Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

No, I said the out halves didn't manage the game well, and that's why I felt Crowley played poorly.

You said then that was just because he was kicking the ball a lot on management instructions, and I posted the Farrell quote which seemed to refute that point. There was obviously some level of management instruction to kick, but Farrell himself is saying he is frustrated with the out halves management of the game. What did Crowley do well in the game?

As for your assertion that my post is a conspiratorial rant. Nonsense.

This was part of your post:

The cynic in me believes that the disproportionate scrutiny his performance has received is nothing more than an attempt to distract from a number of poor performances from some of his more celebrated teammates.

This is nothing short of conspiratorial nonsense - the notion that Crowley is being scapegoated etc.

Crowley played poorly, so did the vast majority of his teammates. Most people on here said as much. He's playing a position where he's going to get singled out a little more given the nature of the prominence of the position. It goes with the territory. God knows Sexton, Byrne, Carbery, etc have come in for more than their fair share of criticism on these pages over the years.

There were a few utterly nonsensical comments about Crowley on here (but there were plenty slating lots of players), but that goes with the territory of Ireland games.

The very fact that you felt the need to reference other posts about Munster players actually proves the point - you can't just look at this through the prism of someone objectively criticising Crowley's performance, you see everything through the lens of "Munster are being criticised" - it's utterly tiresome and IMO it's a far greater reason why "boards is dead" than your suggestion.

I expect was planned long before an injury issue on the NZ tour

This doesn't seem to be the case at all; all of the reporting at the time suggested it was organised pretty late in the day, and that was a large part of the reason why the Provinces were so annoyed about it.

Iirc, the 2022 tour was announced late August? Compare that with the EI tour this year, which was announced early June, I believe. I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that was in large part because of the blow-back from the original EI tour.

To be clear - I'm not at all suggesting the tour was origanised only to get a look at Frawley. But it was pretty clearly a primary focus of the tour.

This is the first correct statement you've managed in the last three hours. Doesn't it feel great?

It would, but fellas stay at Leinster in the hope that their day will come and they're in their mid 20s or older when it becomes clear they have no future there beyond squad player. Without much game time until then they may be developing as training squad (or mid table URC) players but are they developing to the level they might if they were playing competitive rugby week in week out as a 22 or 23 year old? That's the opportunity cost. I guess Im disagreeing with the notion that superior coaching makes Leinster a better deal for these players.

Yeah, they didn't get to 3 phases more than once or twice during the game because of handling errors or ruck turnovers. It's basically impossible to build any kind of phase attack with those stats. That doesn't mean our attack is any good if we cut out the mistakes and hung onto the ball but it also doesn't mean our attack is poor. I'm just not sure how almost all the players on the team had a bad game, something isn't right.

This team went from 17 wins in a row to 4 losses from their last 9. We're sleepwalking in to decline and need a major overhaul.

On the out half question, to me it looked like DMac had one of his best AB games at ten on Friday. It was very measured, his kicking was ace, he managed the game well and picked his moments perfectly. He didn't do the stuff that he is often criticised for, like high risk plays that result in turnovers or players getting isolated. Overall not a great AB performance and perhaps not even a great team but I felt he really came into his own in this game. He debuted with the ABs in 2016! They have 3 players swapping into and out of the ten role in BB and MO'unga and maybe you can say Mo'unga is #1 but it's not clear. England also have 2 or 3 tens on the go: Marcus right now but after a string of losses who says Ford won't come back in, or Finn S, similar to SA. All by way of saying that in periods where you don't have a Sexton/Carter/Wilko player who is miles ahead of anyone else then this sort of dilemma his common enough in test rugby, and guys can be around the 10 shirt without owning it for their entire careers. Finn R and Ntamac are probably the two most established tens among the major teams.

Your post prompted me to look up what Catt's doing next, and it seems he's an assistant to Dan McKellar at the Waratahs.

Maybe he was tired of the Irish weather.

Goodman is in charge. God help us.