Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Fairly tedious arguments, lads.

Thinking about this Emerging Ireland tour, I'd say it'll be used more as extra gametime for promising players down the provincial depth charts now there's less league gametime to go around compared to when it was the Pro 12. There's less merit to including players like Izuchukwu and McCann who are in the first choice XXIII for their province and who they already had a look at on the last EI tour.

Jack Boyle, Paddy McCarthy, Lee Barron, Ruadhán Quinn, Brian Gleeson, Matthew Devine, Fintan Gunne - I'd say this is more the type of player they'd be looking at; players who for the most part aren't making matchday squads once the internationals have returned to URC action.

The consistency argument about SA is rubbish. They've won half of all the RWCs, that's pretty consistent. They also have half their players (or more) playing abroad every season and have to play NZ twice a year in a proper competition. Rassie is a pos but people should separate their critical feelings about him and SA's spotty fan base from the insane ability of SA teams to show up constantly in the competition they value most. They've won it several times when they weren't the best team and had no right to win it. I wish Ireland could have that sort of inconsistency when it comes to the WC or even the 6N. "But they're not as good as the NZ 2011-16 team" is just bad faith, like saying Zidane's French team actually weren't as good as the Brazil team in the late 60s or as good as Tiger Woods in his pomp. Get a grip.

SA compete with NZ every year who have won 5X the number of championships as both SA and Oz, and are historically the most consistent team on the planet, and the best. Ireland's record in the 6N is very good but we rarely compete against any team that is as consistent or good as NZ, England in the early naughties and France in the last few years. Otherwise the standards are very different, exemplified by our WC record.

We've won a good few titles in the last decade but my earlier point is that SA have been consistently winning WCs for 40 years! We have a long way to go before we have that sort of consistency in any competition. And the point still stands regarding SA dealing annually in competition w NZ, we do not have that sort of competition regularly, England, France and Wales are often very ordinary and rarely reach consistent top of the world status any length of time. You could just as easily say Ireland have a few medals these days because the rest of the 6N are just not capable of consistently challenging them.

Anyway, Im not interested in a nitpicking argument about why SA really aren't that good, that's subjective and irrelevant. My point is just the people need to separate out their feelings towards Rassie and some SA fans from SAs clear ability to perform in the WC which is the comp they care most about.

The SA rivalry is spicy partly because many of their players come up against our lads in the league, and are often on the wrong end of it, and because we have an excellent record against them, including the WC group match last year. It a bit similar to the ABs who we have parity with at least most of the time these days. Say what you like about the 6N but those two teams are the two powerhouses of the global game and they both have an intense need to be seen to dominate us. Take it as a compliment.