Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

mun1 wrote: »

I’d go for this starting team on Sunday , which i think have a good chance of beating France if we can match them up front and get good ball to the outside backs. Back 3 Might be a bit dodgy in defence, but worth the risk.

1. Healy
2. Herring
3. Furlong (brilliant when he came on last week)
4. Beirne
5. Ryan
6. Ruddock.
7. VDF
8. Stander
9. Murray
10. Sexton
11. Larmour
12. Henshaw
13. Ringrose
14. Lowe
15. Keenan (find of the season for me).

Don't think Porter did anything to warrant being dropped to the bench. Nor Furlong to be promoted to starting. Nothing against either player. I just think Porter's playing excellent rugby and Furlong could probably use another match to get up to starting fitness.

Must love hardship wrote: »

Based on the current squad Id go...

Kilcoyne
Kelleher
Furlong
Beirne
Henderson /Ryan
Ruddock
VdF
Conan
Murray
Byrne/ Johnny
Larmour
Henshaw
Ringrose
Daly
Keenan

Heffernan
Healy
Porter
Dillane
Conors
Casey
Conway
Farrell

Would have made sense to call up mcgrath the leinster scrumhalf with 2 10's from leinster over 2 scrum halves from munster and no 10.

* my team includes no project players on purpose. While a lot wont agree that's my personal opinion. Great for the club game but not ideal for int game. The single biggest hindrance in us progressing our young players..


If ryan and sexton are out i think farrell will pick

Healy
Herring
Furlong
Beirne
henderson
Ruddock
Vdf
Stander
Murray
Burns
Larmour
Henshaw
Ringrose
Lowe
Keenan

Kelleher
Kilcoyne
Porter
Dillane
Connors
Park
Byrne
Earls

Why Lowe and Larmour on the wrong wings?
I’d assume Lowe will stay on his left wing and Larmour would be on the right.

thomond2006 wrote: »

I shouldn't think so. The Welsh loss can be written off due to the red card and in fairness the team played quite well considering.

I think Farrell will be under pressure however if our only win ends up being over Italy. It would add up a very poor 15 months under him.

This...I've always said I would judge Farrell after this 6Ns. Starting with two defeats would be bad, but I don't think it was the coaches fault that we lost on Sunday. I agree...I thought we actually played well. But 1 win from 5 would lead to searching questions.

The big question that you need to answer before egetting rid of Farrell is who would replace him?

I personally think ROG has a great chance of becoming Ireland coach...and a successful one at that...but I think its a bit early for him...post 2023 might be better

theVersatile wrote: »

I love people blaming Murray's pass to Henderson for the try when it's Ringrose's awful offload attempt off an exit scrum which puts us in that position in the first place. Garry's contribution to the try seemed to be completely disregarded.

Both were equally to blame imo. Henderson was also poor but Murray gave them the ball.
I was replying to people saying Murray played well. I really don't think he did and as my last post his errors contributed to a lot of Wales points. Other than people saying he "controlled the game" which is an excuse for been slow what did he do?
JGP I don't think is our second best 9 but at least he can attack, in his few minutes he nearly got Ringrose in only for a great chase back from Tips.
The 2 best 9s this year are Cooney and McGrath and neither selected in the squad.
For what it's worth I don't think he was the only poor player last weekend. POM obviously, Earl's, Lowe and Ringrose all made to many mistakes.
We hear excuses for not selecting inexperienced young players but it's the undroppables making all the errors....

Former Former Former wrote: »

He tried an offload and the Welsh guy got a hand on it. That's a risk with offloads.

Remember when you hated Joe because he didn't want his players trying offloads in risky positions?

I never held the offloading thing against Joe - he left it to players who were able to do it consistently. You must applaud Ringrose for trying to offload it through a Welsh player though (must have learned that skill from McCloskey) It was completely the wrong decision when we were looking for a strong exit platform - he's far more culpable for the try than either Hendo or Murray. And people say it's Sexton who gets the blind eye turned to him when it comes to mistakes...

phily2002 wrote: »

Both were equally to blame imo. Henderson was also poor but Murray gave them the ball.
I was replying to people saying Murray played well. I really don't think he did and as my last post his errors contributed to a lot of Wales points. Other than people saying he "controlled the game" which is an excuse for been slow what did he do?
JGP I don't think is our second best 9 but at least he can attack, in his few minutes he nearly got Ringrose in only for a great chase back from Tips.
The 2 best 9s this year are Cooney and McGrath and neither selected in the squad.
For what it's worth I don't think he was the only poor player last weekend. POM obviously, Earl's, Lowe and Ringrose all made to many mistakes.
We hear excuses for not selecting inexperienced young players but it's the undroppables making all the errors....

