u/Sportyskater699

I really want to work in the department of defence in either a military or civilian role in the research and procurement of vehicles , weapons etc for the defence forces.

What job/section of the department of defence is this and what’s the best route?

Used to play it with my Friends, they’ve all quit aswell.

The breaking point for me was playing div 1 and having a guy get 2 goals against me and then from the 20th minute playing the ball back to his keeper while my stupid auto switch prevented me from intercepting the ball.
All this while he’s taunting me with emojis so you know it’s on purpose aswell.

In no other football game would the game allow somebody to play it back to the defenders and then back to the keeper for 70 mins, they would have ai pressing the potential pass options.

But of course with this game in its 14th iteration doesn’t have that.

Good bye dream league soccer

Disappointing result in an overall poor tournament, I don’t think I’ve ever watched an u18 with so many guys that I could see “he could play for Ireland at some point” and underperform as a team.

Set piece has gone to pieces, scrum got destroyed each and every-time by anyone, I don’t even believe it’s front row I just believe dark arts and power imbalance in back 5 between Ireland and other teams.

Lineout is quite poor aswell, throwing is either overthrown or crooked, can’t launch set plays off that.

This team looked way better in the 6 nations festival in April so you’d have to wonder what happened there.

Standout players
•Luke Kelly
For anybody who hasn’t watched him, probably the most complete winger Ireland has produced at underage level (u18), great step , very quick , good aerial game and has decent frame aswell, definitely one for the future.

•Alex moloney
Great feet and good ability to wriggle free from contact, very quick aswell and has that bit of fight about him, reminds me of Crowley in that regard, one to watch.

•Michael smyth
Great athlete, maybe a tad bit small for 7 because he’s very fast aswell I wonder could he be a 13 maybe.
Has flair and has a high workrate, definitely a future international.

•Herbie Boyle
Was more impressed with his dynamic ball carrying rather than his scrummaging, scored 2 tries in the South Africa game, strong in tackle, only u17/18 aswell for big future.

Decent performances

James whitty
Good ball carrying, quick and always involved

David Nolan
Great player, good leader.
Still Charlie O’Connor is still number 1

Matthew McCarthy
Great winger, has an eye for the tryline

Xabi scanlan
Big unit, although ball carrying can be quite underwhelming at times for his size, but has the bit of fight about him, strong tackler.

Luke Coffey
Great from the boot, very steady from tee.
Has a good reading of the game

Johnny woods
Nippy with the ball speed, good player

Players that we need to see more from

David Kenny
Had a good six nations tournament but was quite quiet in this tournament, scrummaging will Come in time, however he is quite proficient in his ruck work and maul defence.

Harry heaghny
Really good talent, throwing hasn’t been at the best recently and has been quite in a few games so far, but he has an eye for the tryline as good hookers do, still a lot of quality there.

Paddy scally
Tough when the 9 kicks the conversions but he definitely didn’t have his best games, he is obviously a very talented player from his school campaigns but struggled abit here.

Second rows
The scrum felt underpowered throughout the tournament, all the second rows are highly rated but I felt there was a lack of power and dynamism from them throughout the matches.

A lot to improve on but there is certainly some talent there.

I’ve watched every Ireland u18-u20 (available to watch) game for the last 3 years and what has stood out to me is the slow dip in performances across the board.

Ireland u20 from 2022-2024 was utterly wonderful, brilliant coaching brilliant players etc, however since then we have been treated to two poorly coached u20s sides back to back who were often lacking in multiple areas, particularly in the basics, from lineout time to scrum, to tackling and handling as well.

Ireland u20 in 2025 finished bottom of six nations, Ireland u20 2026 finished 2nd in six nations but 9th in world championship u20 with two poor performances against Fiji and Italy

Watching the Ireland u18 va South Africa u18 an and South Africa u18 this week, there is a clear difference in how both sides are coached, set piece was very poor, I hate going in on young lads but having a bad set piece will do you no favours at this level.

I understand at this age it’s a numbers game in alot of areas but Ireland need to be best in class at the things they can control like set piece and handling all of which are worse than a lot of our competition.

However there is positivity to be had, particularly in the backline, a lot of talent is coming through and will be here in a few years, some better coaching hopefully and many of these players can get better.

I’m sure budget cuts have been tough on underage structures aswell.
But it will have to get a lot better because particularly because a lot of the coaches at this level are not making their best case.

These issues have plagued the game since I was a kid and haven’t been fixed

These are the 5 key issues that need to be fixed.

1:
Player switching is brutal, trying to switch to players on defence is impossible, I’ve just resigned to doing manual switching

The fix is improve player switching

2:
Ai defending, arguably one of the most common complaints I see here, defenders often just stop running when chasing back, it’s baffling sometimes

The fix would be to improve the ai engine

3:
The “A” button and tackles off the ball, when going for a shot if the defender gets in front of you and you shoot you will almost always tackle them, and it always results in red, or when trying to clear the ball with a the defender will just two foot the nearest opponent player.

The fix would be to disable the over extending tackle animation when ball is bouncing around, preventing accidental two footed red card tackles.

4:
Pay to win promos, the constant steam of special cards is boring and just serves as a way to sell gems, less special cards.

The fix would be to stop the gem fest with over priced cards, I know it’s a business but even still, make gems easier to obtain.

5:
Referees…where do I begin, wildly inconsistent sometimes a shoulder to shoulder is a penalty sometimes it’s not, sometimes you’ll get a yellow for a legitimate tackle.

The only things that’s consistent with them is accidental clicking or “A” when trying to boot the ball long.

They also pick and chose whether to blow up a game, sometimes 90+1 is instant other times it’s at least 2 more attacks, it’s baffling.

The fix would be to improve the collision engine within the game with tackles, and actual judge added time based off pitch position and time wasting.

