Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

I'd say he's only an injury away from a Lions call up. His last 3 performances between Leinster and Ireland have been very encouraging. You'd hope it has finally clicked for him in his head as has all the physical tools to be an elite forward.

Got around to seeing the Georgia game this evening.

• Functional performance, without ever seeming to hit our stride. Scrum was under serious pressure at times, and our maul looked poor on both sides of the ball.
• Casey the best player on the pitch for me. We all know of his pass quality, but his kicking here was excellent too. Twice, his kicks from half-way had them under serious pressure inside their 5m line. And we seemed to retain possession from his kicking an awful lot. Delighted for him with the try as captain as well.
• (And if a French player made the pass from Baird's lineout steal after ~65 mins, we'd all be salivating).
• TOB did well, 2 tries, but particularly his ruck work was very good.
• Coombes too, involved a lot, showed his typical workrate, carries, tackles, couple of offloads and turnovers.
• Thought JOB was quietly efficient whenever play came his way.
• I don't think either of the starting 2nd rows particularly advanced their case. Would like to see Ahern start vs Portgual.
• And I don't think our centre pairing had particularly good games either.
• For me, a pretty typical Prendergast performance; what he did well, he did well, and what he did poorly, he did poorly. For example, the 2 sideline conversions were excellent (and his boot is undoubtedly huge; got some distance on the goal-line kick out) but, imo, he should have finished that try and I'm still not convinced his tackling has improved at all.
• And Crowley should've been on sooner imo. Yes, Stockdale got injured, but we were 19 points up after ~41 mins and 22 up after ~61 mins. Coming into the 2 games, I was expecting the 10's to start one game each and that's still what I think will, and should, happen, so in that context it's not a massive deal, but I do think on occasion we are too hesitant to use our bench.
• Gutted for Stockdale. Looked lively in the few involvements he had.
• Complete aside, but that Georgia jersey was lovely. Love a simple jersey with a collar.

I think your over estimating how good a second string Ireland would really be. When we won the NZ tour our best team was playing at it's absolute peak. In more recent years Ireland A teams have been thrashed by England away and at home in the RDS by an Abs 15.

Moving away from touring the tier two counties during Lions years would be absolutely terrible for the game. If anything we should see more of it.

It was one of those days and games where a player was going to find it hard to shine, I didn't think the pecking order was going to change over the summer tours anyway but looking at the game on Saturday confirmed that. I thought Casey was MotM but you can see why they went for O'Brien. Sam mixed the poor and the good, the big no no from me was that he should never have put his foot in touch nor be that close to the line especially when no defender was in reach of him. We were rather lucky that the TMO called back two of their trys, it could have made a very different game of it had they scored them.

Poor Stockdale got a terrible injury, not having much luck either.

I was pretty disappointed with the two locks too. They're both players that I like but it seemed like neither really made a big impact. Aherne came on and made three good carries that I noticed. and just seemed more aggressive. He probably deserves a start this week. Henderson might be alongside him then with Murray and Izuchuckwu competing for the bench spot.

Henderson is probably on the way out of Irish squads so we need one of those three to claim his place.

I'd imagine Crowley would have been on sooner if not for the Stockdale injury. Hopefully he gets the start this week now.

Izuchukwu hasn't kicked on the way I'd hoped. Right now he reminds me a bit of Ryan Baird from a few seasons ago. He's an athletic freak that can make the big play, but if that doesn't pan out he's sort of just there. Will make tackles and a few ok carries. But won't have the impact you'd hope.

Baird appears to have improved a lot over the last 18 months or so in that regard. He's far more involved at the lineout and his tackle and ruck work is far more aggressive. Hopefully Izuchukwu follows suit.

Baird is playing extremely well at the minute, but the competition we thought there'd be for POM's jersey doesn't appear to have materialised. Nobody else has performed well enough other than the Leinster man. Cian Prendergast might be an option, but we don't know as he hasn't been well enough to make a start.

Yeah anything during COVID should not be held against a person.

If a close relative or friend passed away and you felt you needed to spend time away to help in some way, that should not go against you either.

It's an interesting one. What Ireland probably don't have relative to France is a lot of young tyros - players 23 and under - who are first choice or thereabouts for their province/club, i.e. getting enough exposure to come into consideration for international selection at a young age. There are a few in Ulster because of how much turnover there's been in the squad and them not having much money for signings. McNabney and Jack Murphy look to be starters outright, and Postlethwaite and Wilson are probably close enough for it not to make much difference. But across the other provinces there's probably only Sam Prendergast and Hugh Gavin (although Jamie Osborne is also seeing enough high level gametime to be a really good option). On the other side of this there'd probably be a fair few cases like Matthew Devine stuck as third choice and not getting a huge amount of exposure. Charlie Tector and Hugh Cooney would have a hard time breaking into the Leinster first XXIII for a big game with Leinster opting to go to the market and bring in Ioane. If Devine came through in France maybe he would have spent the season before last on loan in ProD2 and then returned to his original club and played a lot as first or second choice.

It's true that there have been no shows from the A team the last two times they've played but the scratch nature of those teams does make it difficult. I look at the Ireland and France lineups from last weekend and for a lot of the head-to-heads I'm thinking Ireland should be competitive - Tixeront v Timoney, Tom Spring v TOB, Slimani v Clarkson, le Garrec v Casey, etc.

My read on it is there are enough players getting provincial gametime for Ireland to be able to field good quality second and third strings. Obviously if you went down to 10th choice French selection versus 10th choice Irish France would have the better readiness by probably a long way. Ireland 2nds of course would be more susceptible to key injuries having a detrimental effect. France have a lot more options if they're looking for a particular profile of player, which is probably especially relevant in the front five.