Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

He had a very good game against Wales in the GS winning season. Made it over the gainline with his carries and was used as a good passing option. Then he did his cruciate in training the following week.

Never played as well for Ireland after that.

The thread has gone so mad that you’d nearly think the 6 nations had already started!

Bonkers stuff

As of today Johnny Sexton will be remembered as a very good player but a player who never really did it at the elite level.

at the world cup , 2011 a bench warmer, 2015 injured and 2019 a real stinker.

The world cup this year is his last chance at redemption , hope he gets it

Interesting. How many other World Rugby Players of the Year haven’t really done it at the elite level?

Harry Byrne did not step up tonight

he did the opposite imo

He might be a good 10 in the future, but not now

Conan was pretty rubbish until the opposition were spent.

he gave away loads of penalties and made lots of poor decisions.

The reported depth from Leinster was not that impressive against a poor welsh team

Ospreys had 28 scrum penalties won before this contest. How many do the provinces have? They'd have murdered all of the provinces scrum.

Harry Byrne was very poor. Healy was very poor and Osborne had a shocker. Leinster were poor overall. But, still managed to win.

Loughman is the biggest winner from tonites match.

Conan was poor in stages! But, he pulled his jocks up and delivered.

Leinster were poor. Akrasia is right! But still, they won.

Conan was sublime in the last quarter. He's got speed and power. Which was very evident. He put to Ospreys and made hay.

As I stated earlier, Ospreys are leading the league in scrum penalties. Fat load of good it does for them! They are probably going to be on the bubble. For a side that provides a large amount of international players, they are shockingly disappointing. They had Leinster on the ropes and couldn't finish the job. Leinster have a good 10 minutes or so and win.

That scrum would demolish any province scrum. Ireland are not getting it right as far as scrummaging goes. I'd guess that Scott Wilson at Ulster is our best bet at tight head at the moment. Munster have produced none, Leinster also and Connacht are using Illo, who went right into the pro set up. In Leinster defense, Aungier left, as did Salanoa and Illo took a guaranteed contract.

The union should be looking to get better scrumm coaches. It's disappointing to watch our sides struggle against the top teams.

Never seen a run of posts quite like this.

Remarkable.

Yet when Coombes came up to international level, he stunk the place out so badly, they had to fumigate the RDS after.

Sure he did

Conan has been nowhere near his Lions standard for the last 2 seasons, maybe yesterday was the catalyst to get back there, as it is he's not the form player.

Agreed, but he has had chances with Ireland since those games and (apparently) not taken them.

So he's back to square one to some extent. I would expect him to be named in the 6N squad but he'll only get ahead of Conan and whoever else based on what he does in camp.

My point is that talking about "form" is a bit pointless when most of the games the provinces play are light years from test level.