Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Antoine Frisch was a mercenary who would have played rugby for any one of France, England Ireland who capped him, but naturally preferred France. As soon as France batted their eyelids at him, he was gone.

There was no real period where he could have had much of a legitimate expectation to make an Irish squad before he was picked for France. He arrived in Sept ‘22 and was immediately picked for an Emerging Ireland squad. He was grand in those games but not a standout by any means.

We had an incredibly settled centre foursome at the time of Aki, McCloskey, Henshaw and Ringrose all of whom are significantly superior players. While he played really well that season, he didn’t do enough to justify being picked ahead of any of them and given we were in a RWC prep we weren’t going to go handing out capture caps in that window (nor have we ever).

We might have included him in the next 6N squad but at that time he was already talking to France and took a call up to their squad.

Jean Kleyn is a guy I would have included in the wider squad. I rate him more highly than the likes of Kieran Treadwell who picked up a good amount of caps in 2022, when Kleyn was outplaying him. But, the biggest distinction seems to be stylistic - Kleyn has hands like tits and while he’s a good nuts and bolts lock, he doesn’t have the dynamism we’d consistently looked for.

Shockingly - the third musketeer of every time this argument rears its head - the Ginger Ross Byrne - seems to have disappeared. Maybe because he’s playing predominantly for Edinburgh’s A side of late.

Miles ahead of Henshaw at thirteen? That’s nonsense. He is better than Aki there, who’s not a thirteen for me, but Henshaw is better than Frisch in virtually every way.

Yeah, I agree here, but on Frisch I don’t think there was really a big opportunity when he could legitimately have expected to have been selected.

He arrived at the beginning of a RWC season into a team that were #1 in the world and won a Grand Slam. We had plenty of depth at centre, and even then he was competing for a wider squad berth with an emerging player like Jamie Osborne who is far more versatile and, IMO, also far more talented. Even still, Osborne had to wait for the summer tour post the RWC to get his first cap.

Frisch wasn’t willing to wait - he bailed back to France pretty much as quickly as he could.

I think Frisch was capped by France as a result of the restrictions placed on the FFR on selecting Top 14 players. I hope I'm wrong and he is a good player, but I just don't see him having any real international career to speak of with guys like Gailleton, Deportere, and Costes all looking like potential stars.

Don't know how you could possibly say Henshaw is a better defensive organiser at 13 or is better at passing through a tackle. Frisch is a better passer overall but tries far more high risk passes than Henshaw so has a number that didn't go to hand that stick in peoples minds. So often for Munster it was Frisch who made the last or second last pass that actually unlocked the opposition defense, the pass to Mike Haley against South Africa is the perfect example, makes yards in contact draws the second defender and offloads onto space at the exact right moment to set up a try. It's a staple of his time at Munster.

I really think that people who call him bog average haven't watched him play. He is an extremely flash offensive passer with a rock solid defensive foundation. The fact that he lacks top end pace and the physicality to be a consistent gainline threat but is still in French squads lets you know how good the rest of his game is. Like I said if he was the bog average player some here paint him as he wouldn't get in a Top 14 side.

I didn’t call Frisch a bog average player - he was a tidy centre who seemed to be a good defender and had some nice passing moments too.

But he’s also a guy who has had maybe one or two noteworthy seasons in his whole career and he turns 29 on his next birthday. These two guys are a couple of years apart in age and when Robbie Henshaw was winning Grand Slams and touring with the Lions, Antoine Frisch was playing for Tarbes ffs in the ProD2.

There is nothing remotely contentious I would have thought though in saying that 2x Lion, 2x Grand Slam Winner, 73 capped player Robbie Henshaw is a far superior player to Frisch, at 12 or 13. I don’t think there is anyone in world rugby who would find that an objectionable statement.

Just going back to this as I've now re-watched the game. The Aviva was dead for large parts of it and Lowe's celebration was entirely justified in its attempts to engage the crowd

He'd put us in a position to potentially score a try, restart the game and maybe pip a win at the end. The kick itself is phenomenal. He had no angle to work with but kicked with such power and accuracy. It's perfect.

I also find a lot of the criticism is centered around Ireland not scoring from the lineout. Which makes zero sense and lacking any sort of critical thinking skills.

I just need someone to bring up how unfair it is how many central contracts Leinster have now and how Jack Crowley should have been brought on for Johnny Sexton in the RWC QF and I’ll have completed my boards pointless circular interprovincial argument bingo card.

Mod: warned

Other posters here are calling him bog average, you said there is nothing he could do that Henshaw couldn't do better. Players peak at different times I don't think that's a big slight against him. The fact the French wanted him back in his late 20's is a testament to how good his two seasons at Munster were. I don't think it's a crazy statement at all to say that Frisch was better at 13 than Henshaw there over his two season in Ireland. Henshaw had a very mixed 6 nations at 13.

The fact that Ringrose spent essentially the entire 2023 6 nations injured and Frisch still couldn't make the squad shows how completely conservative Farrells selections were. Frisch is making a French squad with better quality centres than us but couldn't make an Irish squad when Ringrose was injured.

Frisch didn’t make the 2023 6N squad, but 21 year old Jamie Osborne did.

Explain how this was a “conservative” selection

Do France actually have better centers than us? I'd argue that they don't. There's an easier pathway to get into that France squad as a centre right now.

Ringrose has gotten the better of Fickou over the years and Aki is better than Moefana and Danty. Osborne and Costes are pretty similar ability wise and profile as well I would have thought. Henshaw is more of a wildcard because of his frequent injuries, but he's definitely far more accomplished as a player than Frisch.