So somehow, despite Ireland being the top try scoring team in the 6N with 'great variation or deception' on attack and NZ being so poor at defence, the Irish could only muster 1 try in the 65-odd minutes of rugby after the ABs first yellow card?
If that's what you call 'not very good' defence then I'd hate to see shit defence.
Ireland had 64% territory and 47% possession in the game and were pretty equal in both stats on Saturday in the second half and yet they could only score 1 try while the ABs had a red card against them.
We seem to have this idea that no other international team will ever be able to come close to the ABs and that we can forever be 20 points better than the next team. Not only is that ridiculous, it's boring...
As I said the AB defence is very good at scrambling. They did an admirable job when down to 14/13 men.
However, there's a difference between 'very good' and 'shit'. I didn't say they were shit I said they weren't a very good defence.
When you look at the pattern of previous tests there's issues there.
Bear in mind they've had the same defence coach since halfway through 2017 - Scott McLeod - I see the same passive defence that i've seen for a number of years.
It's interesting that Joe Schmidt helped out the defence before test 1 and then in test 1 we saw the ABs use a lot more counter rucking (also like the Blues did this year also with Schmidt) compared to test 2.
The AB defence doesn't employ a rush defence enough and it doesn't attack the breakdown enough. It waits for mistakes but when coming up against well drilled sides that don't make mistakes it gets exposed. In other words it doesn't force errors - it waits for errors.
Here's a couple of videos analysing the ABs defence on the weekend (ABs conceded their tries 15 on 15 and 14 on 14).
