Joe McCarthy tackles Ireland's worrying penalty problem head on after sin binning
Ireland's young lock reveals that the players are talking constantly about the worrying decline in discipline but fixing it under pressure is their big issue
Joe McCarthy admits that fixing Ireland's penalty problems is the hard part after returning to winning ways against Argentina.
'Big Joe' was one of the biggest culprits as one of two Ireland players to get sin-binned in the narrow victory at the Aviva Stadium last Friday.
But while he was pinged and yellow carded for a blatant second half offside, the card was the result of an accumulation of penalty concessions that will again concern Andy Farrell.
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Ireland skipper Caelan Doris was warned by ref Paul Williams before half-time that his team were heading for a yellow card for persistent infringements and McCarthy was the fall guy for that.
“You’re a bit disappointed that you let the team down a small bit," said the 23-year-old. "Ten minutes feels like ages! But Aled (Walters) our new S&C (coach) was just telling me, ‘make sure you stay warm and to think about your next positive moment coming on.’ You want to have a positive moment once you come back into the game.”
That he was later named as TV's man of the match would usually have resulted in dressing-room slagging but after such a close game, that wasn't on his team-mates' minds immediately afterwards. "Haven’t got slagged about it," he smiled. "But I’ll definitely hear about it from Paulie (Paul O'Connell) in the meeting on Monday.”
The hosts coughed up 13 penalties for the second time in a week - a far cry from the disciplined outfit that previously set a world-class standard under Joe Schmidt and then Farrell.
In fact, Ireland have conceded 54 points on the back of penalties conceded in the last three games. "Yeah, it’s something that we’ve been outstanding on over the last 10 years, actually," said Farrell. "But certainly in that amount of time you’re saying there, it’s not done out of players going out there to be ill-disciplined.
"It’s coming from the right place, if that may sound stupid. All they’re trying to do is do the right thing by their team, They just need to be a little more patient individually and trust the team and what they’re about."
Ireland only gave away four penalties in the Six Nations clincher against Scotland in March but otherwise the penalty stats this year tell a sorry tale.
“That’s probably the hard bit," said McCarthy, when asked how the players cut out indiscipline, particularly on the back of it being such a focus after the All Blacks defeat last week. "We talk a lot about it. Most players actually know how to do it, what the solution is - but it’s about doing it under pressure.
"We lost the penalty count against New Zealand which makes it extremely tough to stay in the game and then again today, we gave them some easy outs so I think if we start cutting out some of those penalties (we'll be better).
"We’re forcing it a bit. We’re a bit off on our penalty count. I think that will make our game flow our lot better, because we came out of the blocks firing and then started slipping into some bad habits and giving away penalties, which kind of made the game cagey enough.
“I think we were a bit better than we were last week. We'll build again. We'll try as hard as we can. We will review it proper hard - the coaches will be on our backs big time. We will have a big chat about it, sit down and try and improve next week, then we have two more games to try and get it right.
"It’s a massive part of the game. You are always trying to find ways to paint the best picture and get maximum pressure.”
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