Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Sexton has been prone to missing penalty kicks in the past. It's awful that it happened in this match.

All kickers are prone to missing kicks. You'd be surprised at the overall kicking stats for some kickers. But the bigger the occasion, the more coverage it gets. There's also a huge amount of online coverage and analysis on Irish rugby.

I recall seeing a statistic that Pollard's general kicking stats are actually not great (open to correction on that one!). Ruan Pienaar had a weird reputation as being a great goal kicker when he was anything but. Farrell can be extremely streaky. Wilkinson had some really poor days with the boot.

Morne Steyn was the one guy that genuinely did deliver both in terms of reputation and stats with Carter not far off either.

I recall seeing a statistic that Pollard's general kicking stats are actually not great (open to correction on that one!). 

I saw something similar recently too. Iirc, they were skewed from his early career, but there was a clear trend of improvement as he got more experience.

I haven't seen anyone label France as chokers for losing to South Africa. They were a team, like Ireland, who had won their group and were going into a quarter final as favourites. The big difference between France and Ireland is in how both teams performed in relation to their maximum potential. France were generally excellent and came out with all guns blazing. Ireland were the complete opposite.

So, there are plenty of ways to define losing performances. But really, despite lots of people wishing otherwise, the word term 'choker' or 'bottler' is a very accurate way to describe the term 'a team losing while perform well capable their best due to nerves.'

Putting someone on ignore is pointless when everyone is quoting him.

He's clearly swimming against the tide, in everything he has ever written here.

Don't waste your time.

Following on from the first few weeks of URC with the internationals away, who do we see as the highest potential young players who can make the international squad over the next couple of years, and ultimately become mainstays?

From a Leinster perspective I think the most likely candidates are James Culhane, Jack Boyle, Sam Prendergast, Jamie Osbourne and Tommy O’Brien.

For Munster I think there is Tom Aherne, Edwin Edogbo, Brian Gleeson and Ruadhan Quinn.

I haven’t seen much of Connacht or Ulster so far this season, but have heard good reports on Cathal Forde for Connacht, as well as Harry Sheridan and David McCann for Ulster.

I haven’t included the more established young players (e.g. Harry Byrne, Scott Penny, Calvin Nash etc.), who I expect are likely to pick up some caps along the way but may struggle to ultimately become first choice international players.

Obviously not all of these guys will go on to become starters (or internationals at all!), but considering this was the first World Cup for 19 out of our 2023 squad, there is likely to be a number of younger guys coming in to fill the void left by the old guard this time around - so hopefully some of them can live up to the hype and fulfil their potential!

If it was humorous you might have a point, but endlessly repeating joyless provocations is akin to throwing dirty nappies out the car window. Let's move on.

Yeah. The ban wasn't for the last post. They've ruined the thread to be honest.

But their last post was quite funny.