Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Should make zero difference, pick the best players on form. That would be Tom Farrell. If he's still in this form in 2 years time at 34 what about it. It's a CC issue, let's be honest about it. The others are on one.

The alternative is sticking with Henshaw and Aki, one being the same age and the other 3 years older than Farrell. Both of whom are way off form.

Good point. Farrell/IRFU will peddle a line about how result in the here and now are essential to the IRFU business model. On that basis, Andy Farrell should be picking on form ahead of the 6N. To me, that means Tom Farrell should be getting capped.

with the seedings been set for the RWC after the autumn games. Maybe playing all NZ SA and Aus was not a fantastic idea

We have to beat one of Aus, SA or NZ to stay in top 6.

Thankfully Farrell’s provincial form has been good for 12 months.

Probably because the team hasn’t had their head coach for the last year…But sure Australia badly exposed SA and SA badly exposed NZL in the RC…in arguably worse fashion…this whole cherry picking method of pick and choosing which games to use as evidence does you’re argument no favours.

SA who have 52% of their squad age 31 or over you mean? Also these teams aren’t “refreshing” their teams, bar France they are all just making their teams worse but binning older players for inferior players just because they are young.

As what’s been said previously 47% of their squad is aged between 25-30 which is exactly what you want heading into the RWC as that group will be bang in their prime come 2027.

This constant whinging is just getting tiresome at this stage, if you are trying to reference in particular what England & NZL are doing (I.e showing they haven’t a clue what they are doing) or SA (even though they are even more conservative than Ireland are) then you really aren’t interested in facts or logic, you just want to have a whinge. The whinging form in somewhere else TRC

And a common misconception here is that people are calling for the entire Ireland team / squad to be picked on form.

But with such a short lead in time to Chicago, particularly for the returning Lions players, could / should some of the closer calls have been selected on form? I think so. There’s a pretty reasonable justification for it.

Fine. But for the actual Test?

We have had players older than 34 at World Cups and I was under the impression he was younger than both Henshaw and Aki.

Why not? For example, if Casey is fit in time, he’s shown much better form this season than JGP.

Or, for example, TOB’s inclusion if fit.

But my point is a broader one anyways than just the NZ game.

I wasn't arguing Farrell should be called up. I was responding to the strawman argument that anyone who thinks Andy should be a bit less conservative in his selections, thinks that the squad should be picked purely on form (which is of course nonsense).

So we had Forde and Cooney in as development players, and capped Gavin in an utterly pointless 100 point win vs Portugal. Great. Let's have a look at them in actual games against tier 1 teams and see how they go. Or Kelly, or Postlethwaite. That's what our competitors do. They give guys a go. We'll keep picking the same 3 guys until they get injured or retire.

At the last World Cup we had three players 34 and older. The least experienced of these had 53 caps and had been an international for ten years. Do you see the difference?

Again, Henshaw and Aki are irrelevant here, Farrell is not competing with them.

Mod Edit

Warning issued.