Don't think there's any real basis to think that this Irish teams age profile is fine either. There is not another side in the top 10 of the world rankings that is picking 3 no. 34+ year olds in its starting XV. With a 32 year old halfback whos best days are 4 years behind him.
France was an example of side that has been moving in the opposite direction to Ireland for 3 years. They aren't The Messiahs (yet) but Ireland are the very naughty boys. Jaysus...even "Dorce" is now writing about it in the IT.
If there were better players who were younger then they’d get those spots. There aren’t. That’s the problem. Our selection policy isn’t where the issue is.
Every country in the world goes through peaks and troughs in terms of talent development. Even the biggest. Just look at England and France. The two biggest and best resourced countries in world rugby. Not even they are immune to it. We aren’t either.
I think a lot of people just seem very entitled tbh. There’s some sort of expectation that there are always going to be top class players there to slot in when the incumbent gets towards the end of their career. But that’s not always going to be the case. And we’re seeing that now. That’s not a failure that someone needs to be blamed for, even though that seems to be the go to response. It’s just the way these things go.
Right now Ireland has better and more consistent depth than ever before. We can probably operate at a consistent level even with a few injuries. And we have some very good players. But by and large our players are simply good. We don’t have many average or poor players but then at the same time we don’t have many top level players either.
So as I said before, staying in the top half of the 6Ns and keeping our ranking about where it is would actually be a real positive. Because very few other countries have been able to do that during their troughs. And if we as supporters have realistic expectations of the team we can find those kinds of positives far easier.
Staying in the top half of the 6N is no achievement at all when you consider that Scotland and Italy are pretty much dross. Finishing better than one of Wales / England / France is absolutely nothing to write home about, that's a very low bar to set.
Ireland have come a long way from celebrating mid table finishes and triple crowns and we should not be lowering expectations or celebrating mediocre results just to try and find something to be positive about.
I'm quite optimistic about the future. We have some weak points in the squad, with ten being the main concern but overall this is the best squad we've had in a long time IMO.
It's a professional business, you either perform or you get fired. I'm sure he'd be able to console himself on the very large salary he's receiving.
This would be a reasonable guess at our starting 15. Earls or POM could come into it but it’s very hard to be sure with the back 3. There are 5 players over the age of 28. 7 players 25 or under. The notion of and aging team just doesn’t match up to the reality of the squad.
Andrew Porter 25
Ronan Kelleher 23
Tadgh Furlong 28
James Ryan 25
Iain Henderson 29
Josh VDF 28
Jack Conan 29
Caelan Doris/ Gavin Coombes 23
Conor Murray 32
Johhny Sexton 36
Bundi Aki 31
Garry Ringrose 26
Jacob Stockdale 25
Hugo Keenan 25
Robert Balacoune 24
Jesus buddy be careful
It's that type of optimism that'll spark ANOTHER 30 pages of how people think this is the worst situation we have ever had at 10 since 1875...
with the obvious number 10 issue, the age profile of our squad looks good there. A very good mix of youth and experience.
Porter at LH Stephen? I also hope Baloucoune is going to be starting instead of Earls. But why pick Earls and Healy in the squad?
Im sorry but I don't see your analysis as an effective oversight. You cannot exclude the heartbeat of the side -The Halfbacks- which also happens to include the captain!
"Porter at LH Stephen?". Correct. All 3 of Porter's start this season have come at loosehead. If it means we can get both Porter and Furlong on the pitch at the same time, there's huge upside to that.
Personally I wouldn't be surprised if Sexton, Healy, Earls and POM are only wheeled out for the NZ game.
We should be able to rotate a bit and still beat Argentina and Japan at home and at the end of their season. And if we aren't, there's a problem.
Doris, Coombes, Carbery, Larmour, Baloucoune can 100% be afforded opportunities in those 2 games.
Good God! I saw Porter started a game a LH but i didnt realise it's 3 games! This sounds like its done and dusted!! That is a massive mistake. I presume its driven by Farrell and IRFU giving the green light to Alaalatoa?
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I presume Alaalatoa was greenlighted BECAUSE Porter was moved to loose head, not vice versa.
Oldest 23 possible from the squad, still not too bad.
Healy 34, Herring 31, Bealham 30,
Beirne 29, Henderson 29,
O'Mahony 32, Conan 29, Van der Flier 28,
Murray 32, Sexton 36,
Earls 34, McCloskey 29, Aki 31, Conway 30,
Zebo 31.
Kelleher 23, Kilcoyne 32, Furlong 28, Dillane 27, Timoney 26, Gibson-Park 29, Carbery 26, Lowe 29.
It’s not about celebrating mid table finishes. Finishing in the top half means anywhere from 1st to 3rd, not simply finishing 3rd all the time.
Its also worth noting that England, France and Wales have all had multiple bottom half of the table finishes over the last decade. If we can avoid that then we could realistically be the only team that does. It’s not something to celebrate at the end of a specific tournament, but it is still a positive nonetheless in a wider sense.
