SA vs Ireland First Test 2024 - The World Champions vs The Best Team in the World

Plus it means the current World Rugby coach of the year is picking AIL level players…

Which was not at all my argument.

The point is about the degrees involved here.

You think suggesting Coombes should be in the Ireland squad is equivalent to suggesting Casey and Crowley are AIL Level?

Or are there degrees involved?

Complaints that Haley should be starting on this tour when 'the current World Rugby coach of the year' doesn't believe he deserves to be in the squad despite multiple other FB options being unavailable.

A never ending drum of moans that 'the current World Rugby coach of the year' for several years mistakenly completely ignored a 'world class' level lock.

Those aren't minor quibbles, those a huge gulf in the opinion of certain posters versus AF.

You either give deference that 'the current World Rugby coach of the year' knows what he is doing or you don't. You certainly can't trot out that argument for points scoring purposes only when it suits you without looking like a complete hypocrite.

I think Casey must be hugely frustrated. I thought he was having a good game on Saturday, in what was his first start for Ireland against decent opposition. He'd have been relishing the chance for another outing this weekend. I still think he's a better player than Doak (who's form has trended downwards I think over the past year or so), but Doak undoubtedly has potential.

Would rather either of them ahead of Caolin Blade, who had a poor season.

I'm not sure the need to mellow regarding the halfbacks - a few posters have just gotten incredibly defensive about any comments about them, be it factual statements about his kicking numbers or a few OTT comments in the heat of the moment.

Even when Sexton missed a single kick in a game you had similar OTT comments about him in the match thread, forget about the very few times he had a 40% success rate when he was called every name under the sun. It is completely normal treatment for the Irish 10.

Despite that terrible kicking performance there is near zero calls to replace Crowley and the general consensus post match is that Casey had a solid to good game - brushing aside concerns of any risk in exposing him to that kind of environment, even despite how he had to leave the pitch on a stretcher.

Everything is grand aside from some circling the wagons for absolutely no discernable reason.

Yeah, I do agree with that. I'm hopeful they can keep improving, because there's a lot of talented players up there. .

As a guy who is just 22 (doesn't turn 23 until December), Doak has already played a huge amount of rugby. 71 appearances for Ulster over the past 3 years (plus two brief appearances in the covid interrupted season). By contrast, Joe McCarthy, a year older, has played 35 times for Leinster (did miss some time with injury in the 22/23 season) and Jamie Osborne (a month older than Doak) has played 48 times for Leinster.

Definitely agree that Doak needs to just focus on 9 though and progress there.

Do World Rugby coaches of the year still make mistakes?

Do they make mistakes so egregious as picking an AIL level player?

Can you see the difference?

(Fwiw, the extent to which I’ve mentioned Haley since the squad was announced I’d guess is a single comment).

I suggest we leave it at that as this is going nowhere.

If Doak had been in camp last week, I'd actually agree with this. Reckon it's too little training too late though unfortunately