Samoa? Let’s curb their enthusiasm

Three areas where Ireland need to deliver...

Second wind syndrome

After what happened against Japan,Ireland will enter this game with a degree of trepidation. While many of the Tier 2 nations such as Canada, USA and Russia have found it difficult to sustain their competitiveness as the tournament has progressed, Joe Schmidt will have taken note of just how difficult Tonga and Fiji made life for France and Wales in their most recent outings.

Fellow Pacific Islanders Samoa will have taken heart from those displays and will look to end their tournament on a similar high against Ireland. This World Cup could be over before it starts for some within the Irish squad. Players have spent the last two seasons doing everything in their power to make sure they were part of Schmidt’s final mission but, to date, it has passed too many of our players by.

If a team of the tournament was selected at this point, not one Irish player would make the starting line up. Some like James Ryan would have been in contention after the impressive outing against Scotland but, since then, Ireland’s performances have been well below par.

Players at all levels have had games where they find it very difficult to get going. The lungs are burning, the legs heavy, but you have to play through it.

That feeling when you find your second wind and, suddenly, you can run and breath with ease enables performance levels to take off dramatically.

Individually and collectively, Ireland have reached that point now. The severe heat and humidity has passed. They need to make a statement today in terms of their ability to produce an 80-minute performance in advance of the knockout phase.

A big part of that is in producing the explosive power that enables you compete with the ultra physical Samoans, who tend to play in fits and starts. Big hits, big carries but then nothing for ten minutes. Ireland need to exploit those periods when the Samoans switch off. Draining the energy from the Samoan legs at scrum time will also aid the Irish line out maul, an area that Best will definitely target.

Japan scored two tries in the last six minutes in their win over Samoa but struggled to impose their high tempo game on the Islanders for long periods. Schmidt will emphasise the necessity to remain patient in their search for an all-important bonus-point win. Ireland need to wear Samoa down and take the legs away from their heavy forwards. The starting point for that is the set piece.

Use set piece to fracture Samoans

The Samoans love to run and crash into people but they tend to be lazy on the other side of the ball, unless you are silly enough to run straight at them. Their work ethic can be poor at times. Ireland need to curb the enthusiasm of their forwards and the best way of going about that is to sap the energy from them.

With Ireland’s most effective and explosive front five reunited, Rory Best needs to use the scrum and lineout maul as a weapon of mass destruction. The Samoan scrum is a big unit but lacks the technical nuances that the Irish front row of Best, Cain Healy and Tadhg Furlong offer.

That trio must make the Samoan front row scrummage every time they engage in the knowledge that the in-form back up trio of Dave Kilcoyne, Niall Scannell and Andrew Porter are more than capable of finishing the job over the last half hour.

The one concern I have, especially at scrum time, is the quality of the pitch at the Fukuoka Haktanomori Stadium and the ease with which it cut up in the recent game there between France and USA. That made it difficult for the front five to get a solid anchor for their feet to drive off as the playing suffice tended to cut up easily and shift underneath you like a mat.

We have now been told that a new surface has been laid in the nine days since then but it is rock solid and that too could have implications scrummage-wise as your studs tend to slide on the solid surface.

Scotland and Japan reaped huge dividends from their driving maul against the Samoans and Ireland have the potential to be even more disruptive. With their backs backpedaling off the base of a retreating maul, Johnny Sexton has all kinds of kicking and passing options open to him to pick holes in their defence.

The only way Samoa have been stopping lineout mauls is by conceding penalties for collapsing. That will suit Ireland fine as Sexton will use the resultant penalty to secure field position. Ireland badly need to rediscover their accuracy and ability to hold onto the ball.

Handling errors and cheap turnovers blighted Ireland’s performances against Japan and Russia and those aspects need to be eradicated quickly as it is sucking the confidence out of the team. The one way to restore that feelgood factor is by dismantling the opposition set piece.

Apart altogether from the damage it does to their forwards, the psychological impact it has on a backline when their pack is being dominated brings rewards elsewhere. Ireland need to be ruthless tomorrow. That starts and ends up front.

The likes of Healy, Furlong, Ryan and Iain Henderson need to go full on for 60 minutes and see where that brings them. Tadhg Beirne has been rewarded for his positive showing against Russia.

In addition to the back up front row, Peter O’Mahony will be champing at the bit to make an impact in the last quarter off the bench with the competition in the back row hotting up. With a dominant platform to play off, Ireland’s attacking threat then needs to finally show its teeth.

Attacking conviction

While the Irish forwards will seek to engage the Samoans front five in an arm wrestle, behind the scrum Sexton and company may be better employed using a more evasive approach. Sexton will, as always, look to play flat on the gain line which will prove far too inviting for the physical Samoans to ignore.

He needs to be smart however and not offer easy targets for them to smash, be it himself or those around him. Nothing energises Samoa more than making a big hit. Ireland need to use footwork rather than brute force to expose the defensive lapses the Samoans display as a collective.

Their desire to rush in for the big hit makes them vulnerable to teams with an ability to pass before or out of the tackle. Their defensive line is often fractured and Bundee Aki along with Sexton and the returning Robbie Henshaw need to exploit this.

Sexton’s famed loop plays may pay more dividends against Samoa than other sides, as long as they don’t read them early. If Ireland labour the pass and make the play easy to read, they will be smashed.

With Jordan Larmour, Jacob Stockdale and Keith Earls forming a potentially devastating back three , Ireland need to get them on the ball as often as possible.

Some of Sexton’s kick passing against Scotland and Russia was excellent and needs to be reproduced again to force the Samoan wingers to cover the five metre channel. That in turn will provide a little more space for Aki and Henshaw to exploit in midfield.

Sexton’s importance to Ireland cannot be overstated. When he is at his best, stretching the opposition midfield and back three with the quality and variety of his kicking and passing, Ireland are a different team.

If he can deliver that, not only should Ireland get the job done against Samoa, it will put the squad in a far better place for what hopefully lies ahead.