Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

And all of that can be true and Crowley can still have a better running threat. Which is the case, imo.

But like…. Whatever way you slice it, he directly compared. It’s silly to argue he’s not.

On the number of tries Crowley/Prendergast score, ROG had 16 in his career between club and country. Not really what he was there for. 10s don't need to score tries, they need to kick their point and create scores for others. Both of them need to improve their kicking stats afaik. Neither are in the 80%+ range, thats not good enough for a top 3 test team.

Unfortunately we haven't seen enough of Crowley in green to judge how well he might organise the team and the kind of difference he would make in attack versus what Prendergast has done. I'd still like to see him get some game time this November, particularly if he continues ot play we'll in red, though the kicking is a real problme.

ON Prendergast being too deep and/or taking thing to the line, Dupont's disallowed try in the first 15 minutes in last years 6N was a disaster for Prendergast in my mind. He called the ball without any plan and telegraphed the poor situation he found himself in resulting in Keenan being tackled way behind the gain line, panic stations and another **** pass to Penaud. Brutal. that can be easily dismissed as growing pains in a pressure cooker situation, fair enough. But he did something eerily similar in South Africa.

Im talking about since Prendergast took over. I liked Crowley a lot before then and thought his 6N season was excellent. The promise was that Prendergast would be a generational player who could manage attack in a superior fashion to what Crowley brought. I haven't seen it but seeing both operate in the same season would be a one way to put it to bed. For me the France match last season showed just how easily all the progress Ireland have made cold be frittered away. Lots of people played poorly but Prendergast looked way out of his depth, which compared poorly to Crowley's performance in France the year before.

o gara had 16 tries in his international career, not his international and club career

This is 100% it. Conor Murray talks about this in his book - Ireland prize having their halfbacks get multiple touches or involvements in phase play. The idea was you’re no use to anyone buried in a ruck.

The obsession on this thread with carrying the ball and making hits is absurd to me.

As I’ve said before - if what we wanted in a 10 was someone to carry hard to the line repeatedly and smash people in the tackle, then Bundee or Stu McCloskey are our best options.

Those are not the core skills of an out half.

'Misinterpreteting'? on this thread? I for one are shocked.

Yeah I don't want a 10 at the bottom of many rucks. But I also don't want a 10 to not carry the ball into contact for feat of being in a ruck. I do want the 10 to be a threat to the defence and to fix a defender close to the ruck to cover the 10 in case they decide to carry into contact. I think Sam does that to a fair extent when he carries close to the defence before passing.

I think he doesn't like the physical side of the game with or without the ball.

He does a decent job of fixing the defender without ever taking the ball into contact. I'd prefer if he was dn actual threat of running through a defender occasionally, but given his physique, that's very unlikely.

I've noticed the defenders don't even bother to committ to him (put in a late/marginal tackle on him). They cover him and as soon as he passes, they drift away to cover the defence. So it's not like he's taking the defender completely out of the play, but he does a decent job when he carries close to the line. Before passing

A huge problem here is sample size.

Like, we probably all got a bit carried away with Prendergast's performances in December/January/February when it looked like he could do it all. A few bad displays sucked the wind out of his sails and we're still trying to figure out what his actual level is. We likely won't know for quite a while yet.

Similarly, when Crowley was given the jersey and we won the 6N, the assumption was that he was now the long-term solution, but again, the more we saw, the less certain that looked and pretty soon he lost the jersey. No-one really knows what his true level is either.

So now we're at the point where every match is going to be hyper-analysed but the reality is that it we won't know where we really stand until at least the end of the season, if even then.

that skillset is not deemed desirable in preference to the fundamentals of 10 play. 

Again, no one is saying it's in preference, at the expense of the fundamentals of 10 play. People are saying it is in addition.

Predictably - some (@alooof ) are going to claim, but if you swapped them how do we know the numbers wouldn't be reversed

I wouldn't want to disappoint you, FTD! ;) Btw, there's a reason it's predictable.

To not give him credit for just how potent Leinster's attack is just not being honest in this situation.

This is a strawman. I haven't not given him credit ("not being honest", eh?). He absolutely deserves some credit, of course he does. But does he deserve so much credit that comparing Munster's total tries vs Leinster's total tries is indicative of anything particularly meaningful when the difference in quality of the teams is so wide? No.

I mean, it's not too many pages ago you said the following of Crowley in the England game this year:

we scored two tries with Crowley on the field and two with him off the field. Crowley had a negligible involvement in either try (zero involvement in one of them).

Yet by your above logic, we should be crediting Crowley because Ireland had a better try-scoring rate in his time on the pitch than Prendergast.

It doesn't make any sense. But sure, "not being honest"…