Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Well you're the one determined to make a big declarative statement - you've said a few times Andy Farrell is a more conservative selector, and you've based this thesis entirely on the minutes essentially awarded to new players in 2024 and 2025.

I don't think the data supports that:

• Ireland have capped a broadly comparable number of players in that window, the range is tight (15 new caps by NZ to 21 by England).
• The French data is not comparable. Each of the last two seasons they've essentially left all of their front liners at home due to contractual reasons. It's only logical if we had done similar - or if we'd had two tours similar to the one this summer, then our numbers would be much more comparable.
• As my post above this shows, the Scottish data tells you nothing really - only that they've played a lot of poor Tier 2 teams and thrown out a lot of caps in those games.
• The Kiwis have actually used less new players than us over the period in question, and brought in a new head coach in 2024.
• The Aussies brought in a new head coach in 2024, and were at rock bottom immediately prior to the start of this data set (lost to Fiji, hammered by Wales, given real scares by Portugal & Georgia in the RWC). They had a lot of players move overseas, and have essentially fully rebuilt.
• The Welsh have had two new coaches since then, and have won 1 game in the past 2 years. Hardly a surprise they're scratching around willing to try virtually anything.
• I haven't drilled into the England numbers, but they equally appointed a new head coach less than 12 months before the RWC, and have had a lot of transition and turmoil.

The team with the most coaching continuity, similar to Ireland, over the period in question, the Boks, are arguably more conservative in their selections, especially given the breadth of their player pool by comparison to Ireland.

You are consistently ignoring the fact that the vast majority of teams appear to award new caps in bunches during the summer test windows, and we have played at least two games less of those games than any other team in the dataset.

On this point:

fwiw, your reading of the "disproportionate amount of minutes" to the top 3 players is a misreading of the stats; because it's a function of the overall total. Whatever way you slice, on average,every new player is getting twice as minutes for France than Ireland, that's across the entire distribution. Not just the top 3. Which is kinda the whole point.

No, you're wrong on this too - it's irrelevant as to whether it's a function of the overall for that team, because it's specific to that team and in context. It still ultimately tells you the same fact - most teams are throwing out a good few new caps in this window (a range of 15-20 or so), and finding 3 or so guys who are making their first choice teams. In that regard, we are absolutely no different.

You're the one proposing to use the minutes awarded to new caps as this great big differentiator - but if the reality is that largely across the board these minutes are predominantly made up by 3 or so players per team, (i.e. New Zealand 51%, Ireland 51%, France 36% etc) then it really doesn't tell you a whole lot about the selection conservatism of the coaches.

You still haven't told me what outliers I should exclude. I think there's a reason for that.

This is the solitary take away from all of the detail in my last post?

I literally just gave you a lengthy post where I commented on all of the reasons why your data is flawed, so take it that way if you want - exclude France (because they rest all their front liners in summer), and exclude Australia, Wales, NZ & England for new coaching tickets (a point you yourself made earlier on the thread when comping Rassie to Farrell).

So who does that leave, Scotland and South Africa? You've done nothing to show we're more conservative than them, arguably the opposite.

Primary objective of any Lions tour is a series win and they delivered with a game to spare. 

Absolutely, and I've said he deserves credit for it.

The discussion here after the third test was hilarious, that the best measure of the series was what happened in the dead rubber match, not the games that happened while the outcome was still in question.

To by completely clear - and a similar point you made earlier - you'll note that wasn't an argument I made.

Pre-tour expectations might have been for a 3-0 win against a ragged Australia but a lot of people under-estimated how good Australia would be. Two weeks after the third test, they went to Johannesburg and put 38 points on the Springboks.

So the facts very obviously changed but not everyone seemed to change their mind. What would Keynes make of that?

And I think it's fair to point out my comment was posted before that Test in Johannesburg. Keynes was good but he couldn't see the future. But yes, in retrospect, I think it's fair to say the Lions win does look more positive, post-Rugby Championship.

If Nash is doing that on a regular basis I suspect they would be, but that's not the norm for Calvin Nash. Any player is entitled to a bad day or two but with SP we have a pretty decent picture of him as a tackler/defender now.

… I'm sick of this prendergast crowley bullsh!t

maybe put it into a separate thread, and any mention of it here gets a ban..

Mod: Post edited and warned.

Ok now we're getting somewhere. So if I excluded:

• the French tests, Japan and Fiji for NZ
• the Fiji, Georgia and Portugal Tests for Ireland

and there was still a large variance (bearing in mind I don't yet know what the results are) would this convince you?

