Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

My point was merely that both 10’s, Sam & Crowley, are excellent prospects, neither are perfect, neither are shocking, and performance varies game to game week to week so no clear run away winner to the balanced / unbiased viewer. No drama, and good for Irish rugby as it makes them both improved athletes

I don't doubt there is some vile stuff posted about Prendergast on social media etc. but this…

10 Sam Prendergast (Leinster):

He had an armchair ride with the forward dominance his pack delivered but he shone with kicks from hand and in finding gaps.

…is hardly it, right?

I think you know as well as I do that this is just a microcosm of what’s been reported by the media in many quarters.

Could that review be anymore vague and minimal…almost like “sh!t, we have to come up with something nice to say!” And even then have to throw in the “armchair ride” part at the beginning, back handed compliments more like it.

How about talk about how great he was at releasing the backs and marching the forwards around? Kind of like how they reported on Mr Golden Boy in the honourable mentions section…

Made 6 out of his 9 tackles, pretty good I’d say!

Lets not pat Humphries on the back too quickly on this, and it doesnt come in till 2026. Leinster have what 12 central contracts (and this isnt leinster bashing, they have the better players), average say 400k each. thats 4.8m, under the 30% rule they had to fund 1.4m themselves, this moves it to 1.9m, so 500k…thats one game moved to croke park for leinster, and thats only 166k per province, so not a silver bullet to make the other provinces competitive

Is there a silver bullet to make the other provinces more competitive? Something obvious and immediate that everyone in every province will be delighted with? If so, you should put it in a proposal and said it to the IRFU immediately.

Funding the academies and altering the talent selection & development programs I suspect. Leinster has proven the academy system is world class if implemented correctly by adequate funding, staffing, and raw talent

What ones did he shirk?

I think you said in another post you'd put up some clips of him refusing to tackle or running up out of the line beyond play or something, any sign of those?

You could make every province more competitive if you gave the same number of central contracts to each province. Obviously there would be other issues like 14 doesn't divide equally by 4 so you would change to 12 or 16 resulting in 3 or 4 per province

There's the obvious issue that you'd be artificially weakening one province. Unless the IRFU decided to go for 44 central contracts (highly unlikely) this would inevitably result in some of the top Leinster players leaving to play for one of the other provinces. Leinster would effectively be down 7 or 8 of their current crop, or have to fund them like they do Snyman and Barrett.

The upshot is you would likely have a stronger national team and more equality among the provinces.

I never said it was a good strategy only that it would make every province more competitive.

And on reflection I should actually correct that to say it would make 3 of the other provinces more competitive

A stronger national team would be the result of a better mix of talent at the provinces which would help to improve the talent already on offer. A case of surrounding yourself by better players to become better yourself. The added talent at the other 3 provinces would eventually reap the rewards

I'd imagine there are plenty of Leinster players that would rather play for a French or English club than to play for another province and plenty of supporters that would have their stomachs turn at the thought of e.g. Keenan donning their provinces jersey so yes it would be a big risk on multiple fronts if the IRFU were to implement such an idea

But in response to the question "Is there a silver bullet to make the other provinces more competitive?" that's one way they could go about it

Sorry - was responding to @Red Silurian's first post.

How much would it cost to fund players attending one of the rugby boarding schools, 30 or 40K for 4 years? Newbridge, Clongowes, Blackrock, Rockwell, Kilkenny and one or two others. Most of these schools already produce players that feed into academies, it seems an obvious one to identify young talent from around the country and fund their education. <ost of these schools don't recruit afaik, or of they do it is with already notable players at 15-16 years old.

This needs to be about finding more and better players from the three provinces. Pumping more money into the same systems and diverting more Leinster players to these provinces aren’t solutions.

Hopefully there is a genuine plan to develop new pathways.

On an unrelated note, it’s interesting that a province will be picking up 40% of the cost of a contract with no input into the terms of that contract.