One of the narratives emerging from both Ireland's defeat to Argentina in the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals and the Northern Hemisphere's collective failure at this year's tournament is the differing approaches to rugby in both halves of the globe and whether the North should learn from the south.
Former Ireland head coach Eddie O'Sullivan and Grenoble coach Bernard Jackman were on Off The Ball tonight to analyse Ireland's loss and the fallout and both touched on the issue of evolution.
Eddie believes "our attacking plan has been very successful for us but it's not the most complicated attacking plan", adding that it is based on winning collisions where Argentina prevailed.
Eddie also believes that being able to adjust strategies based on the opposition and cited the All-Blacks as masters of the art.
"It seems to me New Zealand seem to be the best team at it. New Zealand are capable of playing out of three or four different shapes and what's even more scary is they can change shapes during a game which is extremely difficult to do," he said, adding that Northern Hemisphere teams do not tend to change strategies quite as much as it is a "recipe for success" at Six Nations level.
Bernard posed a question looking towards the future.
"The smart teams evolve and they set the level and they push the way forward. That's the challenge for Ireland now. Are we able to still be the best? Are we still able to win Six Nations titles playing the type of rugby we played or are we going to evolve and be the innovators again?"
As for the notion of making drastic changes to rugby in Ireland on the back of yesterday's defeat, Eddie says "he wouldn't get into the root and branch reform" nor uniform tactics for the Irish provinces, pointing towards the success at academy level and feels that it is more a case of looking at "core skills".
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