Great atmosphere in the stadium, seemed like hardly any kiwis there but the Irish were super passionate and good sports. The noise in the last 10 / at the final whistle was immense, meant so much to them.
Overall for me the first 70mins felt like the first 25mins of the England game last week, just passive in everything we did and kicking far too much. Was waiting for the big "flip the switch" moment and it never came really, there was a bit more space in the last 10 and we sort of looked likely but made mistakes at crucial moments. As other posters said, giving Ireland a lead to defend with 10 to go they were always going to become superhuman and that basically happened. I'm sick of us always having to chase the game!
I watch us defend and think, if other teams gave us that much space, we'd score 50+pts every test. I just don't get it, we let teams across the advantage line with ease and then don't compete well enough at the ensuing rucks. So passive. That's way more of a concern to me than our suddenly impotent attack, which could be fixed with a bit more depth and punchy runners in the midfield. We seem too flat and too keen to go wide early.
As an aside, Aviva stadium looks like it's made of wax and one end was propped against an oven. I guess it's the local residents north who complained about their south- facing sunlight being blocked, but the whole thing looks ridiculous. An otherwise enormous stadium with one end having only 10 rows of seats and a cute little perspex window behind them. At least Eden Park / Twickenham aren't the only stadia stupidly located in a residential neighbourhood!
