Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

After reading the intro I was expecting some sort of magical prediction. Any dog on the street can't see past France and SA. France because they are at home and seem to have gone past the imploding French teams. SA because they have a simple but affective game plan.

Is his view based on the WC alone or based on all games played in competitions over the last 10 years?

If in the WC alone then Argentina would not be a comparison I would make. Argentina have consistently over performed while Ireland have consistently underperformed. Ireland would probably be more of a Scotland.

If taking in all games then not sure how you could say they can't string performance together. They have won 2 Grand Slams in the last few years which requires 5 top performance to win. A series win in NZ which the list is tiny of teams who have achieved. To compare to Argentina who have won nothing is incorrect again.

Also a "student of the game" would realise that the issues Ireland have wasn't just down to mental weakness. Take 2015 for instance, this is the New Zealand team. Now take the following players out of it like Ireland had and see how they would get on

Gone: Nonu, A. Smith, Kaino, McCaw, Retallick

New Zealand: B Smith, Milner-Skudder, C Smith, Nonu, Savea, Carter, A. Smith, Crockett, Coles, O Franks, Retallick, Whitelock, Kaino, McCaw, Read.

Now I think that was the players Ireland missed for the game. NZ was good but remove those players out and its a totally different game

They are totally overrated from the last RWC. Yes they were good of course, all RWC winners are, but I would confidently say they are the weakest RWC winning side ever that had a pretty forgiving path to the RWC final and were average for most of the RWC but to their credit when it mattered most they turned up. I don't think they will be handled comfortably though as they will be better once their Japan based players get up to speed but I feel if they play like they did in the last RWC they wont win this one and will be lucky to get past the QF's as the draw this time is far less forgiving.

They also have a very old team (their starting XV that played NZL 13 of the 15 players will be 30 or over by the end of the year) and Im not so sure particularly the style they play that they will be able to go 4-5 big games in a row and win a RWC on this occasion.

Incorrect they play the 3rd, 4th & 8th best teams on the planet. If it was down to having a domestic league then why were there dramatic improvements when Jaguares where introduced? If anything they went backwards. There is no green tinted glasses, what you are seeing here from this "expert" is a very poor observation of where rugby is nowadays. If you meet him again make sure to remind him that there is actually rugby played between WC's. Let me take a wild guess, he's from the Southern Hemisphere but declared for USA?

I dont really see how Argentina's record means much when it comes to consistency considering they've only played twice in 20 years on neutral grounds. Not a single player in this French side has been to a semi or a final. You are clutching at straw's.

And incredible team that is still behind Ireland as we saw in the 6N and in the latest world rankings, almost every argument he made against Ireland winning can also be attributed to France but as usual just like the media some fans or experts are very selective when they consider facts, the main area France are clearly ahead is having the media spotlight on them who will stop at nothing to keep this narrative of France winning their home World Cup on track and I feel for any side that knocks them out as they will have hit piece after hit piece written about in revenge.

Do a quick count, how many of the current French side played in those finals or semi finals (ill give you a hint, its the same number as Ireland). And again desperately hanging onto history, certain fans have really just lost their mind at this stage.

I don't really think it is, its something I thought about at the beginning of the cycle and now I feel I'm being vindicated. But conversely that's why I think people backing SA are really clutching at straws. Yes they have but crucially they arent the best team in the world now and haven't been for the whole RWC cycle. History matters yes but certain fans and experts are putting far too much weight on the importance of history. The reality is the majority of what will determine who will win the RWC is the work that has been done over this 4 year cycle and recent form, thinking you can ignore all that and back a team just because of history is naive to put it mildly. Going into this RWC the best 2 teams in the world based on the last 4 years are undoubtedly Ireland & France which is reflected in the world rankings.

Because they had an extraordinarily bad head coach for the first half of the cycle which was a mitigating factor in assessing their 2019 cycle, in the 2nd half of the cycle they managed to win a Rugby Championship. This cycle they had the same coaching staff throughout so there isn't the same factors involved.

They are related, the issue here is applying too much weight to history and its effects. People keeping banging this drum with France in the last 2 WC's despite how poor they were playing and the RWC showed that the most important factor in assessing how a team will do at a RWC is their form both currently and over 4 years.

It's quite clear that this is a different Irish side to previous one's both in how they play and how they are psychologically which were all red flags with the last few sides. One thing I see online is a lot of people trying to criticise this team based on either A. Ireland in 2019 and B. Leinster in the Champions cup this year and while there is some truth to A. (I think using Leinster as any indication on how Ireland go is utter nonsense and I still can't believe some people try to use it as any evidence) what I think both these points prove is that even the Ireland detractors have accepted that there aren't many, if any, flaws in the current side that they have to resort to digging through their archive or even more desperately use a club side as evidence. The best as well is during the 6N thanks to the injury crisis so many players got a look in, we got to see further evidence of how strong mentally they are and that the team can still get even better which they will need to be in order to win the tournament.

I genuinely have no doubt if we go out in this RWC it wont be because we bottled it, we'll go out because of how utterly ridiculous our side of the draw is as in reality we could play at our best and still lose as anyone out of Ireland, France, NZL, SA could beat the other on any given day and you still have SCO who cant be discounted either.

SA didn't go into the last WC as "no hopers" and I don't know anyone who would have said that. They had just won the Rugby Championship and bang in form.

Very few and with Joe finger prints all over the team the NZ public are quietly confident