Thursday, June 9, 2016

I've got a good feeling Ireland are going to beat the Springboks...

 
Jared Payne

Loads of rugby this weekend quality senior rugby, fantastic U20’s – and isn’t some football tournament starting as well?

For Ireland, after a couple of recent intense provincial encounters, it’s time to pull it all together and present a united front in one of the most hostile places to get a result. South Africa have home advantage, and the legendary epic size of their players on their side. But there’s quite a lot of change going on in their team this year – new coach, new captain, and a host of retirements has brought a lot of new players into the team. There’s a debut flyhalf, new halves combinations, and new centres. It’s strong scrum though. And there’s very little experience on the bench, good players, but even more new combinations on show if they hit the pitch.

Ireland meanwhile have a team that’s a lot more settled – we have a good pool of players with a decent amount of caps to pull from, and I’m way happier with our bench. Joe Schmidt has the team really well drilled, and we’ll be seeing a fairly seamless transition as the subs come on. The strategy I think we’ll be trying to play is really get the Boks running a lot, and tire them out, then let our subs finish the job. I know we’ve got a few players missing that we’d like to have – but you know what, I really think we’re going to win this game, I’ve got a good feeling after seeing the players on each team. Loving Payne at fullback too!

In the other matches, I think the All Blacks will sort out Wales, although they might look a bit scratchy doing it. Then Australia England should be monumental, really hard to pick a winner, but I’m sure it will be really close!

Ireland: 15 Jared Payne, 14 Andrew Trimble, 13 Robbie Henshaw, 12 Luke Marshall, 11 Keith Earls, 10 Paddy Jackson, 9 Conor Murray, 8 Jamie Heaslip, 7 Jordi Murphy, 6 CJ Stander, 5 Devin Toner, 4 Iain Henderson, 3 Mike Ross, 2 Rory Best (c), 1 Jack McGrath
Replacements: 16 Sean Cronin, 17 Finlay Bealham, 18 Tadhg Furlong, 19 Ultan Dillane, 20 Rhys Ruddock, 21 Kieran Marmion, 22 Ian Madigan, 23 Craig Gilroy

South Africa: 15 Willie le Roux, 14 JP Pietersen, 13 Lionel Mapoe, 12 Damian de Allende, 11 Lwazi Mvovo, 10 Patrick Lambie, 9 Faf de Klerk, 8 Duane Vermeulen, 7 Siya Kolisi, 6 Francois Louw, 5 Lood de Jager, 4 Eben Etzebeth, 3 Frans Malherbe, 2 Adriaan Strauss (c), 1 Tendai Mtawarira
Replacements: 16 Bongi Mbonambi, 17 Trevor Nyakane, 18 Julian Redelinghuys, 19 Pieter-Steph du Toit, 20 Warren Whiteley, 21 Rudy Paige, 22 Elton Jantjies, 23 Jesse Kriel

International
11 Jun 2016
New Zealand vs Wales 07:35
Australia vs England 10:00
South Africa vs Ireland 15:00

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