'C would've been able to stop him even if he was sitting back right in that gap. The first up defenders should've had him covered but it was a well executed move and they didn't and at 5m out if you miss there isn't really a second chance. Ioane and Cooper aren't playing in their most familiar positions you have to give them a little bit of lee way if they make the odd miscommunication error.

[GIGS20]

They've played pretty much three seasons next to each other though. I'd reckon that would make it harder for a player to slip between them.

It had to be a communication error, most likely Cooper called Digby outside thinking the inside runners were covered by the flankers and then got frozen by something into thinking that was a bad call and tried to cover somebody on the inside. At least that's the only thing I can think of that explains such a massive gap between two players of reasonable standard (let alone international standard)