Duggan: Irish tactics were wrong

Former Irish captain Willie Duggan is backing Ireland to bounce back from defeat to England and challenge for the RBS Six Nations Championship title.

Obviously, Ireland need England to lose one of their remaining three matches against either France, Italy or Wales but Duggan believes Ireland can put the Aviva disappointment behind them.

Duggan, who earned 41 caps between 1975 and 1984 and toured New Zealand with the Irish Lions in 1977, was regarded as one of the toughest back row forwards of his era and he was left wondering just what went wrong in Dublin on Saturday.

It was, he felt, a bizarre contest and one where neither side showed their potential: “Looking at that game you would wonder how the hell England beat the All Blacks in November. Looking at Ireland, and guys like Jamie Heaslip, you would wonder how things went wrong, I mean Heaslip dropped the ball twice from kick-offs and he doesn’t do mistakes like that.

“Nobody was going to score tries there, it was a combination of great defence on both sides and atrocious weather conditions. Even when they weren’t under pressure Ireland made handling mistakes; the conditions were bad out there and I suppose it affected Ireland more than England.”

The former skipper, was, however, critical of Ireland’s game plan.

The defeat, he suggested, had nothing to do with the loss of Simon Zebo and Jonathan Sexton: “Zebo, for instance, was out on the wing and when was he going to get a decent bit of possession on a day like that?

“It was a day for forward play; back rows then have to be up to their game. Ireland don’t play that type of heavyweight game, they haven’t in the last few years.

“I wouldn’t have promoted the idea of trying to play the game they tried to play in the circumstances. It was a day to go down the sidelines and keep it tight; I don’t know what goes on there anymore but it might have been a case where the players should have been allowed to change the game plan.”

So, can Ireland recover?

“Difficult to say,” he said, “but at least they’ve a couple of weeks to recover. I’m not a fan of this one week break bit in the Six Nations. I think every team needs a couple of weeks between matches at this level. A lot depends on how the guys recover from injuries, there’s going to be a lot of disruption in the coming days but I’d be optimistic enough. We played badly but I figure there’s a lot there to improve upon and the players are there to provide that improvement.