No, it wouldn't.

A new coach, which Scott Robertson was, right at the start of this dataset, is always going to bring in a lot of his own new players as he settles on a squad. Particularly if brought in because the perception is that the last guy (and the squad) weren't doing well.

This doesn't make the new coach "not conservative" - you can't make a judgment on them at this juncture because there's nothing to compare it to.

If you want to do that - then, as I said, go an compare Farrell's first two seasons to Robertson's last two and see what that data tells you.

So lets see:

• NZ aren't being less conservative
• they gave a lot of minutes to guys against Japan, Fiji and a second/third string French side this summer
• apart from that it's largely been business as usual.
• They've capped less new players over this window than us.
• the actual quantum of minutes is realistically only a feature of (a) the fact they've played more games, (b) the nature of the games played.

So let's see what that looks like in practice:

• For NZ: excluding Japan, Fiji and France (where they "gave a lot of minutes to guys") and
• For Ireland: excluding Portugal, Georgia and Fiji (i.e. evening out the "the nature of the games played")
• and indeed doing it by minutes available to account for "fact they've played more games".

All of this based on your terms and your caveats you've provided above…. and…..

It's absolutely absurd to continue to contend that NZ aren't being less conservative than us since the RWC. But I suspect that's exactly what you'll do.

If you're going to do it, go and do it, and do it for all of them so rather than cherry-picking whichever name suits you.

You've been pretty quiet on the Scottish data I provided, is Gregor Townsend not one of Andy Farrell's peers?

How do you factor the two Emerging Ireland tours and the Ireland A games (v England last year, v Spain in November) into your thinking around Farrell's conservatism?

From the 2022 tour - 10 players have since been capped, and 2 players went to the RWC less than 12 months later.

From the 2024 tour - a further 8 players have since been capped (not counting Izuchukwu and Kendellen which are counted in the 2022 numbers).

A bigger piece of all of this - it's all relative around whenever the window is in which you choose to cut the data. So, for example, France have gotten 5,086 mins out of the cohort they've brought through in 2024 and 2025 to Ireland's 2,473 mins for the same time period.

But if you go back and look at the cohorts brought through in 2022 and 2023 - France got 4,620 mins out of that group to Ireland's 6,569 mins. Means the difference in the last 4 seasons is a relatively small 664 mins, during a period when France played an extra couple of games.

You can cut this data to try and make any argument you want, but it 100% does not paint some definitive picture of Ireland being more conservative than peers IMO.

If you're going to do it, go and do it, and do it for all of them so rather than cherry-picking whichever name suits you.

You've been pretty quiet on the Scottish data I provided, is Gregor Townsend not one of Andy Farrell's peers?

Ya, I mean it's not like this takes a load of time or anything…. or, indeed, as you've said yourself "why not go do it yourself". At least we've moved on from the "never actually bring any analysis to the table". Progress.

How do you factor the two Emerging Ireland tours

From the 2022 tour - 10 players have since been capped

From the 2024 tour - a further 8 players have since been capped

They weren't capped. Because the EI tours aren't capped games.

But are you really going to argue France only have more mins because "they gave a lot of minutes to guys against Japan, Fiji and a second/third string French side" but then argue we should include EI games in Farrell's metrics?

How would you rank the EI games with regards "the nature of the games played."?

You could indeed go back and look at the cohorts from 2022 and 2023. But bear in my ALL of this kicked off because you took umbrage with my statement that

To me, it seems like Farrell has gotten increasingly conservative as his tenure has went on.

To which you replied:

Data again doesn't really support this by comparison to other teams.

Farrell has awarded 16 new caps since the 2023 RWC

So at this point, you're kinda making my point for me.

I never said include the EI tours in the numbers, I mean that those are the numbers of players from those tours subsequently capped for the full national team.

As I said - continue though to ignore “peers” like the Scottish data etc that don’t suit your narrative and selectively cut the data for a period that also suits you narrative.

This is beyond tedious (for everyone I’m sure) at this point.

keep the stats coming, Aloof, whenever possible…

In my opinion theres a different mindset between NZ and Ireland when it comes to player's ages. In NZ there has long been an attitude of "if you're good enough, you're old enough". Whereas Ireland seem to lean more to player has to prove themselves for a season or 2 before earning a call up.

The flip side of that is that players over 30 were often considered over the hill in NZ and it was time for the shiny new thing. I believe that actually cost NZ through the late 90s and early to mid 2000s.

nash also came in at pretty much the last minute for the france game