Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

The point I've made is that just looking at the number of new caps doesn't tell us very much without looking into their subsequent minutes and caps beyond that. You suggested that:

Data again doesn't really support [that Farrell has gotten more conservative as his tenure went on] by comparison to other teams.

because the number of of new caps since RWC 2023 was broadly similar. I've looked into it furthe , and here is a comparison between number of new caps, and their total subsequent caps and minutes since RWC 2023. Here's what that data shows, and posting this without comment - yet.

Genuinely interested to see what the response to this will be on here….

@realhorrorshow and @Yeah_Right I suspect you might be interested in this also.

The Molecast podcast this week mentions they think you could argue the RWC27 window really from this November onwards, now that the Lions tour distraction is done and dusted.

If you look at the 2023 RWC squad, the guys who definitely won't make the next one are:

• Dave Kilcoyne - retired
• Peter O'Mahony - retired
• Conor Murray - retired
• Jonathan Sexton - retired
• Keith Earls - retired

Guys who technically could but most likely won't make it would be:

• Rob Herring - 3rd choice now at best, 37 y/o at start of next RWC
• Bundee Aki - 37 y/o at next RWC
• Ross Byrne - playing overseas, not highly rated
• Iain Henderson - 35 y/o at next RWC, out of favour

And then guys who there are question marks over would be:

• Tadhg Beirne - still an elite player, but will be 35 y/o by then
• Josh van der Flier - 34 y/o at next RWC
• Jack Conan - 35 y/o at next RWC
• Finlay Bealham - 35 y/o at next RWC
• Tadhg Furlong - 34 y/o at next RWC (with a lot of injury history in recent years)
• Robbie Henshaw - 34 y/o at next RWC, form has been trending downward
• Stuart McCloskey - 35 y/o at next RWC
• James Lowe - 35 y/o at next RWC

So there is potentially huge scope for turnover, and a lot of leadership gone out the door (especially Sexton, Murray & O'Mahony) and a lot potentially going to (Beirne, Conan, Furlong, Aki, Herring, Henshaw, Lowe etc).

I think we'll definitely see some evolution in selection over the course of the November series.

Doris has a pretty good injury record really. Before his injury in the Northampton game he had played 44 out of the 45 tests for Ireland in between the 2021 and 2025 Lions tours.

Says a lot about how good his availability has been.

And yet, if you normalise it to calculate the minutes per game for new caps, Ireland are still rooted bottom of the table. Average it out over the 18 games that Ireland played and you still get the following:

Why? Because whatever way you slice is, Farrell is more conservative than his peers.

How on earth is anyone trying to argue that Farrell is not a conservative coach??
Barring his obsession with Prendergast, he only changes players if they get injured.

This is the guy who ended up with Aki and Farrell as his center pairing at the end of the third Lions test.
That should tell you a lot about his desire for experimenting.

South Africa meanwhile start three different outhalves in meaningful games! I couldn't imagine Farrell doing anything like that.

Leinster reached a European final with Ross Byrne at outhalf. It's a bit bizarre to say Prendergast is an integral part of the Leinster team. I don't think he's been terrible or anything like that but he hasn't been amazing either.

He had ultimately a pretty average season last year if judged as an established player.
Harry Byrne / Ross Byrne / Ciaran Frawley would get that Leinster team to at least a European semi final and URC semi final.
Prendergast did badly in the European semi final and well in the URL semi final and final.
Hard to say they wouldn't have still won the URC without him though.

In terms of picking him for the Autumn Internationals (which I expect Farrell to do), it's entirely based on this "ceiling". It's not based on what he's done up to now.

I think it's worth pointing out I defended Farrell against this charge in 2023 (particularly in comparison to Wales).

I've laid out the data for why my opinion has changed since then. I think that's all pretty reasonable.

Maybe, but maybe there are a lot of other factors to consider. One of those things where you can see whatever you want to see, I suppose.

France have way more total caps than us, double in fact. Is that because they're less conservative, or because they went on their last two summer tours (six tests total) without any of their star players because of their agreement with the Top 14? How many of those caps went to genuine prospects and how many went to warm bodies with French passports? They called up 35-year old Rabah Slimani for the tour to NZ like.

Wales have more total caps than us too. Is that because they're less conservative, or because they held on way too long to the previous cohort of aging legends and then left themselves a mammoth rebuilding task since the RWC?

Australia and NZ always have a big turnover post-RWC as their players take off for pastures richer.

Which is all completely reasonable, syd; I've provided the full data for the sake of completeness.

And fwiw, I've always said I absolutely understand conservative selection during the 6N's. I'm more critical of him during the AI's, and I strongly feel last year was a missed opportunity in that regard.

I guess my point is, don't see how even the most ardent Farrell fan can contend Farrell hasn't gotten more conservative; I expected it to look conservative, but the data even surprised me tbh.

I think we're in real need of seeing some freshness during these upcoming AI's.

In terms of picking him for the Autumn Internationals (which I expect Farrell to do), it's entirely based on this "ceiling". 

When you make statements like this, please feel free to add "in my opinion" to the end of it, because that's all it is after all.

Leinster reached a European final with Ross Byrne at outhalf.

The same Ross Byrne they judged to be not good enough and just let walk out the door?

He had ultimately a pretty average season last year if judged as an established player.

Harry Byrne / Ross Byrne / Ciaran Frawley would get that Leinster team to at least a European semi final and URC semi final.

Sam got them to a European semi and won a URC. Even the European semi we lost - Leinster scored 34 points (5 tries) and lost that game to a couple of stupid systemic defensive collapses.

This is basic maths - but you're critiquing Prendergast for tries conceded here when he wasn't even on the field - i.e. two tries after he'd come off against England and 2 tries conceded before he even came on the field against Italy.

The comparison in the periods where they're actually playing:

2024: we conceded 7 tries (60 points) with Crowley on the field.

2025: we conceded 10 tries (88 points) with Prendergast on the field (worth noting Jack Crowley was on the field alongside Sam when we conceded 3 tries - 27 points (late try v Scotland and 2 converted tries and 2 pens v France).

This also, of course, does not take into account that in 2025 we had a relatively poor showing against Wales - where we played with 14 men for 50 mins, and against France where we also had 2 yellow cards and shipped a lot of points.

In 2024 - France got the early red card and we put a big score on them.

That's really the difference in the points difference YoY.

The indo lads (granted) made a good point that both SP and Crowley are the weakest player on the team when playing for Ireland, not a situation we've found ourselves in for decades. Neither were deemed good enough to get past Fin Smith for the Lions eventhough Farrell was coach. Ceilings or whatever, neither are winning a World Cup.