Fiji are as Fiji do and what Irish coach Andy Farrell has to ask himself is how many players from the team that won on Saturday in Dublin can squeeze into his matchday squad next Saturday against Australia and into his Six Nations thinking in the New Year.
Perhaps the bigger issue and the most important one for the players is how many have slipped down the pecking order and out of his mind after the scrappy, disjointed performance. Or as coach Farrell better put it: “I thought we was off. I thought we was poor.”
That will send a shiver down the collective Irish psyche, even factoring in that Fiji tend to turn matches into a wild west event and test parts of the game that other teams don’t do so much. Their indiscipline just kept knocking them back.
The match didn’t quite add up to the Test spectacle Ireland would have wanted to put on, with the team’s low wattage, collective performance turning the day into a successful if frustrating one for the home team.
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The names to emerge in a match that became dreary and fractured in the second half – forcing a “we’re bored” Mexican wave from the crowd – were Jamison Gibson Park, Tadhg Beirne and man of the match Nick Timoney. Stuart McCloskey was also powerful.
Gibson-Park and Beirne are in Farrell’s frontline already. In terms of new faces in Farrell’s thinking, Timoney’s two tries and his unfussy but highly effective play has forced his name into the thinking.
Jack Conan was quiet at number 8 and has had a season of small things which have stopped him getting real momentum into his game. Prior to the match he was burning to get an extended run and he was given that by Farrell.
The ironic aspect with Timoney is that it was last weekend’s openside flanker, Josh van der Flier, who won man of the match against world champions South Africa. There is no shifting van der Flier. But Timoney did himself no harm.
Robert Baloucoune also showed flashes of the high twitch fibres he possesses. His first half try was taken well. A catch on the try line and touch down made for a simple thing executed well.
In the second half, when Balocoune received marginally more ball, he looked bright and ready to run hard at the opposition to see if he could spark something into life. Again, like the backrow positions, the wings are heavily populated although nothing is entirely settled until James Lowe returns to fitness and Jacob Stockdale gets extended game time.
[ Ireland player ratings v Fiji: Timoney, Beirne and Gibson-Park impressOpens in new window ]
Overall Farrell will have to ask if Jeremy Loughman and Rob Herring did enough to displace Dan Sheehan and Andrew Porter. The answer is no. Similarly did Kieran Treadwell scare James Ryan? Probably not.
In the backrow was Jack Conan persuasive enough at number 8 to prevent Caelan Doris slotting back into the formation Ireland played against South Africa with Peter O’Mahony and van der Flier either side? Unlikely.
Along the backline McCloskey and Garry Ringrose look set to go again, but did Joey Carbery frighten the socks off Johnny Sexton and did Jimmy O’Brien do enough to displace Hugo Keenan at fullback? No and no.
Just a few players have exploited moving day in rugby, Timoney and the Enniskillen winger Balacoune. A few others have patching up to do including Hansen before an embarrassed Australia arrive after losing to Italy. Expect that side to dramatically change and Farrell’s too.
