Ireland Team Talk/Gossip/Rumour Thread

CatFromHue wrote: »

Ross and D'arcy could have switched with Court and McFadden and been put on the bench. Similarly with POM and Ferris/SOB.

thomond2006 wrote: »

**** Ireland, the players are gonna be flogged come the HEC quarters.

jacothelad wrote: »

Current IRB Standings.

IRELAND / SCOTLAND
80.3 / 74.94

Home Win - 15
80.46 / 74.776

Home win. 15+
80.546 / 74.694

DRAW
79.464 / 75.776

AWAY WIN - 15
78.464 / 75.776

AWAY WIN +15
77.546 / 77.694

We could drop out of the top 8

desertcircus wrote: »

I honestly don't get this. Assuming that the average pro's Test career is eight years (which is probably optimistic), you're looking at pulling through a full squad of thirty over that time frame. Add two just in case, and we arrive at a need to produce 32 Test internationals - not 32 players who happen to have won a couple of caps - every eight years, or four new long-term picks every year. Of course, there's World Cup years, and the following year is ranking-points year, so those are crucially important and blooding players has to take a backseat. Let's say we blood two major new Test players in each of those years. In an eight-year cycle, that means the two off-years are your chance to produce serious contenders for the jersey. You need six new major players in each of these years; players you've tested in the right circumstances, not just players you've thrown in because of injury. In Ireland's case, this means that we need to produce twelve players between 2013 and 2014; to do that, we'll need to give at least sixteen players a serious chance to prove themselves (what that means is at least three games, picked to give them a chance; there's no point in giving a promising 22-year-old thirteen a starting cap against New Zealand) in those two years. I can't emphasise how important this is; it's the difference between being able to cope with an injury and having more or less no idea what's going to happen in the event of one. It's the difference between a succession plan and a total panic.

Paul O'Connell is out for the rest of the Six Nations, and we honestly have no idea who'll perform best in a green jersey out of Dan Tuohy, Mike McCarthy, Devin Toner and Ryan Caldwell, because we've made virtually zero effort to give those players a chance to show what they can do. We don't know whether to select Peter O'Mahony or Chris Henry, because the management team might never have even bothered playing Sean O'Brien if it hadn't been for an injury crisis. Both Conor Murray and Eoin Reddan got their serious shots at the number nine jersey only once their predecessor had imploded spectacularly, at which point they were handed their first real chance at the biggest competition in the world. Brian O'Driscoll is out and Gordon Darcy is in poor form and we have absolutely no idea what to do about the midfield because the management have quite literally never planned for it. It's a shocking, abysmal failure to look past the next game, and as long as it remains the same we'll shoot no higher than a few Triple Crowns and a Six Nations title once every few decades. We might as well forget the World Cup completely.

By the end of 2014, the Ireland management need to know how Sherry, Strauss, Hagan, Toner, McCarthy, Tuohy, Ruddock, Ryan, Henry, Marshall, Madigan, O'Malley, McFadden, Spence, Cave, Gilroy, Kearney Jr, Zebo and Jones are likely to do in an Ireland jersey at the deep end. We should be looking into the Six Nations 2015 knowing EXACTLY what those players' strengths and weaknesses are at Test level, who they need to be partnered with if they're still wet behind the ears, and what kind of gameplan they're best suited to.

In reality, of the nineteen players named above, I'll be genuinely astonished if half of them get five games in those two years without getting their chance due to injury to the established first (and probably second) choices.