Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Yeah but with all due respect, England arent on par with SA or even close to it really. If we have the same level of performance SA will be much more punishing and wont be as forgiving in defence, even with a new attack and defence coach. The main challenge for Ireland is upfront if we can get parity or even close to parity we'll have every chance in the series as like you said SA arent like NZL when it comes to being ruthless.

6-2 split works for teams that like to beat the opposition up front, like SA for example. For a team like Ireland its more important to be flexible which is why having a 5-3 is far more beneficial. I've yet to see the benefits of it tbh and if anything the risk is greater than the reward.

I'm looking at the evidence you've presented as its the only evidence I can judge…I dont see why if you have other evidence why you havent presented it so all I can do is judge this evidence. When you consider how the season ended for the Irish provinces and how SA are going into this RWC as World Champs I cant help but feel a large portion of the reasons you back SA are emotive based because the evidence you showed isnt very convincing and is at best debatable.

This make's absolutely no sense. I think you are massively overthinking things.

But if you look at the 23, which Farrell seems to do, as the best 23 he has available is a 6 -2 spilt more likely because we have better forwards compared to the backs

Then he has to have 2 backs on the bench

To me thats what he was doing in 6 nations

Two good showing, hopefully one win and maybe identify one new player for the 23 would be a success

If you look at the options in the 6 nations the backs hadn't got huge talent sitting outside of the 23, Ringrose was injured, Hansen was out etc

If Farrell had a full fit squad to pick from I think he would go 5-3 all the time like he did before. POM getting taken off is not an issue as they always seemed to take a backrow off…..

I would prefer a 5-3, I dont like the 6-2 and we are just trying to copy a SA team whcih we are not, I dont think it worked at Leinster either

he has played before this season and had the EI tour