Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Something I've been ruminating on all week, after 4 good performances from the provinces last weekend, is what the heck happened to Ireland as the 6N went on? There's absolutely no way that team was playing to its ability, players looked a bit like they didn't want to be there by the final whistle against Italy, so what went wrong? The Leinster players looked rejuvenated, for Munster you had Beirne, Nash and Crowley playing way better than anything we saw in the 6N, Ulster were slightly outmatched but absolutely went out on their shields with a lot of good individual performances.

(I didn't see the Connacht game, sorry Connacht, but good result at least).

Did we totally underestimate the impact of Farrell not being there? Did the players carry their provincial form into camp but that faded as the tournament continued? It's worrying either way.

Ireland were poor in November as well when Farrell was there.

Yeah, tend to agree with this with the footnote that Ireland tend not to hand out heavy beatings regardless of the opposition, but Wales and Italy were schooled by strong teams in the 6N while Ireland squeezed by them. And giving England two late scores in the 6N was very expensive and basically unforgivable. On current trajectory I'm expecting NZ to absolutely demolish us in Nov. All that said, there's been a lot of churn in the provinces w coaching changes and different styles of play being introduced so the overall consistency that we had between provinces and the Irish team has been quite disrupted this season, with the absence of Farrell adding too that. Our playing pool is very strong and the Irish team is still one of the best around on their day/ It's just a pity the coaching ticket is not as gold plated as it's been, I feel like Felix and Flan were two that got away.

it was handled very badly alright. They should have started with Crowley and over the championship if prendergast had surpassed Crowley than fair enough.
They should have let it happen naturally, instead they tried to force it and they made a complete balls of it.
They even had ex players and the media saying prendergast has overtaken Crowley , trying to sell it.

Do not be surprised if prendergast goes to the lions, farrell has the arrogance to double down on his error.

Andy Farrell has many traits, arrogance is not one of them, quite the opposite which is why he can get teams to rally around him

A 6 nations team that won the same amount of matches as this year.
also Prendergast seemed to take the jersey in autumn so the crying in those couple of posts about it happening in the 6N is at best nonsense.

Given my post started this discussion, can I just point out that the people jumping straight to "Whhhhaaaa if they'd only picked my favourite player!!!", there is no possible way you could miss the point by a greater margin.

SP didnt walk straight in - he was in extended squads and toured with Ireland and didnt get a minute of gametime. He then benched and then took the jersey.

It was a truncated timeline but he went through the usual steps, probably expedited by Crowley not being in great form for either his province or country.

Crowley his last game and Prendergast now.. if they improve just 5% along with the additional 10-20 caps before WC.. pretty bloody great place to be for Ireland.

How good was Prendergast this evening? Exceptional performance really. Over to the Irish coaches to get those sorts of performances from him in green.