Well may they sleep but let's not pretend there aren't any concerns surrounding them. They are culpable to some degree in our WC failure and our failure to win back to back grand slams.
Going to reserve all judgment until the squad and fixtures are out. Don't see any point discussing this in too much detail this early
Thats a good shout tbh
Well you've hardly engaged with this topic constructively - it's incredibly frustrating the repeated assertions that the Irish coaching team are either "poor evaluators of talent" or even worse the occasional insidious suggestions of bias, supported by nothing but your gut feeling.
You ignore a glut of data suggesting Crowley was likely the biggest beneficiary from the EI tour, you claim they give no chances to players (when shown we've capped nearly 2x as many players in the past 4 years as SA you double down and claim they throw guys in in big games, until you then see they haven't debuted a player against NZ since 2017).
It all comes tinged with the typical bullshit provincial nonsense too - see the only players you're whining about getting minutes over the last few years over this sequence being Joe McCarthy, Jordan Larmour, Harry Byrne and Ciaran Frawley.
You're suggesting that Rowntree was picking his team for pre-season friendlies, based on his best guess at who would be picked to go on an Emerging Ireland tour a month later? OK.
If people only focus on the negatives of the EI tour and completely deny that there were any positives, then of course it will be very unpopular.
I feel iv engaged here just as legitimately as you have im not sure why you feel otherwise. You feel the coaching staff is perfect in every way perhaps but i doubt they do..
IIv used leisnter players as examples as they make up most of the irish squad for whatever reasons you believe so chances are ill land on one. Id rather we avoided the accusations of provincialism if you wouldn't mind
Mod: We're not going down the provincial baiting road again. It's stops now for everyone.
failure to win back to back grand slams.
Sorry, what? Only here could winning two championships back to back, including absolutely spanking France in Paris, be preceded by the word failure.
Bizarre.
I absolutely don't think the "coaching staff is perfect" and have never suggested as such, but I do feel they come in from some utterly nonsensical frequent criticism, most of it from the same quarters.
I doubt it was a "best guess" tbh.
I think it's fair to say, given the reaction from the Provinces when the tour was announced, there'd have been a fair bit of communication between them and the Ireland coaching team with a view towards who would be selected, prior to the Sept 14th squad announcement.
Yes, that is an assumption, but I think a fairly reasonable one based on what we know / what was said.
If people only focus on the negatives of the EI tour and completely deny that there were any positives…
You're mis-representing me here; I've never said there weren't any positives (to Ireland). I just don't think they should come at the expense of the negatives (to the provinces).
What quarters?
You know exactly what I'm talking about.
No i dont.
Your stone cold facts or stats incinuated things would have gone exactly the same at munster without a tour while a new coaching staff is bedding in so its no more a fact than anything youve disagreed with
Why does it feel like any time the irfu is questioned people get their backs up about it?
I've never said there weren't any positives. I just don't think they should come at the expense of the negatives.
That's not a realistic aim. The provinces always suffer at the expense of the national team, that's just the nature of the beast. In fact, as the balance of the national team has shifted, 50% of our provinces suffer far less than they did in the past.
The relentless criticism of Farrell is that he won't pick new guys, won't pick on form, only picks guys who know the systems - and here's a great opportunity for guys to impress Easterby as he's preparing to take the reins. We should be delighted by this, otherwise we're expecting to keep doing the same things and see different results.
I guarantee you players will be falling over themselves to get on that plane, even if the fans don't want them to go.
There's a difference between "the IRFU gets questioned" and making comments like:
So invite them to squads or do a summer tour its absolutely asenine to take established players out of the urc in order to play the toyota wildebeasts just so that nucifora can claim hes made them
Dragging them across the world to SA to play meaningless games during the URC season is stupid and dumb and 100% cost Munster vital league points in 2022/2023.
Its a poor sign of a coaching staff that they cant tell if a players good unless they have them for weeks on end no?
Thats a pretty damning endightment of the irish coaching staff
If mins is the concern we can go down a whole other rabbit hole but itd deflecting from my point which is a good coaching staff shouldnt need to take players mid season to play in a much lower level competition to know of their talented
if a coaching staff cant see the ability without taking them away for two months with an assistant coach not even andy farrell the its a bad sign and suggests were missing out on some world class talent elsewhere because they havent gone on a tour with irish coaches
And that suggests an issue with the irish coaching teamtalent evaluation
None of the above comments are simply "questioning" the IRFU or Irish management team, they're just throwing muck and making silly insinuations and suggestions that they are poor at evaluating talent.
And players should be. But i dont think its unfair to say a player shouldn't have to make a tour that maby runs every two years in order to make an international squad.
In response to your disagreement. Thats hoe conversation works sometimes i dont have to agree with you
Perhaps players could be given the option to to travel on a EI tour. The IRFU could try & persuade them to go, and their provincial coach could try and persuade them to stay.
Provinces who feel that they may be unfairly disadvantaged might choose to have their players stay at home. After all, it's not as if the IRFU own all the provinces or anything like that 🤭
That's not a realistic aim. The provinces always suffer at the expense of the national team, that's just the nature of the beast.
… they do, but normally it doesn't happen, to this scale, outside a Test window. I think that's a perfectly reasonable point.
Why, say, couldn't they have had a mid-week game during the AI's? It could achieve a lot of the up-side, while mitigating the downside. Having something in Ravenhill would make a lot of sense, imo.
What point are you trying to make?
Maybe read it again
But i dont think its unfair to say a player shouldn't have to make a tour that maby runs every two years in order to make an international squad.
I don't think anyone claimed they did. This is just another way to look closely at players, maybe I missed the memo where IRFU said only EI players could be capped.
Do you think that's a fair position to put the players in?
Absolutely nobody claimed Jack Crowley wouldn't have made an international squad without the EI tour, but it is almost certain he wouldn't have been capped as early as Nov '22, made the 2023 6N Squad and from there the RWC squad without the EI tour.
We're just repeating ourselves now, and obviously he'd have pushed through at some point, but given he'd barely played for Munster at 10 at the beginning of that season (and wasn't really playing at 10 regularly until the Champions Cup knockouts in April), it is wild to suggest he'd have made the 6N squad without the EI tour.
Why, say, couldn't they have had a mid-week game during the AI's?
We did that in 2022 as well, if you remember. Three of them, in fact, if you add the Maori games in the summer.
But that's a completely different set-up; the senior coaches will always be (correctly) focused on the senior team and the dirt-trackers will never get anything like the time and attention they would get on an EI tour.
But sure this has been my point we have no idea how much hed have played. If he was playing significan mins for munster and i think he would have then no reason not to bring him in ei tour or not
Makes the coaching ticket for Ireland all the more impressive to win back to back 6 nations and stay number 1 in the World for so long
I think irelands coaching ticket is clearly extremely talented but im not sure why that would impact it
This was noticeable in the Maoiri game when the team didn't look like it had the right prep for the game. Mostly down to lack of time on focus on the main team
An EI tour gives the coachs full focus on the squad and gives players who might not have been in a squad yet a feel for how it works. Valuable experience
Well the conversation was surrounding jack crowley not likely playing in autumn, 6n, wc warmups and wc without thr ei tour
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