Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

“Phenomenal opportunity” seems to be overstating things to me, tbh.

And I’m not convinced it’ll have little or no effect on the league; 2nd thru 6th was really close fought and exchanged hands a few times over the final weeks of the season last year. And we know home advantage can count for a lot.

But it’s practically impossible to quantify, so I agree it’ll probably be forgotten about by seasons end. Possibly with one caveat.

This tour is adding additional games to an already stretched calendar, at a time when player welfare is already in the limelight. If there are (m)any significant injuries, I can see this tour receiving criticism after the fact tbh.

It’s two games that will be mildly affected. Probably won’t affect the outcomes. If any of the provinces are that badly affected by missing a McCloskey, Prendergast or a Coombes. Then they are probably not good enough to compete anyway.

Will those games be any less affected than the 2 games in the middle of the 6N? Or the one directly after the 6N. International rugby will always be more important to the unions than the URC. It creates far higher revenue.

I'm not massively against the idea, but it would make more sense to go during the November tests when there are no URC matches (at least there weren't last year). Obviously that would mean sending a completely different coaching and management team which may miss the point of the tour I suppose.

I think we ultimately need to wait and see what happens. If they are selecting a few fringe players and then a bunch of kids while also releasing the front line internationals then there may be little to no impact on the provinces and the league. If that’s the case then it’s no big deal.

If, on the other hand, they take a large group of fringe players and aren’t releasing the internationals then it is a big deal and a terrible move. And there may be degrees in between.

At this point we simply don’t know what this is going to be nor what the impacts are going to be. So we simply can’t call how good, bad or indifferent the tour is.

I actually had Marty Moore in mind with that. He was playing well last season and if he keeps it up then I coould see him benefit from tour, if he travels obvs.

The only way it makes sense IMO, is if the touring party is mostly made up of high potential young players who need game time, but wouldn't be involved for their province anyway.

I'm thinking Jack Boyle, Michael Milne, John McKee, Scott Buckley, Tom Clarkson, Keynan Knox, Izuchuckwu, Edwin Edogbo, Thomas Ahern, Daniel Okeke, Alex Soroka, Alex Kendellan, Matthew Devine, Sam Prendergast, Jack Crowley, Cathal Forde, Jude Postlethwaite, Patrick Campbell etc.

These guys will likely be holding tackle bags in September anyway, so getting them games makes sense. But taking players out of competitive URC games against good opposition, to go play meaningless games against sub-URC level opposition makes literally no sense.

Loughman, Ahern, Treadwell, Kendellan, Crowley, Campbell, Moore, McIlroy all spring to mind. Guys like EOS, Casey or even Doak could go as well without it being the end of the world for the provinces if guys like Warwick, Murray and Cooney were available. I’m sure there’s others that I can’t think of off the top of my head.

But again, how much of this is purely RWC focused?

This is the IRFU source quote when it was announced:

“If you look at the lessons from the World Cup in England and Japan I think the depth was an issue in both,” an IRFU source said. “Andy was happy with how much the players learned in New Zealand, so he wants to extend that to give us the required depth for the World Cup. That’s probably 45 when you take into account injuries before the tournament and then when it’s up and running.”

If we're talking about longer-term promise, I daresay those players would be better off getting gametime against higher calibre opposition, and an interpro.

And maybe I’m reading that wrong, but that reads to me that they want 45 guys capable of going to the RWC. The squad size is 33. That’s where the 12 figure I mentioned came from. If they are looking at guys outside the 33 then 12 or so is the number they are looking at. Now how many of the guys they bring are in contention for that 12 and how many are making up the numbers/longer term investments we can’t tell yet. But the overall point is that it’s probable that not all 30+ players are in contention for that back-up RWC group.

And within that back-up group there may be different things they want to bring on. Maybe they want to develop leadership abilities among some. Maybe they want to identify genuine competition for the RWC squad in others. There’s loads of things that could be going on. Right now it’s impossible to tell what the objectives are and what the impact on anything will be.

There is a lot of me playing devils advocate here, and if it turns out this has a big impact on 1 or more provinces it would want to be a very productive tour to be worthwhile and I’m not sure it would be. I’m open to the idea that this is total BS. But I’m not going to assume it is when I know feck all about it.

I absolutely love your cynicism. Honestly. Never change!

Ah everything is strawmanning on the internet now. Especially talk of trips to butlins.

We’ve had years of people complaining about Ireland making the same mistakes at the World Cup. Try something different and it’s being called either pointless or crapping on the URC.

This can be trying something different, positive for Ireland AND, for want of a better phrase, “crapping on the URC”. It can be all of those things.

I was referring there to posters who keep saying how big an Impact missing McCloskey for 3 games would have on Ulster. Which I think is completely overblown. If they are that reliant on one player, then it doesn’t say much about the state of Ulster rugby. That loosing one player would diminish their value as a team.

If as I believe will be the case, the frontline internationals aren’t available. Leinster could be missing nearly 30 players here. So it will probably affect Leinster to a larger degree than any other province. They will be away to Ulster, which they would probably lose one way or the other and have sent a weakened team for no matter what. Then have the Sharks at home. By that point I would expect the frontline internationals to be available as their pre-season will be completed. Which means if anything a stronger team than we would have otherwise put out.

“In regards to the affect this will have on the URC people forget the likes of Porter to Doris, JGP to Keenan will all still be around”

I don’t think people are forgetting this at all tbh, and is part of the exact point they’re making; that some people are viewing this thru blue tinted specs.