"Economic crisis forces Lions to expel, tour Ireland"

Neil3030

Ok, so that would be the satirical headline, if the Onion gave two sh*ts about rugby. But it's incredible to think that Irish rugby, both at a provincial and International level, has developed to a position where we could, at least in theory, sustain a Lions tour.

Barbarians aside, The Lions will play 9 matches Down Under, during the present sojourn - 3 tests against Qantas Wallabies Inc., 5 against various Super 15 teams and then 1 against the combined efforts of New South Wales and Queensland. As an island, we could offer 9 damn competitive games; 3 tests against the national side, a test against each province and 2 tests against North/West, East/South or some other combination of dual-provincial efforts (though I would very much maintain Ulacht and Lunster ftw).

Though the Lions would be significantly weakened by not having Irish players - most notably test starters like Sexton, POC etc - the key issue would obviously be the depth of the Irish playing pool; once the provinces are stripped of their international contingent, would they have the man power to take on the Lions' second-ish string? Certainly there would be zero room for injuries.

But I'd say at least plausible, especially if players on the fringe of the International team could bolster their provincial ranks. For starters, Connacht would pretty much be at full strength, depending on whether Schmidt fancies Henshaw. Ulster would have their Springboks, Leinster would have Nacewa (Under the International System of Units, 1 Nacewa = 4.16 South Africans). And regardless of what 15 men line-out for Munster, magical magical things happen in Thomand Park against International opposition.

Anyway, I'm not actually calling for this to ever happen, in fact, I'm not sure what this post was supposed to achieve. On the one hand, it's simply a joyous affirmation of how far Irish rugby has come, and maybe on the other, I suppose it's a call for debate on whether the idea is indeed practical, if perhaps a tad unglamorous for travelling supporters.

jamiedav2011

Nice thought, perhaps a game against the 4 provinces, an invitational 'Exiles' team and a club team like the one that plays England during the 6N?

Possible Leinster team would be something like:

McGrath, Cronin, Bent, Toner, Cullen, Locky, Jenno, Murphy, Boss, Gopperth, Fitz, Goodman, O'Malley, DK, Kirchner

Maybe Munster something like the following perhaps?
Kilcoyne, Sherry, Botha, Holland, DOC, Stander, TOD, Coughlan, Sheridan, Keatley, Conway, Downey, LLL, LOD, Jones

Nice pie in the sky post!

LeeroyJones

Interesting idea. Got me thinking.
What I'd like to see happen is an Irish Barabarians side like the French Barbarians. A team made up from the 4 Provinces minus players selected for Ireland for an upcoming Summer Tour. A year like this with a Lions tour, Ireland tour, Emerging Ireland and a JWC all at once is a bit much but on other years it could be an enjoyable warm-up for a Summer tour.
If I was to imagine this summer not being a Lions year or Emerging Ireland year(such a thing?!) a potential XV could be

1. McGrath
2. Cronin (on the assumption Best Strauss and Sherry would be w/Ireland)
3. Afoa
4. Cullen
5. Muller
6. Muldoon
7. Jennings
8. Williams

9. Pienaar
10. Parks
11. Carr
12. McSharry
13. Laulala
14. Howlett (also imagining that he's fit!)
15. Nacewa

locum-motion

LeeroyJones wrote: »

...
2. Cronin (on the assumption Best Strauss and Sherry would be w/Ireland)
...

Yeah, because that's the usual order, allright!

tolosenc

Neil3030 wrote: »

Leinster would have Nacewa

I hate to be the one to break this to you...

trouttrout

locum-motion wrote: »

Yeah, because that's the usual order, allright!

Seems to be at the moment, Sherry was ahead of Cronin in the Irish squad

CIARAN_BOYLE

trouttrout wrote: »

Seems to be at the moment, Sherry was ahead of Cronin in the Irish squad

We'll see come the AIs and the 6nations. Nothing can be read into the current situation.

CatFromHue

Four teams isn't enough, Australia are struggling and they've 5!

Ruck Inspector

we barely produce enough players for four teams and despite connachts progress they are still a good bit away from being a top side..

LeeroyJones

locum-motion wrote: »

Yeah, because that's the usual order, allright!

Just the player that popped into my head when naming a purely hypothetical XV, don't read too much into it

Beery Eyed

Ruck Inspector wrote: »

we barely produce enough players for four teams and despite connachts progress they are still a good bit away from being a top side..

Well, that's just not true. If anything it's my opinion that the opposite has been the case in the last few years. By this I mean that each year there are now several very highly regarded prospects who cannot find a place in an academy/sub-academy, and instead are left to look abroad, or play at AIL level & try to break through from there, which is always extremely difficult.

As was mentioned in the OP, the fact that our top players are away with the Lions, and we can still name two full squads for North America & Georgia, is something that we would never have been able to do in the past and it shows how much more depth there is in the game now.

Not only that, but many people who I've spoken to are under the impression that we must have been really "scraping the bottom of the barrel", as it were, to come up with the numbers for these tours. Nonsense! In fact there are also a bunch of other quality players who aren't included in either of the squads. Some have missed out through injury, whereas some were simply not selected.

The likes of Gordon Darcy, Luke Fitzgerald, Stephen Ferris, Keith Earls & Eoin Reddan & Donnacha O'Callaghan are all Lions standard players that were unavailable or not selected. Likewise, Luke Marshall, Stephen Archer, Dave McSharry, James Coughlan, Gavin Duffy, Roger Wilson, Robbie Diack & Denis Buckley have all been knocking on the door for international squads & were forced/left out. Then you have the likes of Paddy Butler, Dave O'Callaghan, JJ Hanrahan, Ben Marshall, Mick Kearney, Andrew Browne and others who are promising players but there was no space in the squads for them. There are also some guys playing abroad who have impressed this year & some older guys who have been left out to make room for younger players.

Basically, this idea that we are just scraping by for players to fill the four provinces is simply not true any more in my opinion. We have four highly competitive and successful teams with strong turnover coming through from their academies. The success of Leinster, Munster & Ulster in Europe shows that. While Connacht have been well able to hold their own so far at the top level and are continually improving.

Ruck Inspector

We have more depth than ever before but we still struggle at various positions to develop a lot of high level options.

Realistically we don't have a top class irish 8 at any province other than Leinster, Wilson and Coughlan are pretty good players but are not top level. Butler and McKeon are similarly talented but might have the potential to improve. Neither have shown to be of HEC level starters on contenders to date.

Jordi Murphy has emerged as a potential player top class but he has yet to prove it.

Couple more potential guys in the academies(Conan, O'Donoghue)

TH prop, you quite write an essay on.
Second Row, quite weak aswell.

Some positions we have vastly improved our options, Outhalf being one. Scrumhalf, is still quite bare below Murray. Centre aswell of course, but it appears inside centre options are beginning to emerge, not so much on the outside yet.

We are in no way ready for a 5th team, an argument could be made that we could do with a development team but even that is a stretch.