Ireland’s issues after autumn as Andy Farrell heads for Lions duty

Ireland only had themselves to blame for making such hard work of Saturday’s win.

Handling errors, especially in a wayward first-half display, were an issue as they continually failed to convert pressure inside the Australia 22 into points.

“We spilled enough ball and made enough errors in the first half to lose two matches,” Farrell remarked.

It has been a theme all month. Against New Zealand, there were 21 handling errors with the All Blacks nearly flawless in that regard. With a combined 35 in the Argentina and Fiji games, it is an area that requires intense focus when Ireland next gather in the build-up to the Six Nations.

Set-piece issues returned on Saturday, too. Ireland lost four line-outs, ridding themselves of a key attacking platform. Line-out issues were a major theme throughout last year’s World Cup.

A year on, there remains a heavy workload for forwards coach Paul O’Connell with lock Joe McCarthy admitting there is “definitely improvement to be had”.

“Today was a bit crazy, there were 24 line-outs, so I think we were on the run trying to make up some new line-outs and we had gone through all of them about twice,” said McCarthy, who started all 11 of Ireland’s games this year.

“We’ve got good success, we had good mauls throughout the year, focused very much on good drills and things like that, but we probably slipped away from that in a few games, leaking a few line-outs, a few sloppy bits.

“But I think it’s been relatively strong enough.”