FWIW, I think your point re: his penalties is fair enough. I've made my opinion fairly clear the last while that "running around like a lunatic" is not equal to "good nine play". Controlling the game isn't an excuse for playing slow. It ensures accuracy in his passes over a long sustained period of time - we saw with JGP and Burns what happens when you rush these things. I don't even find him that slow atm, box kicking set ups aside. We can always nit pick individual kicks but if only two out of eleven or thirteen (don't recall the exact figure) box kicks received a negative return - that's a fairly decent day's work IMO.

Former Former Former wrote: »

He tried an offload and the Welsh guy got a hand on it. That's a risk with offloads.

Remember when you hated Joe because he didn't want his players trying offloads in risky positions?

Sexton was absolutely screaming for the ball too. Rightly so, if it goes to hand he was away. Getting into the Welsh half was extremely difficult for us in the second half.

I think the offload attempt was the right call but Garry definitely needed to execute it better. But when we're a man down chasing a game sometimes these plays are worth it.

These swing on a knife edge. We'd still be talking about it 3 years on if Sexton missed that drop in Paris...

aloooof wrote: »

He reacted to a bouncing ball from a wayward offload. That's the reason he was on his knees while passing, with 3 Welsh players around him, ready to turn over.

Henderson gave away a penalty 2 phases later and got back into the line too narrow. The try was scored, what 4 phases after his pass to henderson?

Murray had a mixed day, imo, but blaming him for that try is a real stretch imo.

He was responsible for it as was Ringrose and Henderson(and Sexton should have made to call for Lowe to launch it).
He wasn't fully responsible for the second try but his high tackle gave them a free shot(Lowe terrible here also).
He was responsible for the blocking penalty.
Imagine if this was Casey's debut, we wouldn't be calling it a mixed performance, we'd be saying it was poor because of inexperience and he'd be dropped....

It's not just offloading, we're consistently poor drawing and giving the pass at the right time. Good teams attack like a wave, make a small break and move the ball to a player in a better position. We tend to be too staccato, make a good run, come to a hard stop, start again. It's noticable how rarely we manage to negotiate blindsided overlaps to create scoring opportunities.

Yeah_Right wrote: »

The bit in bold is the key. There are some fans (especially a certain one on here) calling for the coaching ticket to be scrapped but who will replace them? I can't think of any candidates readily available.

They need to replace Catt. I can't identify anything positive that he's brought to the team yet.

With just a little more luck Lancaster would have won at least two Six Nations, he's got a decent record against most international teams and Eddie's initial success was at least partially based on Lancaster's work on the squad. He doesn't suit many of the duties that an international coach has and I think club coaching suits his strengths a lot more, but I think his record presents a bit of a different story to the commonly perceived narrative.

Teferi wrote: »

With just a little more luck Lancaster would have won at least two Six Nations, he's got a decent record against most international teams and Eddie's initial success was at least partially based on Lancaster's work on the squad. He doesn't suit many of the duties that an international coach has and I think club coaching suits his strengths a lot more, but I think his record presents a bit of a different story to the commonly perceived narrative.

just for a bit of fun...who are the options?

Easterby
Lancaster/Cullen
McFarland
Van Graan
McCall
O'Shea
ROG
Lam

Anyone else who would be realistically considered?

As I said a couple of pages ago I reckon ROG will be the man in the next 2-6 years, ie either for the 2027 or 2031 world cups.

Lancaster is an interesting one. He was the fall guy for England in 2015, but we can look at it objectively in Ireland and most reasonable people would say...yes he made mistakes, but there were other issues at play, particularly around Sam Burgess. He is older and wiser and now knows the Irish system inside out. If there was an opening and he made himself available I think he would be a no brainer. However there is no indication he'd want the job...never mind there being a vacancy.

Personally I think there is a lot still to be written in the Andy Farrell story so its just bit of fun to discuss this at the moment. It might be more serious in about 6 weeks time though