Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

It has become very clear over the course of the last few pages that any appeals to reason are falling on deaf ears. You have people claiming Sexton playing a half of rugby in the 3 weeks before the NZ game was too much.

If Beirne had been rested more then Tom here would be whinging about how undercooked he was and that there was no way we could have competed against the battle-hardened NZers. None of these arguments are being made in good faith.

The minutes themselves aren’t crazy, but Ireland definitely could’ve managed them better. He didn’t need to be playing big minutes against the weaker opposition. Munster had no choice during their run-in, but Ireland did, and that’s where the load could’ve been eased a bit

Nobody’s saying we shouldn’t play our best players at all ,but there’s a difference between starting everyone and managing minutes smartly. Against tier-2 sides, it’s the perfect chance to give lads a breather and test the depth. Running your top players into the ground in pool games you’re winning comfortably doesn’t make sense when you need them fresh for the knockouts.

We can agree to disagree on that, but is it closer than their defence? It definitely is, imo. (I'd go as far as saying Prendergast's defence is the biggest deficiency in the Irish squad right now tbh).

There is another point worth mentioning here that we've had a change of style with regards our attack recently too, which to be fair, Prendergast is more suited to - he's got a better long pass and a bigger range from the boot, and that suits a team that's trying to get to width more quickly, have fewer phases and kick / exit earlier (tho I think Prendergast has a propensity to cross-kick a little bit too frequently, imo).

I think it's almost a certainty that Prendergast will be in situ vs NZ, and tbh I expect he'll start each of the 3 Tests again NZ, SA and Aus. Personally, I'd prefer to see them both start 2 Tests each.

If you rest him (and other front liners) against the tier 2 sides (Romania and Tonga), what do you do, just pitch up to face South Africa on September 23rd when our best players have barely played in weeks? How do you think that would work out for us?

Anyone with a functioning pair of eyes can tell that Crowley is a better athlete than Prendergast. He is more likely to trouble the line or make a break. Prendergast is a marginally better passer and he's a better kicker but claims that he's more agile or athletic are well wide of the mark. Unfortunately though you are wasting your breath. A poster on here claimed that Crowley isn't international standard last week, despite him leading us to our largest ever victory in France in his debut season as our starting fly half. France, that place where Irish teams famously flourish. Still, that same poster claimed that the same thing of Kleyn and promised to stop posting here if something as outrageous and unlikely as him getting selected for South Africa ever occurred.

I think the point other people are making is that a better balance could be struck.

You're right, you don't want him going in completely cold against SA. But equally, did he need to played 80 mins against all of England, Samoa, Romania and Tonga in the lead? Probably not.

As I said, I don't have a strong opinion either way on this argument, but the Irish players did have more minutes going into the QF than the other teams. Now, did that contribute to fatigue into the QF, given the weeks involved? I don't know tbh. But I think it's fairly reasonable to suggest there's a conversation / debate to be had on it, where people will have different opinions.

And yes a large part of the high number of minutes is the vagaries of how the fixtures fell, a completely fair point. But they did have more minutes.

For the 23s in that game, NZ's players averaged 151 mins, Ireland's 181 across the tournament to date. All of this analysis totally ignores the fact that NZ's rest week was between Rounds 2 and Round 3 (between Italy and Namibia fixtures) and ours was between Rounds 3 and Rounds 4 (between SA and Scotland)

There were 3 full weeks from when we played South Africa till when we played NZ.

In those 3 weeks, our players played one game against Scotland. In that game, we took substantially our whole pack off after less than 50 mins (Lowe left after 40 mins, Sexton after 44 mins, and all of Beirne, Sheehan, Porter, Furlong and O'Mahony off after 47 mins).

What more rotation was reasonably to be expected given we hadn't assured our qualification for the QFs till we won that game?

In the same 3 week period before the Irish game, NZ played 2 games. So for the two sides that faced off on 14th October, the NZ players had played an average of 79.7 minutes in the preceding three weeks, and the Irish players had played an average of 44.8 minutes in the same time period. The preceding three weeks are surely a more relevant timeframe if we're talking about fatigue or tiredness that stuff that happened more than 2 months prior.

It is worth remembering that Scotland had given SA a decent game and while we were favourites to win, it was not a done deal by any stretch, and it's also worth remembering that given what we saw in the opening match, avoiding France by topping the pool was very much the target. There's no way we were going to send out the second string.

We had to play Beirne against Scotland because Ryan was injured, but he was taken off 48 minutes, as was Sexton. 48 minutes of rugby in the two weeks prior to the NZ game is not a big ask.

Finally, 80 minutes against Romania or Tonga is not the same as 80 minutes against a tier 1 country, especially for a forward.

And the starting 15's averaged 167 mins for NZ vs 250 for Ireland.

But that's all pretty reasonable FTD, and I wouldn't disagree with it. I certainly wouldn't have expected us to rotate vs Scotland, for example, given qualification wasn't assured.

Gerry Thornley floated the idea that we should try get Carbery back, as I think he's out of contract at the end of this season? Not saying he would be the starter, but it's not an awful shout, if he could be persuaded to come back to, say, Ulster or Connacht. You'd imagine he'll command a reasonably big wedge tho.

I would imagine McCarthy/Milne was 50/50. Possibly went with McCarthy as he is 4 years younger but who knows. Would have preferred Milne went from a selfish perspective as Leinster are completely decimated in the front row for their game vs Zebre next week.

The centres are a worry in general with all 30+. Would have liked Hume or Gavin (probably Gavin), even Hugh Cooney who I think has something about him, ahead of Henshaw.