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'The gap's closing' - Ireland gaining on England insists Ryan

By PA
PA

Stand-in skipper James Ryan is adamant Ireland will learn from the “collection of errors” which cost them dearly in the comprehensive defeat to England.

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Andy Farrell’s side struggled to impose themselves on Saturday’s Autumn Nations Cup clash at Twickenham and paid a heavy price for a series of set-piece blunders in an 18-7 loss.

Leinster lock Ryan was selected to lead out his country in London due to the injury absence of regular captain Johnny Sexton.

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Itoje on his man of the match performance against Ireland

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Itoje on his man of the match performance against Ireland

While mistakes at the line-out contributed to making it a miserable occasion for the 24-year-old, he has backed the team to take on board their shortcomings.

“Probably our set-piece let us down at times in crucial moments. They scored off the back of some those moments that we didn’t quite nail,” said Ryan.

“It was just a collection of errors, really. It’s so important at this level to be accurate. It’s definitely one big learning that we’ll take.

“It was just little inaccuracies that gave them points. But we’ll take loads from that and I’ve no doubt that we’re going to keep building.

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“It’s no one person’s fault. Collectively we need to be more accurate in those pressure moments. We’ll have a look at ourselves next week.”

Jacob Stockdale’s late converted try made the scoreline more respectable after two scores from Jonny May and the boot of Owen Farrell gave the dominant hosts complete control.

Ireland have now been convincingly beaten on each of their past four meetings with Eddie Jones’ World Cup finalists.

Two of those defeats, in addition to a loss to France, have come in the seven matches since Farrell replaced Joe Schmidt after last year’s World Cup.

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In spite of those unfavourable results, Ryan insists the Irish are closing the gap to the world’s top teams.

“Look, this is a new group, new coaching staff,” said Ryan.

“How many players have made their debuts over the last few weeks? It’s kind of a new chapter for us.

England, in terms of where they are at, they’ve been together a lot longer. I’ve no doubt that the gap’s closing there.

“We just need to keep growing now. We’ll get so much from games like this as a group.”

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J
JW 4 hours ago
'Let's not sugarcoat it': Former All Black's urgent call to protect eligibility rules

Yep, no one knows what will happen. Thing is I think (this is me arguing a point here not a random debate with this one) they're better off trialing it now in a controlled environment than waiting to open it up in a knee jerk style reaction to a crumbling organtization and team. They can always stop it again.


The principle idea is that why would players leave just because the door is ajar?


BBBR decides to go but is not good enough to retain the jersey after doing it. NZ no longer need to do what I suggest by paying him to get back upto speed. That is solely a concept of a body that needs to do what I call pick and stick wth players. NZR can't hold onto everyone so they have to choose their BBBRs and if that player comes back from a sabbatical under par it's a priority to get him upto speed as fast as possible because half of his competition has been let go overseas because they can't hold onto them all. Changing eligibility removes that dilemma, if a BBBR isn't playing well you can be assured that someone else is (well the idea is that you can be more assured than if you only selected from domestic players).


So if someone decides they want to go overseas, they better do it with an org than is going to help improve them, otherwise theyre still basically as ineligible as if they would have been scorning a NZ Super side that would have given them the best chance to be an All Black.

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