Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Prepare to be wrong

Absolutely entitled to an opinion, I just think it’s going to miss the mark.

Taking my stab at it. Arg game is a bit iffy and depends a lot on how Frawley goes this weekend.

v Mun 10.Frawley 22. Harry

v Con 10.Prendergast 22.Ross

v Lions 10.Frawley 22.Prendergast 26th Oct

v NZ 10.Crowley 22.Frawley

v Arg 10. Frawley 22.Crowley

v Fiji 10. Prendergast 22.Frawley 23rd Nov 

v Ulster 10. RossB 22.HarryB 29th Nov

v Aus 10. Frawley 22.Crowley / maybe Prendergast 30th Nov

I hope it's the case Devine's passing improves - there's almost no excuse for it not to anymore, but I remember watching Luke McGrath playing for Michael's, or Ireland U20 or Leinster A and thinking "wow, what a rugby player, if he can just sort out his pass he'll be a 50 capper for Ireland" - and that was probably close to 12 or 13 years ago, and nothing improved. Obviously McGrath still had a great career, but I think not having an elite pass is limiting for a scrum half now at the highest level (as it should).

Prendergast has significantly more experience at this stage than Crowley did when he was called into the AI squad two years ago

I'm not sure if that's accurate Podge, is it? I'd say they're reasonably comparable, and agree I expect Prendergast to start vs Fiji, but would be surprised if he had significantly more experience than Crowley had?

At this present time - they have remarkably similar level of appearances, starts and minutes, though Prendergast has a chance to be higher if he gets some gametime between now and November, which he absolutely should.

Jack Crowley - when selected on the bench against Fiji in November 2022 had had 7 starts for Munster (6 at 10, 1 at 15), 19 total appearances for 732 total minutes.

Crowley's starts game against Ospreys, Ulster, Castres (in Europe), Dragons, Lions, Leinster (at 15) and Ulster again.

Sam Prendergast has, as of today, 7 starts for Leinster, 19 games and 696 total minutes.

Prendergast started against the Lions, Bulls, Scarlets, Ulster, Stormers, Connacht and Edinburgh.

Crowley was about 2 months shy of his 23rd birthday when he debuted, Prendergast will be a year younger if he debuts in November.

It'd be interesting to see how many minutes he has there from the bench too, but that'd be super difficult to figure out…

I had a look there. I've captured games where he came off the bench to directly replace the 10, but have probably missed a handful of games where he started elsewhere and was moved to 10.

Overall - by my reckoning he's had 13 starts (23% of total starts) at 10 across the past 8 seasons (including this one), has played in 25 games there (26% of total games), for a total of c. 1,226 minutes (27% of total mins).

It's massively front loaded though - 18 of his 25 games at 10 came in his first three seasons, when he got 8 of his 13 starts and 73% of all the mins he's gotten at 10.

He had three seasons in the middle of his career - 20/21 (0 starts, 0 apps, 0 mins at 10), 21/22 (0 starts, 0 apps, 0 mins at 10) and 22/23 (1 game, 1 app, 44 mins at 10), where he wasn't seen as a 10 at all arguably, but it did increase again a bit last season.

He started 2 European games last year at 10 (v Sale and v Stade Francais, and moved to 10 during the Munster game in the Aviva, the La Rochelle game in LAR and the Toulouse final.

Honestly its happy days for Ireland where we have 3 relatively new options (Frawley has been around but not with the ten focus he has now) at ten where a couple years ago we had none that gave any confidence. No slight on RB saying that, he just plays a very different game than what Ireland need and work best with. Ross is a controlling, steady, possession oriented, territorial and kicking out half. He is boilerplate Munster playing behind a great pack and while its ironic to say it, Munster probably would have been better served recruiting him over Carbery all those year ago. RB will remain at the periphery for Ireland because he is a consistently excellent player who can be relied on but I can see Frawley pushing him out of the top 2 or 3 spots. No idea what will happen at Leinter, other than assuming Leo won't make up his mind about any of this.