Ireland out manouvre Fiji for a comprehensive win.

David Corkery

A shrewd man once told me that you should never arm yourself with a knife if you are heading into a gunfight.

Choosing your weapons before you go into war is an extremely important aspect for any commander and chief to consider before he fires his first shot and for a sporting coach the same rules apply.

First of all there is the landscape and weather to ponder over, secondly there is your capability to sustain repeated pressure and thirdly and most importantly it is imperative that you understand your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses.

Of those who know anything about Fijian rugby they will tell you that the last thing you want to do is challenge them to any kind of physical confrontation because physicality is the foundation that they build their entire game plan from and they just thrive off smashing anything that runs at them.

Choose to challenge these mighty South Sea islanders to an arm wrestle and there is a very good chance that your arm will end up in a sling albeit, in saying that it is vitally important that you don’t stand off them either.

Whether you are going to be successful against any of the South Sea island teams really boils down to getting the balance between shrewdness, physicality and tempo just right and on this occasion Andy Farrell and his coaching team got the blend spot on.

If you look at how Ireland scored their first three tries what you will see is that rather than looking to punch holes in the Fijians powerful first off line of defence the men in green opted to seek soft shoulders and hit them in areas where they didn’t expect to be hit.

The first of those seven pointers manifested itself when Caelan Doris who would have been my man of the match crossed the try line after a perfectly executed training park move from a five meter line-out.

Thinking that the Irish forwards were going to attempt to maul forward after a clean take from the lineout, the Fijians were hoodwinked into defending the ensuing maul however, ball was rapidly transferred through a few pairs of hands and Doris by running a very clever line of support dotted down for Irelands first of eight tries.

The second try came curtesy of yet another training park move when from a five meter penalty the young debutant hooker 21-year-old Gus McCarthy and Doris seamlessly combined from a tap and go to see Josh van der Flier cross for Irelands second.

The third came from another five meter lineout that saw the visitors get sucked in to defending a maul, but in doing so carelessly left their flanks unmanned and the ever busy Craig Casey dived over to more or less kill off the game as a contest.

At that point Ireland had converted all three tries and the score board read 21-3, but Ireland still had one more trick up their sleeves before the half time buzzer was to be sounded.

With the clock in the red and from yet another five meter play Prendergast’s perfectly weighted kick landed in the hands of winger Mack Hansen and he trotted over the white wash as if he was out for a Sunday evening stroll.

Prendergast once again converted and even though the young flyhalf was three from three at this point of the game, it is probably forty minutes of rugby he will want to erase from his memory bank.

Tipped by many as the true successor to Johnny Sexton, Prendergast has a long way to go before he earns the right to call himself Irelands first choice flyhalf.

Apart from firstly having to oust the ever reliable Jack Crowley from the position, Prendergast must experience the very many lows that come hand in hand with playing international rugby and this he can only do by making mistakes and finding a way of dealing with and fixing them.

Shortly after Irelands first try Prendergast recklessly and very deliberately targeted his shoulder towards the head of Fiji’s Kitione Salawa who was chasing down his own kick.

After reviewing the incident Scottish referee Hollie Davidson showed the flyhalf a yellow card and placed the incident on review. Astoundingly for Prendergast the card was not upgraded to a red and he was allowed return to the field, but the Leinster man can count his lucky stars because for me it was a straight red.

Even though Salawa got back to his feet after a little bit of treatment, it was the fact that Prendergast deliberately and intentionally made contact with the head that causes me much concern.

I just wonder if it was the other way around and it was the Fijian who exacted the foul, what colour would have the card been?

Prendergast also made multiple other mistakes with the ball and I have no problem with this because he can only learn from his mistakes, but unless he learns to control his temperament his time in the green will be very short lived.

Next week Ireland will welcome Joe Schmidt and his Australian squad for the last of this year’s Autumn internationals and I really hope that Farrell decides to run with many of the younger players who he picked on Friday night.