Irish Rugby peaked in 2023 and is now in steady decline. A Very Barron decade ahead

Has anybody analyzed statistically over an extended period how we perform in tournaments and between World Cups? My theory is that we’re well coached because our national team essentially plays for one club team so we perform well between World Cups. However, at a World Cup this advantage diminishes as teams like South Africa and Argentina become reacquainted with each other and our relative lack of depth is exposed by injuries during the tournament. I even wonder whether the same thing happens in the 6N? Some nerd needs to look into this.

5 years rule for foreign players is only right TBF, and should serve to incentivise development locally.

It made a cod of the idea of a nation, and creates odd situations like the recent WC QF with our try scorers playing against their own country.

Or you could just point to Ireland from 4 years ago. An XV that was even older than this one on a Lions year ended up being number 1 in the world 12 months later and stayed that was for another 18.

I completely agree with this and have said it for a long time. Every 6N we get a head start with our cohesion and the extended run-up time before a RWC means that we have much less of an advantage.

How the hell could you possibly do the above?

Yeah the number 1 team in the world who exited the 2023RWC in the QF again.

it would have to be an NFL style draft system. It would be hugely unpopular with most provincial fans. Essentially you would be pooling all the schools players together at Academy contact time and distributing them based on the previous seasons performance. Don't think it would work.

I agree fully, it would never work. It would involve the best young talent not playing for their province which may alienate the fan base. A guy born and bred in Dublin would most likely love to play in blue, ditto for Galway, Belfast and Limerick/Cork. We're too parochial in this country for it to work.

But I think that those professional teams can sell off/trade their option to draft the best players!

lol @sxt is that you Sexton??

Who won the 2025 triple crown?

Ireland's 3 best players by far in this six nations this year were Nz born, Ireland will not be able to replace these players with the same quality ever again

Not sure we needed a dedicated thread to rehash the same tired old cliches but just on this point, only Aki arrived in Ireland even remotely as good as he turned out to be.

Gibson-Park arrived here in 2016, four years later he was still the understudy to Luke McGrath and very few people saw this as an issue. We could have picked him for the 2019 RWC, we didn’t, and no one protested.

Similarly, to say that Lowe was the unfinished article when he arrived here would be a massive understatement. He wasn’t half the player he is now.

(I would really question if Aki was one of our best players in the 6N btw.)

These guys are always held up as evidence that we can’t develop players. Someone with a more positive perspective might say they’re the opposite.

yes, the coach who won 2 heineken cups and ireland's second ever grand slam was 'diabolical'

he wasnt at the level of schmidt or farrell obviously but he wasnt complete rubbish either

his overall win percentage is bad yes, but he was the first one to actually win silverware and win coach of the year. kidd and ashton didnt even make double figures in terms of games from what i remember too so the percentage part is slightly skewed too

Let's see the average age of the teams that take to the field against Georgia and Portugal and see if we're still "Needing a major refresh" afterwards.

Well obviously the side will be younger during the summer. The majority of our starters who are nearly all 30+ will be on the Lions tour. This isn’t some kind of “gotcha”. They’ll all be straight back in come November

But even at that, I guarantee we’ll name the most conservative team imaginable with guys like Ringrose, Henshaw, Henderson, Herring, Stockdale, Blade all playing.