Brewer backs Irish to rattle the Boks
Fiji assistant coach Brewer saw his side go down 41-6 to the Grand Slam champions on Saturday and predicts Declan Kidney side will trouble the mighty Springboks.
He claimed: “Ireland are perfectly placed to beat the Springboks.
“They’re good enough, they’re ruthless enough and there is no doubt they’ll be up for it.”
Brewer was impressed with many aspect of Ireland’s play.
He explained: “Ireland used quality technique and strength to push us back, to get over the gain line and put us under pressure. When they didn’t get over the gain line they looked like they were going to break us down in some other way.
“Ireland have guys in the team who can execute at pace and precision and they threaten from every angle of attack.”
Brewer felt the game ended as a contest after Brian O’Driscoll 47th- minute try.
“From a one-score game it went out to two scores and they (Ireland) had the benefit of the wind to give them territorial advantage. We were left to attack from way too deep and they just closed us out with solid defence and clever lines of assault.
“These boys (our guys) are still learning and we’re a long way from matching a team like Ireland. We have learned we need to be more clever in our defending and that we’ll have to paddle a bit instead of coming up to make the big hits.
“We set out to take Ireland on through the middle of the field and make them play back towards the touch line which was working for us for a while.
“We knew they (the Irish) are very good defensively on the open side.”
Their stats over 12 months prove that only 35% of the points scored against them have come from tries. As far as attack is concerned, 70% of the tries they have scored in the same time have come off the first three phases. We aimed to defend vigorously those first phases. We wanted to ping them in those early phases and make them play from broken field play; we felt if we could do that we might have lessened their potency.
“They’re used to playing system style of rugby and if they get that kind of cohesion through those first three phases they can be lethal,” he said.
A sizeable part of the reason for potency in attack is the influence of Brian O’Driscoll according to head coach Glen Ella.
The Australian legend said: “He was remarkable in the middle of the pitch through his ability to read the game. He can’t be allowed an inch and it didn’t help that this Irish team has quality players all over the park.
“It’s not just in the back line where that number ten (Jonathan Sexton) stamped a bit of class on the match, on the wing or in the centre of the field, it’s in the front, second and back rows. You can’t beat experience. It’s a learning curve for our guys. We played better than we did in Murrayfield, but I that tells a story about the type of quality team Ireland have become in recent years. They will put you away in the blink of an eye,” he said.
Ella smiled when asked whether they could possibly do that next weekend against the world champions and then responded: “Let’s put it this way, it will be interesting.”
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