Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

why would he when it’s obvious to all he is being told how to play and that means sexton ball

No running, wrap around, taking ball to the line , lots of mouthing off to players and officials.

Crowley wants to play 10 the modern way, he knows how sexton played 10 restricted how Ireland played, but Crowley is being told by Farrell to play sexton ball or you don’t play.

Sad really.

my post was just my own personal opinion.

I wasn't referencing anything else Cian Tracey said - just that he made the point that it didn't necessarily flow that simply because a player is put up for media duties meant he was definitely starting. That was in response to another poster suggesting it never happened, when two separate journalists said this week it did in fact happen.

On your broader point - I wish people would stop talking about Jack Crowley like he's some cosseted little child who needs to be protected from any criticism. He comes across as an incredibly confident and fiery character - it's one of his major strengths. He needs that kind of mental toughness to carry the expectations that are on him.

The decision to select Prendergast to start ahead of him on Saturday wasn't some enormous slight on Crowley - it was simply the coaching team saying they felt Prendergast had played well the previous week and deciding they wanted another look at him. People weren't gnashing their teeth all week about poor Garry Ringrose (one of the few players who played well against NZ and one of our very best players against Argentina) being unfairly dropped to the bench for Saturday - most just recognised he's playing a competitive position and the guys he was up against are really good players too.

I don't for a second think he is - but if Crowley was so fragile to have been badly rattled by this then he's not tough enough for the 10 shirt for Ireland long term anyway.

Yes, that's true. But it's also a feature of our games for a couple of years now, and I dare say a predictable one. Oz gave us 23 lineouts, not something you'd see if our line out was bullet proof.

A much more banal read is that Farrell is coaching Crowley in the art of leadership and representing the team alongside his ressponsibilities as a playmaker.

That's the point tho. Given everything we know about Farrell's man management, this seems at odds with it.

My only point above was that it's possible to think Crowley is plenty resilient enough for this to not knock a feather out of him AND that not putting him up for media wouldn't have been treating him like a cosseted child.

I’m sure he has. I have no idea what it might be.

Point is, there’s a myriad of scenarios here. Some of them reflect badly on Farrell, some of them reflect well on him. I was just observing that no one can really look at this dispassionately, we’re all bringing our pre-existing opinions on Farrell into it and we’ll all gravitate to the scenarios that match them.

Reflecting on the Autumn games is a strange one. Despite winning 3/4 games it feels like we're a team on the decline.

Tried to watch as many of the games as I could and feels like other teams are improving, and we're not. South Africa, Australia, Argentina, Scotland and France all looked good.

For us, we just look so old right now. Not that I think there should be an age restriction, but I just felt like we suddenly have a lot of guys over 30, with little depth and experience in the next tranche of players. Some examples that come to mind are Healy, POM and Murray. They have been fine servants and some of our best players but did they really need to play as many minutes in this series as they did? Porter is being flogged because Farrell seemed desperate to give Healy the record, and he couldn't seem to even play 20 minutes.

People will say that we blooded, SP and Gus McCarthy, which we did. But why not play Izzy against Argentina or Australia? Or start Casey against one of them either. Cian Prendergast only got meaningful minutes against Fiji? It's just so frustrating. Even selecting Stuart McCloskey, he didn't play much, so why not select Cathal Forde to at least train and make his debut against Fiji?

I feel like we are sleep walking into what could be a challenging six nations. Just feels like we didn't really gain a huge amount in this window.