Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

The replacement props have more caps than the entire starting XV.

On a related note, glad to see Moore back in the frame, even in a limited way. Don't know what happened back in the day but he's too good to be out in the cold any longer.

They have the same amount of caps. 58 each, although Stockdale has 35 of that 58.

Doubt he did enough to leapfrog Timoney though.

Unusual choice for the 23 shirt given his lack of versatility

It doesn't seem to be something that's puts Farrell off his selections for the 23 jersey. I think all of Chris Farrell, Henshaw, Hume and Aki have been named in the 23 shirt during his tenure.

(I'd be interested to see a breakdown of his 23 jersey selections tbh, but a material % have been centres).

EDIT:

If Hugo pulls up lame early on, we're going to have quite the rejig (presumably Joey to 15?)

And ya, Joey to 15 is exactly what I would guess would happen to limit the re-jigging as much as possible.

We saw as much in the Sharks game; with Larmour's injury, Leinster could've put Ngatai to FB, JOB to wing and Ringrose to centre, but instead chose to put Ringrose to the wing for a single change.

Had a quick look; he's selected a winger 16 times, a centre 11 times (tho wasn't entirely sure what bucket to put Will Addison in. Maybe the "injured" one at this stage...).

Interesting to see the distrubution more evenly spread for centres than wingers, but that could be down as much to injuries as anything.

Taking out Tier 2 games (Georgia and USA), it's 11:14, so a fairly even spread.

That's a really exciting A team.

Not sure how I fell about these games though, I've often thought in the past that one off A games can do more damage to players than good though. Play well and it's only an A game, play badly in a team that has just come together and you get written off for life.

That said this Irish management group is doing a lot to expand its playing options and is investing a lot of time in Irish teams below the senior side, so the players are getting good opportunities.

Next question is how do I watch this in Northern Ireland? I assume the IRFU haven't signed a TV deal that has excluded fans in Northern Ireland as that would be beyond outrageous if they have. But as I say I doubt they would ever consider doing that.

On the Ireland A as a positive or negative...taken alongside the EI tour I think it's a very positive departure. Ireland's squad depth has been our Achilles heel more often than not. 2 or 3 injuries and we get into trouble at the best of times, and more than that we just can't stay at our level. So developing opportunities for peripheral and younger players to get exposure to training camps and competitive international matches can help expand the pool of viable players.