Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

I guess you missed his block down that led to the try which won the match. Do you follow rugby?

The 46 players that were in camp (37 initial squad plus 9 called up) will surely be largely the 45.

The two players I think could miss out due to shortage of playing time would probably be Scott Penny and either Carbery or Frawley.

I could also see Timoney losing out to Hodnett.

On current form Shane Daly has to be in there as well, I don't know whether that would mean dropping Larmour or Earls.

There's a case for Kleyn over Treadwell also.

Archer is playing better than Salanoa also.

I'd have Loughman ahead of Kilcoyne and Milne too.

Deegan and Prendergast score significantly fewer tries than Coombes

Using the very blunt instrument of Tries per minutes played in their career,

Coombes 1 try per 126 mins (and this is wiith him playing significant amounts of minutes this year in the 2nd row, the position least likely to score tries)

Deegan 1 try per 164 mins

Prendergast 1 try every 609 minutes

Penny plays a different role to Coombes, They're not in competition with each other for a spot

Having a player like Coombes means it causes compressions in defense. He needs to be watched by 3 forwards which creates space elsewhere

Conan at 8 doesn't do this, he tends to score his tries on the edges where he can overpower wingers or full backs

Coombes allows space for other players to attack because he is such a ball carrying threat

He also has an excellent passing handling and can pop balls out once he's committed defenders.

Coombes isn't loved by Munster just because of what he does, but because of what he allows other players to do around him.

Its the same with Will Skelton. Even when he doesn't have the ball, he forces the opposition to focus on him and that creates opportunities elsewhere.

Munster have improved this year for 3 main reasons.

1. Our conditioning has improved a lot.

2 Our tactics have changed to pass the ball a lot more and keep the ball alive

3 We have multiple ball carrying threats in the 2nd row and Back Back row. Having one ball carrier is no good because they get taken out at rucks and suddenly you're forced to go wide or kick because all your big players are getting back to their feet. The benefit of having 2 big 2nd Rows alongside Coombes at 8 and the likes of Fineen Wycherly at 6 means we have 4 huge mobile players on the pitch at once who can all carry the ball and offload.

(Leinster have tried this too, playing Baird at 6 for essentially a 3 lock pack)

Having better conditioning allows us to play more phase play and that creates gaps and opens up opportunities to attack. Munster have scored the most tries from 10+ phases of any team in the URC. Compare this with leinster who score a lot off 1st or 2nd phase because they kick the ball a lot and attack on the transition.

I think Ireland were lucky to win that grand slam this year. France bottled that game tactically. They played directly into our hands and I don't think they'll do that again. (In the Final of the Champions cup, LAR started the game using the wrong tactics of kicking the ball out of play and giving Leinster the set piece, when they stopped doing that mid way through the 1st half, they began dominating the game)