John O’Sullivan
speaker
1,338 appearances
7 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 21 Jul
John O’Sullivan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 4.
Appearances
Yeah, I think also your breakdown point is excellent.
The one thing here with the breakdown, Ireland were outplayed at the breakdown.
So that is something that is a concern.
They addressed it and they were better in the second half.
I think Tyburn made a huge difference when he came on.
He was also a poaching threat and he slowed down Australia ball.
So Ireland's orientation and the technical side of that aspect of things was much better.
But at one stage, I saw four Irish players lying on the ground, one Australian who'd made the tackle, who was already back on his feet as four Irish players were getting to their feet.
So the numbers game that is always, and it is always a numbers game at the breakdown, knowing and understanding when you can go for a poach, knowing and understanding how many players to commit to a breakdown.
The hustle to get back up and get in the line, be the defence or attack, the ability, as Gordon has touched on there, to understand that kind of short pop ball, to make the decision for Jemison Gibson Park, to be able to read the defensive line, to see where the hole is, to come on to the ball at pace from depth.
If you look at Ireland's problems in the first half, a lot of what they did was static, again, slow, players taking the ball standing still.
And that's all well and good.
But if you're doing that and you're playing out the back, you just put in the gain line, you're going back to a different postcode.
And the problem is if nobody makes a good decision or nobody makes a break or you don't get to the edge, then you're tackled.
10, 15 metres behind the game line and all of a sudden you have to go back and start all over again and Ireland did way too much of that in the first half and I thought that the decisions that they had to make at breakdown time, I thought they got a lot of those wrong.
Well, I was going to say one final, final point of this is what do Japan and Australia have in common?
What will they have in common?
They'll play the ball out of the tackle, they'll offload, they'll play at pace.
And if you don't get set quickly enough in defence, you're going to be in trouble.
Yeah, I thought they threw it away, to be honest.
Showing 741–760 of 1,338 · page 38 of 67
← Previous
Next →