Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

I doubt it tbh. Ultimately Coombes was in the squad while Deegan was not.

If you've actually convinced yourself of this to help ease the pain of Coombes' omission, that's actually quite funny

We have known for some time that Prendergast was ahead of Coombes in the pecking order. But I reckon Prendergast is being played at 8 this weekend to give him an opportunity to really convince the coaches that he genuinely offers 3-tool backrow cover. This was never to compare him to Coombes, it's probably more with a view to deciding between him and either Baird or McCarthy.

Edit: And the more I think about it, the more I reckon it's Prendergast vs McCarthy....

Maybe Faz thinks Prendergast is the better player!

Prendergast deserves his chance on Saturday . Looking like a 19-14 split in the WC squad at this stage with Baird, prendergast, McCarthy travelling with the usual suspects.

hopefully a win but absolutely no injuries please.

I personally think Coombes won’t even be starting for Munster in 2 or 3 years time, Gleeson and Quinn will be coming through at 8 and 6 most likely with Hodnett and Kendellen fighting it out at 7. Coombes is world class 5 meters out but not much after that. Really looking forward to the potential battle between Gleeson and Doris, that could be spectacular.

Well I greatly look forward to the back-to-back-to-back Heineken Cups that will be won by a Munster side that's so good Gavin Coombes can't get into it!

Strong disagree, tbh. He's put in excellent performances in Europe for maybe 3 seasons now. This season in particular, he was exceptional, especially in the group stages vs Northampton and Toulouse. His stats were off the charts.

Stats don’t tell a full picture, stockdales stats against Italy were pretty impressive if I remember correctly

Stockdale's metres gained stat was impressive, but I'm not certain the rest were. It was very much a mixed bag.

Whereas Coombes was putting in performances that delivered impressive stats across the board. I've posted this before, but this was his average from the group stages this year:

They're huge numbers by anyone's standard. And plenty of his performance passed the eye-test as well as delivering impressive stats.

But I didn't mention bias in my post. In any case...

Out of interest, what was Scott Penny stats last season?

Comparing like for like, in the Champions cup, Penny only played 94 minutes over 3 games. But normailising that to 80 mins for each peformance (which Coombes did, so again to compare like-with-like), he averaged the following:

10.2 carries per game, 29.8 metres, 6.8 tackles, 0 turnovers, and no tries.

Some of those are admittedly higher-variance stats than others, but he isn't ahead of Coombes in a single metric. From the stats I've used, on average, Coombes is averaging:

• 4.5 more carries
• 21.5 more metres
• 10.2 more tackles
• 1.3 more turnovers
• 1 more try

Per game.

Was talking to someone close to Munster set up last year, don’t remember exactly what they said about Coombes, but something to the effect that the coaches found him frustrating.I didn’t necessarily get the impression he was a bad trainer but maybe an inconsistent one which sometimes annoyed the coaches. Can see how this wouldn’t translate well in the international setup.

Or, alternatively, they all suit Farrell’s game plan more.