Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

The selectors at Connaught decided pretty much right away that Ben Murphy was ahead of Devine as despite his form he was dropped almost immediately. Stu will back that I suspect. Hard to argue with those that see the talent day in day out . Doak was brought into the infamous injury ridden A game v England only after Ben Murphy got injured, alongside Gunne who was the original sub 9 but the fiasco with HIA and the loss of both 10’s, Ross B & Frawley, left Gunne on the wing for H1 and Doak starting. JGP is still a distance ahead of Casey in all aspects and WC27 will appear in no time so JGP still top choice for me. Casey will benefit from this tour with the Lions contingent creating space and the 10 conundrum may impact future SH selection also. After Casey it’s Murphy for the time being , then Doak who has a great boot but doesn’t look to be a natural 9 & Gunne who at 21 is the youngest and to me the most exciting of them all.

His injury record? At a point that was a fair excuse but he was fit enough to play 42 games the last two seasons (19 games last season and 23 the year before). The lack of Irish caps can be explained by poor injury timing but lack of development at Munster can't be pointed to simply being injury related.

I didn't blame coaching, I said 'maybe the new coaching will get more out of him'. A coach can be doing nothing wrong but a new coach unlock something in a player that elevates him, even just by installing new tactics.

Your defensive whataboutery doesn't hide the fact that Ahern simply hasn't kicked on like expected despite significant availability and gametime.

Lack of development by what metric?

Funnily enough, Leamy is quoted in The42 as being extremely impressed with his development over the last two years.

So he's been prevented from getting Irish caps through injury but Munster have somehow also stunted his development? Surely if his development stalled he wouldn't have been in the running for Irish caps in the first place. Is Ahern going to be the next provincial player up to have everything he does analysed exhaustively so that his international aspirations may be written off. Will it be that he missed a tackle once or that he doesn't pass enough I wonder?

Great news, I'm really looking forward to seeing what he can do at the next level. He looks like a really promising player.

I doubt Clarkson, O'Toole or Aungier is quite ready for the Lions.

The point is Busby is doing his best to drum up attention for a book and media tour, speaking engagements, etc, any way he can possibly knock a few quid out of a rash comment in a press conference.

Hansen was an absolute disgrace and should have got more of a ban than he did.

But I really don’t know what Busby is hoping to achieve here.

more bridges burned by the IRFU, they need a **** HR manager