Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Many players have been performing to a level for their province, only to not be included in favour of players not playing to that level for another province

Hansen is 25 now, made his Ireland debut at 23. Frisch is 27. There are a lot of younger centres at a similar level who I’d say are more likely to be involved than Frisch.

Ok

17 line out steals last season, 3 already this year in 120 minutes of rugby. They are world class numbers

Tom Farrell is very similar to Gavin Thornbury in the fact that when they're absolutely tearing it up for Connacht and knocking on the window for international selection they pick up long-term injuries at the worst imaginable time.

I was very impressed with young McCann in the last two weeks. We're a few very decent prospects coming through in the second/back row positions over the coming years.

Still needs to tighten up on his discipline but there’s a huge amount of potential with him

I very clearly did answer the questions tho. Your questions...

My answer:

But I'll remind you of your original point:

they should be able to perform to a level for their province and then perform in the national setup. Farrell hs shown that he has no issue with putting players into the team when they meet those targets.

The point is, all the players I've listed all had fairly limited degrees of Provincial experience, particularly at Europen level, when Farrell selected them. That's just objectively true. In JGP's case he was 2nd choice provincially.

And on this:

Hodnett v Penny, was that in a November series? I can't even remember. Neither made it into the WC warm up and Penny hasn't been capped? so what exactly is the Penny v Hodnett discussion?

Which is why I specifcally prefaced this point with "Even in broader squads...". At the time, Penny had 10 minutes European experience. Hodnett had much more, playing well against the likes of Toulouse.

Fully agree but think you're actually underplaying his experience there - from my count he has 93 games for Leinster and 35 games for the Blues before his first Irish cap (which wasn't even as a starter).

The JGP example is simply an extremely poor one if a person is trying to make the case on limited degrees of experience.

My original point was just about experience. It was about:

Fair enough, look, I've clarified by position, and it doesn't change that with regards the other 7 I gave as an example.

But... you do you.

To be absolutely clear again on this, no, this...

...is not at all what I'm saying. My point is specifically on your following quote:

"to a level" to me, implies vs high-calibre opposition? (Or maybe I've taken that up wrong?). The majority of the players I've mentioned had limited enough high-level and/or European experience before getting capped.

That doesn't mean I'm saying Farrell was wrong to cap them. I'm not. (And in many, he was very clearly proven right).

But that's different from saying Provincial form or exposure had very much at all to do with it.

Interesting read, linked below for anyone interested. I remember looking at some rucks stats around the 6 Nations time and, perhaps not surprising, but Bundee had the highest rucking numbers of our backs. Not to the extent of surpassing the forwards (altho this was just ruck numbers).