{"id":560870,"date":"2026-07-21T14:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T14:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/560870\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T14:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T14:27:09","slug":"biggar-feels-loss-of-former-super-strength-explains-ireland-drop-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/560870\/","title":{"rendered":"Biggar Feels Loss Of Former ‘Super Strength’ Explains Ireland Drop Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

While two wins out of three in this summer’s Nations Championship<\/a> is hardly a disaster for Ireland, there will be some concerns about the team’s direction of travel in recent times.<\/p>\n

The performance against New Zealand on Saturday was a mixed bag<\/a>. Andy Farrell’s men did show some resilience in the second half<\/a>, but they made far too many errors over the course of the game.<\/p>\n

That was particularly true when it came to attacking areas, with some poor handling errors prematurely ending promising ventures into the All Blacks 22′.<\/p>\n

The defeat meant Ireland have now last the last six games in which they have faced New Zealand, France, or South Africa.<\/p>\n

Dan Biggar identifies major Ireland issue<\/p>\n

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It is becoming clear that Ireland are no longer quite competing with the best teams in world rugby, with that six-match losing run indicative of a drop off from the standards that had been set in previous seasons.<\/p>\n

Speaking on The Rugby Pod<\/a>, Dan Biggar identified a former ‘super strength’ that is no longer present in the Ireland team that could explain their recent dip in form.<\/p>\n

Ireland’s super strength over the last ten years has been detail, detail, detail, structure, structure, structure. Connections and pods…<\/p>\n

Some of the handling errors they made was from not being in shape, the ball going to the third man and not expecting it, instead of the second guy in the pod. Jamison Gibson-Park wasn’t hitting the right guy, no connections out the back…<\/p>\n

I thought on the weekend a few of their handling errors was caused by them not being as structured or clear in what they were doing.<\/p>\n

The last six matches they’ve played against South Africa, France, or New Zealand, they lost. That’s the difference.<\/p>\n

That’s not necessarily a criticism of Ireland. They’re playing against the very best and they’re a tiny bit below that.<\/p>\n

That analysis is fairly spot on, with the current Ireland team lacking the accuracy in attack that had previously been a key component of their game.<\/p>\n

Can Andy Farrell get Ireland back on track?<\/p>\n

Andy Farrell will be keen to get Ireland back on track ahead of the autumn internationals, with one eye already on next years’ Rugby World Cup.<\/p>\n

Issues around the line-out and scrum have also to be resolved along with the lack of accuracy in attacks at times.<\/p>\n

With an aging squad and uncertainty around new players coming through, that could be a formidable task for the Ireland head coach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While two wins out of three in this summer’s Nations Championship is hardly a disaster for Ireland, there…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-560870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}