We don’t have some divine right to be a top team all of the time in the same way that no other team does. But recognising that doesn’t mean that I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to find something to be positive about. It just means I’m being realistic and am capable of seeing positives even if things aren’t all rosy. Very rarely are things either all good or all bad after all.
Stockdale isn't in the squad at all so definitely won't be in the 15. It'll be Simon Zebo on the left wing most likely (31).
He didn’t exclude them though?????????
Yes. Thats the way id see it. Although i thought he was coming in to replace Bent at the time. Bizarre
So we could have Finlay Bealham as the replacement TH v NZ?
Yes we've never been really terrible in this time period.
We don't have a divine right to be a top team all the time but we are comfortably the 3rd best resourced team in the northern hemisphere. If Ireland finished 3rd then that's like a golfer finishing on par. It's "met expectations" in business speak. It's probably the definition of average.
Out of interest, I checked how Farrell compares vs his peers and their predecessors also. In terms of new caps per game, he’s ahead of everyone bar Galthie.
Andy Farrell - 22 new caps in 16 games
Ian Foster - 14 new caps in 17 games
Steve Hansen - 22 new caps took 29 games
Eddie Jones - 22 new caps took 20 games
Stuart Lancaster - 22 new caps took 18 games
Galthie - 27 new caps in 15 games
Brunel - 22 new caps took 17 games
Pivac - 18 new caps in 15 games
Townsend - 22 new caps in 18 games
Dave Rennie - 17 new caps in 17 games
(I’ll check Gatland later, but would be surprised to see different).
I get the feeling that Earls, Healy and Sexton won't be there this time next season, so I'm assuming they are there to pass the torch to the next generation. They can offer a lot in terms of experience, respect, maturity and professionalism to the newer players to the squad. I can only imagine that the younger players would enjoy their company in the squad.
O'Mahony, Murray, Zebo, Aki, Bealham and Conway the only others 30 and over, none of them I'd consider too old to make it to the next World Cup given their ages and their playing positions. Whether they'll be in peak condition by then or good enough to fill out the wider squad remains to be seen.
In the meantime, we've two 6 Nations to try to win before then.
And yet it is still better than everyone else objectively speaking. Haven’t England finished 5th twice now under Eddie Jones? France have a number of 4th place finishes. By the resources logic we should always finish behind them. We don’t and haven’t. Also by the resources logic, they should never have finished so far down the table. Yet they have.
The post above is almost the definition of entitled. You are very blasé, almost dismissive about Ireland finishing about where they should and will really only be happy if we over-perform. In sport more than anywhere that’s a recipe for frustration.
If we finished 3rd in the next 3 6Ns running I wouldn’t deem it a success. But I also wouldn’t deem it a disaster. And it would mean a decade in the top half of the table, which no other team will have managed. I won’t be celebrating that, but I will recognise it as a positive. Because it would be.
Billy Burns doesnt count as a new cap.......sorry im a bad man!
You forgot Dave Rennie. In his 4th game he fielded his 8th and 9th Test debutants. All against NZ
Ireland will be wheeling out Sexton v NZ for his ceremonial 100th cap. Wasted opportunity
What’s the fascination with taking teams who have been hugely underperforming for prolonged periods and using them as a bench mark for stuff? Aussie rugby has been in the toilet for years. And let’s not forget that Rennie also brought 33 year old Cooper back because, wait for it, the 21 year old he had initially backed wasn’t up to it.
It's not entitled, we're not going to win it every year.
But I'm not going to take any solace from a "well at least we aren't really crap" or "a decade in the top half" message because it's fairly meaningless. The fact that England or France have had 4/5 place finishes is of absolutely no consequence to me.
Dave Rennie - 17 new caps in 17 games. Will add this above for completeness, but again Farrell’s stats look favourable.
Interestingly James Slipper earned his 100th cap during the Rugby Championship that year. So holding Australia up as a paragon either doesn’t seem to tally.
A top half of the table finish without a trophy is as meaningful or meaningless as a RWC semi final without a trophy.
Finishing on par with where we should be shouldnt require solace. Solace should only be required if we finish lower than we should. The fact that you’d need solace for an on par performance is in itself entitled. You feel like we should be doing better than we should be doing. That we should get more than we objectively deserve. How is that not entitled?
So it’s better to wheel out a very clearly inferior player, against arguably the best team in the world? For the sake of what, experience?
That first sentence is completely wrong. Surely you can see that there is no equivocation between 3rd place in the 6N and getting to the last 4 of the World Cup? One is significantly more difficult to do than the other.
Whatever coach of ours eventually breaks the glass ceiling and gets us to a WC semi final will have achieved something that every single coach before him has failed to achieve.
Getting to a WC semi final would be a greater achievement for Irish Rugby than winning a Grand Slam. It's much more difficult.
you were doing ok until that last line.....
