Solid foundation delights Kiss
“I think the initial stats that came out, after about 20 minutes we made about 93 (tackles),” said Ireland defence coach Les Kiss.
“That’s getting up in the extreme end of the scale. The guys certainly had to dig deep for themselves and each other in those moments, there were some good things but there is still a lot more to come from us.
“It’s the first hit-out, we could have been sharper in some areas and not only in terms of our technical work but also in terms of how we looked at the game and how we just saw opportunities, if only just shifting the position to give ourselves a chance to put a little bit more line speed at times.
“But, generally, they had to dig in deep because they didn’t have much ball.”
Scotland got that late try but Kiss takes some positives from the situation. His men’s disappointment, for instance.
“It hurt. It’s nice that it hurt all the guys as well, they showed it at the end of the match. It’s one of those things, generally, we are really happy with how we go with our set-piece defence, and start-up defence.
“The play itself was quite well executed, the depth that they came onto the ball just put a few little question marks there and held us in the midfield so some decisions had to come on the edges. And we will work on those things.
“The blocking line? That was there but can we get through that harder, they are things we’ll ask ourselves, was it a forward pass or could we have made a better decision on the end of the line? We will work on those things but fore the rest of the game I thought they did really well and they (Scotland) came up with a good play.”
As for Robinson’s praise, Kiss doesn’t think Ireland are showing their hand too early.
“Not really. Since I’ve joined the group three years ago, there has been a real willingness by the guys to actually be involved in the tackle in a different way.
“Certainly, we’ve worked out ways to enhance the way we look at it and make us more effective in putting pressure on in the middle of the tackle through to the back end. I would be hesitant to say that we are just an upright tackle team — when you look at the stats, when we were first into the tackle 60 per cent went in high, the rest were low, so you’ve got some good chop tackle as well.
“If it’s perceived that way, that’s good because I know it’s a good strength that teams have to work out how do they play against that. Does that mean that they forget about passing the ball and trying to go low and trying to create quick ball which then dilutes the way they like to attack? Maybe it’s a strength they are doing it, I’m not sure, teams will try to work out how they work with it and deal with it but I like to think that the whole system allows guys to bring their strengths to the game, whether it’s an upright tackle and get into a choke and hold it to a maul; some guys can really read it well and chop the legs and get over the ball and have better decisions that way.
“I’m hopeful that there is a broad range of skills that we can bring to the tackle area.”
Technical enough for you? Try Kiss’s view of the Australia-New Zealand game last weekend and the All Blacks’ defence against Quade Cooper.
“They were smart, the All Blacks, in not allowing the Aussie (ruck) cleaners to take people out of the tackle area which puts hesitation on your pillar defenders. They were strong there.
“That allowed them to apply the right amount of line speed, particular on the inside on Cooper, so he passed earlier than he wanted to. He couldn’t take the line under his terms, and those were the interesting things there. ”
Prompted about Cooper’s defence being a possible liability, Kiss instead focused politely on what the mercurial Aussie brings to the table in other ways. Hey, the man’s got to plan a World Cup defence against Australia. He’s entitled to keep a few technical matters to himself.
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