Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

This is entirely true but also a problem. Imo it skews too much that way. The barrier to entry is too high.

I don't disagree with some of the reasoning, but there were multiple posts here post squad announcement all saying something along the lines of:

His stats are unreal but he's not getting a look in for Ireland

his stats are very impressive even with starting from the bench

 Anyway, it's all moot, I don't think he can have done much more to be honest, if it was a player from another team posting those kind of stats I'd wager their fans would be saying the same.

But now, there are multiple posts for people trying to rationalise my piece where I illustrated that the much vaunted stats aren't actually that impressive at all.

Maybe it is the case that Munster overuse him as a carrier, and as a result we don't see his best side there, but constantly claiming him to be a really strong carrier doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I pulled the same numbers together for Nick Timoney, for comparison, and while he played 151 fewer minutes than Coombes, he too outcarried him in terms of metres. He had 87 fewer carries, but 281 more metres, so his average is 4.3m per carry. In short, on average over the course of the season the average Nick Timoney carry is more than twice as effective as the average Gavin Coombes carry.

As a tackler, he also has a 91% tackle success percentage, and only a slightly lower quantum of tackles (16 fewer).

So - the people who are saying Gavin Coombes is unlucky "because the stats etc" are just wrong, and aren't looking at the whole picture.

Dropping harry and ross reminds me of when he dropped carberry. I don't actually see any big drop in form with any of them. They are all essentially the same as they always were.

To me its insane that prendergast is in this team over harry byrne. And doubly so over ross.

I have absolutely no idea the basis for what the URC deem a "successful" carry, they don't explain the methodology or reasoning anywhere (that I can find). Another significant limitation of those numbers is they omit the players who haven't played a certain amount of games.

The numbers I've provided are based on the entire seasons for these players, across all competitions.

People keep using the 2m carry on opposition line thing - but it's worth noting Nick Timoney scored 5 tries more than Coombes this season too (12 v 7).

His tackling stats are good, but nothing out of the ordinary - Doris had more tackles this season at virtually the same effectiveness and Timoney had ever so slightly less at the same effectiveness. I've already made the point that the sheer volume of carries isn't an impressive stat when the average carry is so low. He would be better served carrying less tbh and carrying more effectively.

He's still one injury from playing. They should have taken ross as well in that case.

Throwing Prendergast into an actual game on this tour would be imo mental. So, hopefully they do have people ready to fly in.