Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Yes - we can see that a decent minority of Ulster and Munster fans have stopped supporting Ireland because not "enough" of their players are being picked, and I don't expect that to change any time soon.

I think the way the Barrett signing is being spun, despite being utterly irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things, is adding to the dissatisfaction and if Leinster go on to win the European Cup and make up the bulk of the squad for South Africa, it's just going to get worse. I think the central contracts thing is only a small piece of a much wider issue.

I don't think it's that simple; very consistently 3, and sometimes all 4 of our teams don't start in that competition. So it's not going to be something they directly target.

"Yet again this season Ireland had 2 teams in that competition after dropping down"

I think the "yet again" is overstating this, no? Is it not the norm that we typically only have 1, and only occasionally 2? It's a long time since either Leinster or Munster have been in the Challenge Cup, iirc.

Unsure, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had. (Particularly if it's an emergency / injury cover signing).

But none of that helps when it comes to World Cup because our players don't seem to be able to adapt and recover quickly enough. I'd say our players are a bit over-protected. Also the majority of the first 15 would still be in Ireland, it's the fringe players who would leave. It might mean we don't so as well in some 6 Nations or Autumn matches but for me the target now has to be winning the next world cup.

And it's not stripping players from Leinster, it's giving players an alternative path. Where would Tadgh Beirne be now if he hadn't left Leinster, would he have developed into the player he is today.

I'd do it this way.

The message you were replying to was talking exclusively about central contracts, but I'm glad we've cleared that up.

The cohesion thing is absolute bollocks. Jean Kleyn didn't miss out on Ireland selection because Farrell wanted more "cohesion", he missed out either because a) Farrell doesn't/didn't rate him or b) Kleyn wanted to go back to the Boks or c) both of the above. Absolutely nothing to do with cohesion.

Reading this after just waking up, I conclude that Ulster and Munster are absolute failures. There's no other way to look at it.

The combined population of both provinces would be similar to Leinster and yet look at the CC contracts. Who's to blame? Both provinces have contributed sweet F.A.

To keep you 😊