Rant over

He takes over from Schmidt and has just won the World Cup with South Africa.
He builds his back room staff over time

What approach do you see him taking at the beginning?

2020-2021
2021-2023 World Cup build
2024-present World Cup cycle

What players in Ireland who aren’t in the picture do you think might have gotten more game time?

What players do you think wouldn’t have gotten game time?

What style of play would he try and play?

I’m only asking this because he’s the consensus best coach in the world and even though Farrell is likely a close second or third it would be interesting to see the difference in approaches.

Disappointing result for the team in a fixture that the u18’s won last year

Ireland started really well and got a try by Herbie Boyle but faded after that and gave South Africa some easy tries.

The scrum struggled in general, at first it held until the ball was out but in the end it creaked and gave up penalties, just a power imbalance throughout the pack.

Some excellent try line defence by Ireland with some massive hits to push back the South Africans
Ireland started second half well with a try but still faded in the 2nd half, individual moments were key to Ireland staying in the game.

However great fight back near the end of the game with two tries

I liked the ability for Ireland to keep the ball in play

Excellent kick for Luke Coffey to put Ireland ahead, he has a great boot.

Tough to lose

good effort but South Africa are a good team

Some good performances by:

**•**Michael smyth
•Daniel Murphy
•Luke Kelly
•Matthew McCarthy

Man of the match for Ireland

Michael smyth

When Agamemnon finishes talking they all charge Odysseus and his crew to the boats and then stop.

What was there reason for charging after them , was it because they blamed Odysseus for getting them killed?

I’m not saying it’s good that the AFL are taking our players, it’s bad.

However it’s clear to see the rise in the athleticism in the gaa and how it is viewed abroad now.

There’s absolutely no space on an intercounty panel if you are not an athlete.

AFL wants athletes and the gaa now has the athletes that can translate across sports more easily.

The guys who went to the afl years ago were outliers now there are many more like them.

Fair play to all involved

If you look at a lot of our ball carrying stats a lot of it comes down to a few players namely

•Doris
•McCarthy
•Conan
•mccloskey
•Dan Sheehan

We see against the more physical teams that teams just double tackle our big ball carriers and nullify them, we see it all the time with Joe McCarthy, Doris’s footwork allows him to negate the double tackles often.

In the nations championship Ireland had one of the lowest meters per carry of any team.

The rest of the team need to step up the ball carrying, Ian madigan said on the latest indo podcast that “the guys aren’t coming onto the ball at speed”.

He also said “you need to earn the right to go wide” aswell
“You earn the right by getting gainline which we aren’t doing against the better teams”

i.e they don’t have enough momentum as they make contact with the defensive line leading to less impactful carries.

My point is that we need the rest of the team to step up the carrying ability, especially the rest of the forwards so that we keep the defences having to worry about the ball carrying threat of the whole of our team not 4 or 5 guys.

Anybody have any thoughts or players that would help the squad, the stats seem to back it up.

Now this isn’t culturally or ethnically or nationally irish.

This is which Irish player who came through the Irish system played the least like every other Irish player.

Who was the least Irish system player we ever had and how did their career go?

When I was younger I wanted to get into sprinting, well unfortunately I found that pretty much every track in Dublin was owned by a club of which it costed money to use.

Some counties don’t even have a running track, it shows when we have a great pool of athletes who will never live near a running track, if you go to America for example there are so many running tracks you can just go on to run.

How many elite potential genetic sprinters never really bothered with sprinting because they couldn’t find any track near them so they just played gaa and were known as the “fast lad”.

Highlights of video

•2 wins which were a positive, but performances weren’t where they needed to be.

•Ireland not in top 3, loads of elite players but too much of drop off in certain positions.

•Good depth building

Positives in video

•Joe McCarthy, “probably best 4 lock in world”

•good debuts for Bohan,Jansen ,illo etc for depth building

•Praise for pathways in Ireland despite size of Ireland

•scrum slight improvement

Problems in video

•predictable attack,easy to defend against

•Defence can be very shaky

•New Zealand 10 dominant carries to 1 for Ireland ratio

This is my ranking for most exciting Irish rugby players, this is just my opinion feel free to add your own or query “why x player was in this tier”.

Rules
Player must have under 5 Ireland caps

Player is 20-25 years old

Player is IQ

The weighting is 50/50 on what they have achieved and what I believe the potential is

S tier

Paddy McCarthy

A tier

Brian gleeson
Bryn ward
Edwin Edogbo
Billy Bohan
Cathal forde
Jude postelwaithe
Nathan doak

B tier

Darragh Murray
Sean Edogbo
Sam illo
Evan O’Connell
Jack Murphy
Jerry cahir
JJ kenny
Matthew Devine
Charlie tector
Casper Gabriel
Tom wood
James mcnabney
Diarmuid mangan
Jack Boyle
Alex soroka
Jack deegan
Fintan gunne
Dylan mcneice
James culhane
Alex usanov
Conor o’tighernigh
Harry Sheridan
Fiachna Barrett
Scott Wilson
Tom mcallister
Ronan Foxe
Ciaran mangan
Ben o’donavan
Sam bishti
Joe hopes
Hugh cooney
Diarmuid kilgallen
Ruadhann Quinn
Shay McCarthy
Hugh Gavin
Dan kelly
Micheal foy
Niall smyth
Finn Treacy

C tier

Ben Murphy
Ben O’Connor
Andrew sparrow
Ruben moloney
Matthew victory

How many athletic freaks are on that pitch being able to run for 70 mins, win aerial ball all at around 85kg aswell.

Imagine how many of these guys would be class for Ireland, imagine Clifford at 10 and o’donaghue at 13

There is a serious amount of backline talent in the gaa that have the potential to be class at rugby.

We’d be serious contenders come world up time