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6th February 2017
11:09am GMT

Yes, there was clear evidence that Ireland were set-up to defend narrowly but the most important thing is that your players have the ability to adapt to the circumstances which emerge on the pitch.
In this case, it was clear that Scotland were routinely placing Hogg on the outside channels and Ireland failed to put width in their defence to deal with this.
As we previously reported, Shane Horgan wrote in his column for The Times, that the loss of Johnny Sexton led to Ireland adopting a more narrow game plan.
https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/828232500430458881
However, Ian Madigan refutes this, as he outlines in his column for RTE.
'I know there has been some talk that Joe set up a narrow defence because Johnny wasn’t playing but I’m pretty sure he would not have changed his set-up because of that. I sense it was more the way the Scots attacked us that caught us off guard and forced us to go narrow.'Whatever the reason that Ireland set-up in a narrow fashion, it proved costly in the end as we saw from the tries that were conceded and the lack of penetration from Ireland in the first half. Although Italy will pose different questions to Ireland, more so up-front than out wide, Ireland will need to play with more width on both sides of the ball if they are to secure a much need bonus-point win against the Italians.
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