Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

But will be he be still among the best in his position in the NH in 2 years time? We don’t know.

Now, you could say that of any player. But it is obviously a bigger concern as that player ages.

When you add in that we have an older squad across the board, I think it’s reasonable to suggest that we need to start seeing some freshness in the squad as a whole.

There’s a way broader point here than just Coombes.

I'm referencing Coombes worrying about Gleeson because it's a conversation about Coombes getting more time ahead of building a squad for the next World Cup…

Honestly I'm trying to have a conversation with you, and yet you seem to be ignoring everything that is being said.

It is clear to me that the coaching staff see Gleeson as the next one up, as things stand.

For me the New Zealand game has been over analysed. I'll give you 3 reasons we lost, none of which blames a player,

1 Hunger. Sport is all about how much you want a victory. Indeed you can be a significantly inferior side and destroy the opposition if you have hurt and hunger in your heart! That's partly why Munster beat Leinster. Many might have seen Coombes raise his fist as he ran off during the sin bin. That's hunger!

2) Fitness and GAME time. Seriously lacking with many. They need game time together badly. Also a little hangover from the provincials was evident to me.

3) A home game played 1000s of miles away from home. We shouldn't be agreeing to these mini events in USA. Let New Zealand nominate their home game's there if they want, why should we!!

We keep picking the 2 most out of form 12s is the issue. Until last week of course and McCloskey got injured unfortunately as he was playing well. It took another injury for Tom Farrell to get called up.

Nobody's saying the likes of Conan should be phased out. Were just questioning what is the benefit to Ireland long term by playing both him and Doris against the likes of Japan in autumn internationals? Or both of them vs Wales and Italy in 6N games we should be winning at our ease.

Common sense prevails.

Can understand why it looked bad but I don't know how anybody was looking at that and thought there was a high degree of danger…

You mean he retired nearly a decade later.

it's fascinating how after every drop in form for national team in the last 20 odd years, places like this have been flooded with comments about how the coach is over conservative. My opinion is simply that we have a smaller pick than most of the other teams in the top 5-6 in the world and as a result see less turnover. This actually serves us well sometimes imo as when england or france are at lower ebbs they often chop and change to insane degrees, partly what lead imo to an awful decade for france by their standards a while back, while we generally stay relatively consistent. It's also a fact that this has bitten us in World Cups in various ways. 2015 for me was a total freak with injury. 2019 the team was definitely stale.

But 2023, and Im sure I'll get destroyed for this, I don't agree we could have done much different. The team was the best in the world leading in and mostly in their prime. Certainly a high average age but we were aiming to win the tournament and had been buildign with that core of players who has had some once in a lifetime success. Beat the Springboks. and we had depth and viable options at every position bar 10 and 15. The idea that throwing in Ross Byrne or Crowley against New Zealand in those last 15 minutes and they somehow would have sparked us to get a try and get over the line is a bit rich. Byrne, Carbury and Crowley has all started games in the 12 months leading up to the tournament, none of them had done anything in that time to justify their coming on in that game. Sometimes the options are just not there and all you can do is give them the opportunity but if they dont' take it and you have sexton then you ride or die with sexton.

Now, since the world cup there might be legitimate criticisms about the rate at which we have freshened up the team but they are overblown.

Players who have had their first really significant involvement since the RWC (E.g not including crowley as he had a start against Australia in 2022):

Prendergast,McCarthy, frawley, Nash, Osborne, Tommy O Brien, (Have all started major six nations games or games against SA/ NZ) Gus Mccarthy, Paddy Mccarthy, Thomas Clarkson, Jack Boyle, Izuchukwu.

Not Counting the gerogia or Portugal games you'd have another 5 or 6 names minimum.

There is the other side of it- Healy, POM, Murray, why were they allowed to hang on so long and in the case of Healy and Murray I think it was a mistake. POM was still contributing so hard to be too critical.

tl:dr- The normal amount of turnover is happening in the squad, unfortunately we're coming from a very strong place where we were legit contenders. It didn't work out then and there's a difficult balance to strike between renewing the team and staying competititive. We are not getting the balance right atm in my opinion and that is a legit criticism of farrell. But saying that he might be under pressure for his job between now and the world cup is beyond nonsense unless we have a Wales like run.

Gavin Coombes taking up 3 pages of this thread is equally nonsensical. He's behind Prendergast anyway. 8 is probably our strongest position. You could do the whataboutery of IF Conan hits a steep decline and IF Doris then got injured for any position on the field.