Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

I'm only "objectively mis-quoting" someone if you choose to focus on the aspect that suits your argument.

His comment was:

Those are players "from" Leinster, not players who have been through Leinster Academy.

That's an objectively incorrect statement, when almost 50% of the players on the list have been part of the Academy and the overwhelming majority were part of the sub-Academy structure.

40 is the size of the professional squad. Plus 20 academy players who don’t necessarily move to full contract

And I have no issue with this post. I just don't see why you couldn't have made your point like this without mis-quoting him…

I didn't mis-quote him - I've made that quite clear.

But, why don't you let him worry about me apparently mis-quoting him instead of feeling the need to respond to virtually 75% of my posts here picking these silly arguments?

Honestly - I've zero issue engaging with you in good faith on actual things about rugby, but to say I'm sick to the teeth of these exchanges would be an understatement.

You do and don't.

It tends to depend on what angle of the discussion you're coming from.

Anyway - I'm done with this, thanks.

As far as I can tell, Munster had 3 players from the 23 against the Sharks who came thru the Leinster academy. Is that heavy lifting or overly excessive? I wouldn't think so tbh.

A huge amount of this analysis is based on your interpretation of the phrase "heavy lifting".

So, to just take this back to brass tacks, I've looked at all four provincial squads and split out across three Tiers.

Tier 1 is guys who have actually been part of the Leinster Academy and/or played senior rugby for Leinster. There are 18 players across the other three provinces who fall under this tier (8 at Connacht, 8 at Munster, 2 at Ulster).

Tier 2 is guys from Leinster, who were not formally part of the Leinster Academy and signed to other provinces - there are 28 guys across the three provinces who fall under this tier (15 at Connacht, 6 at Munster, 8 at Ulster).

Tier 3 is guys from other provinces who went to school in Leinster - there are 6 guys under this tier (4 at Connacht, 2 at Munster).

Connacht:

Tier 1: Jack Aungier, Peter Dooley, Temi Lasisi, Oisin Dowling, Josh Murphy, Sean O'Brien, Ben Murphy, David Hawkshaw

Tier 2: Jordan Duggan, Sam Illo, David O'Connor, Paul Boyle, Cian Prendergast, Finn Treacy, Billy Bohan, Matthew Victory, Mikey Yarr, David Walsh, Aaron O'Brien, Sean Naughton, Conor O'Shaughnessy, Daniel Ryan, James Nicholson.

Tier 3: Denis Buckley, Dave Heffernan, Harry West, Max Flynn

Of the current Connacht Academy - 16 players, 9 are from Leinster schools.

Munster:

Tier 1: Jeremy Loughman, Michael Milne, Lee Barron, Roman Salanoa, Tadgh Beirne, Paddy Patterson, Tom Farrell, Andrew Smith

Tier 2: Oli Jager, Sean O'Brien, Fionn Gibbons, Diarmuid Kilgallen, George Hadden, Ronan Foxe

Tier 3: Fineen Wycherley, Josh Wycherley

Ulster:

Tier 1: Rory McGuire, Aitzol King

Tier 2: Eric O'Sullivan, Cormac Izuchukwu, Nick Timoney, David Shanahan, Jack Murphy, Tom Brigg, Will de Klerk, Sam Berman

Tier 3: None.

By contrast, in Leinster - there is 1 player who would meet the Tier 1 definition for any of the other three provinces: Robbie Henshaw, and 1 Tier 2 player, John McKee.

So, just step back from it all - there clearly is a pretty strong level of movement happening at all levels - both from the kind of established pros who feel they aren't going to get enough minutes at Leinster (guys like Peter Dooley, Josh Murphy, Michael Milne, Lee Barron) and guys from Leinster who don't get an academy offer there (examples at all three provinces).

The concept that there needs to be considerably more of this type of movement doesn't look all that realistic to me.

Whatever about anything else, Tier 3 seems a bit of a reach, no?

And equally it's also then evidence of an inherent advantage that Leinster have that the other provinces can't replicate to anywhere near the same degree.

That works both ways too.

It's bizarre to me when some posters deny what is an obvious inherent advantage…

Plug the Munster schools pipeline from 10 years ago into the Leinster academy and vice-versa and do we still see the same outputs an international level as we're seeing now? I'm not at all convinced we do, for very obvious reasons.

Sorry, you're right about the boarding now being gone in Methody (it was still there around the time I was in school).

Midleton and Newtown are schools that play rugby - they're not entirely dissimilar in size to Clongowes (though granted both are mixed), but very comparable in size to Roscrea, so the statement "about the level of 3rds or 4ths in schools in Leinster" isn't relevant.

My comment "what advantage is that?" - wasn't denying the existence of any advantages, rather it was asking you to clarify which specific advantages you were claiming was a feature, hence why the next sentence was "The presence or existence of boarding schools?"

But, here we are again debating minutiae of wording rather than the actual substantive point.

The advantages bestowed by private schools is overblown at times - it's not an aspect exclusive to Leinster by any means. If you strip out the NIQs, IQ abroads or guys from Leinster in the wider Munster squad, you still have c. 19 guys who went to private schools within Munster.

The three most successful schools in the Munster Schools Senior Cup (PBC, CBC and Rockwell), who between them have won 80% of all Munster Schools Senior Cups, are all private, fee paying schools. PBC and CBC are substantial all-boys schools with relatively large enrolments in an Irish context. The fees for these schools are also substantial.

Leinster obviously have the larger quantum of private schools, but in recent years the production of players has still been relatively concentrated to a handful of select schools even there.