Ireland's defence has been uncharacteristically leaky in this year's Six Nations, and former Leinster fly-half Andy Dunne believes our attritional offence could be contributing to the problem.
Speaking to Ger and Eoin over Skype on Wednesday's OTB AM, Dunne said that "the one concern I'd have is are we leaking tries because were' so physically tired from the demand our attack game gives us. People haven't really discussed that a whole lot, but we do tend to have to work very, very hard to score our tries. On the opposite side of that, can we maintain that work ethic and commitment in defence when we're quite physically drained?".
Noting that a lot of our attacking moves against Wales started far deeper than usual, Dunne believes that may have been due to Johnny Sexton's early missed from the boot.
"When Johny Sexton missed his first three kicks I think the shackles came off for him a little bit and he thought 'I've got to try and make an impact in this game'. His typical impact is accuracy with the boot, tactical excellence, and guiding the team around the field often with less physical effort than he displayed on Saturday".
"I think the initial couple of kicks that he missed forced him to show his hand a bit more and he ran the ball from deep".
Dunne thinks that Ireland play such a contact heavy attacking game plan, which leads to a lot of incremental gains that suck the energy from the players.
"Typically we tend not to attack from deep, and launch our attacks probably 30 or 40 metres from the opposition try line. Which means there's less space on the field, it's more condensed with defenders, and your modern day choice is you have to run through them".
The former Leinster man claimed that the effort that goes into imposing our physicality in attack could be the reason we've started to conceded sloppy tries, as players are tired mentally and physically.
"We only really got our tries from the attritional stuff, the typical style of our play".
"I think any ball carrying forward would welcome not constantly running into composition. They have to do it, but by choice I'm sure more often than not they's prefer to run into space as opposed to people. It does take it's toll on the body physically, and I think it does have a knock on effect on our defensive work rate too when people are so physically tired".
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