Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Henderson in for Ryan? Not in this universe.

Henderson in for O'Mahony for me. Who they start in the row becomes an interesting question then, but Doris is the 6 and that's a settled question.

Herring in for Sheehan too to close out the set pieces with his dead-eye darts and experience.

Very hard to see any change in 9 to 15 or 21-23 either.

There was a slip in cohesion slightly when the bench arrived on today but that squad will drill away all next week and hopefully wring out some of that.

Very exciting fixture to come next week now.

I was hoping to see something from Carbery when he came on. But he was poor in his 20 minute cameo. Just looks like he doesn't know what he wants to do on the ball.

He hasn't performed well for Munster and I think we're going to have to look elsewhere with Ireland.

Yeah, the difference between him and Sexton was night and day.

To be fair given the way the previous 55 mins went he probably felt like he had to force it a bit. We will get a better idea of where he is if he starts the Argentina match.

Wow....just wow.

Farrell's questionable selections all fully vindicated. Credit where credit's due. If this is what he's been building towards and we see more of the same, I'll gladly take the last 2 years on the chin.

Most enjoyable performance I've seen from an Ireland team...possibly ever?

I'm absolutely delighted.

Hard to see any changes for next week, unless they were pre ordained before today. I think Henderson was the only FINISHER who really pressed his case.

VdF's handling was brilliant, always in the right place as a link. He didn't have to make his usual mountain of tackles because Japan didn't have the ball. I thought he played very well

I'd absolutely be starting VdF. Besides, who else would start at 7? Timoney? Please don't say POM. VdF is one of the easiest selections for next week imo.

No way VDF is dropped. He's streets ahead of the other options at 7 in the squad. Suggesting dropping him is madness. His engine, work rate, defence and carrying are top notch.

Doris may be at risk if they want to add some size with Hendy against NZ's pack which will be bigger than Japan's.

Lowe was class today but starting him v NZ is a massive risk. Zebo or Larmour are more reliable defensively.

If they are then the all blacks will have to be the partially black and whites something in sure Guinness would love to be associated with.

3/10, you could do better

One thing we can say right now is that we have no clue how next week is going to really go. We’ve come on a good bit since the 6Ns, but then the opposition hasn’t been very good. So what does any of these improvements mean for next week? Who the hell knows. We definitely aren’t favourites, but I don’t think we know just how close we are or are not. But sure we need to find out so it’s as well we do that next week than in the 6Ns or in 2023!

Ireland is funny because there's genuinely a large proportion of the population who hate the Irish rugby team and actively hope they lose.

Nobody is just indifferent. You either actively want Ireland to win or to lose, there's no middle ground

I don’t think anyone thinks that it will. But a good performance might. As others have been at pains to point out, the results of these games don’t really matter. Let’s see how we stack up against the best and how far we need to go over the next 2 years.

I’d rather people take the positives and be happy about stuff tbh. There’s more than enough whinging and misery around the place as it is.

Ultimately we saw a lot of the things I wanted to see. More variety in our attack being the biggest thing. I’d be concerned about some of the performances off the bench, but overall it’s signs of us moving in the right direction. I don’t think we’re at the end of that journey by any means. But for now at least I’m happy enough with what I’ve seen.

Next week is going to be interesting for a few reasons. We’ve seen Leinster look to adopt a similar style so far this season, but haven’t come up against top class opposition so far. So exactly how this game will translate against quality opposition still remains to be seen. This will be the first time we really get to see that and it will inform where both Leinster and Ireland can expect to be over the next year or so at least.

We’ll obviously not get anywhere near the platform we got today and will need to tweak our approach accordingly, but we can still show a lot of the same fundamentals in doing that. If we can give ourselves a platform worth a damn it could be a very entertaining game.