Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

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.

There seems to be lots of comments about Farrell and selection for the last Six Nations and the Summer Tour when Farrell was on sabatical for the last year with Easterby acting as interim head coach and then Paul O'Connell running the summer tour. The Summer Tour was a good chance to see whether anybody could force their way into the AI squad and a few did.

I dont see why we need to compare ourselves to other countries when we dont have similar playing numbers. What they do is irrelevant to Ireland

We dont need to compare ourselves to anyone to be honest. Just what works for Ireland. Not what someone else is doing

I think, could be wrong, the premise here is that putting players into the international team will make them better? I dont think that happens. If it was the case then international coachs would just keep on firing in new players and have a squad full of stars.

Also as we seen last year, fans don't want to see new players in if the team loses. Just look at the reaction to Prendergast going into the team, he was slaughtered when Ireland lost to France and in reality the issue was in the forward. No 10 was going to change that result

People want new players into the team, then Ireland loses a game and they go after the player. Prendergast, P Jackson and many more have had the same happen to them.

In terms of Farrell, if he done a France on it, dropped all the senior players, put in a load of young players, he would be sacked if Ireland has a terrible 6 nations and autumn

This is also a great point and part of the reason management (rightly) don't give a toss about what is said outside the camp. Lowe struggled a little in his first 6 Nations and there was a cohort who wanted him booted back to leinster. we're 2 Six Nations removed from the world cup and have had 2 different starting tens go through a full tournament (Bar the last italy game) and somehow that's wrong as well for some people.

The team will be working on a wider plan for the world cup. (Maybe it's a sh!te plan, who knows) but we'll find out over the next 2 years. So far in the post world cup years we have a Six Nations title (with McCarthy/ Crowley being new starters) and a drawn series in SA (Casey and Crowley and Osborne starting, Frawley being the hero)- Then a really poor Six Nations and 2 bad losses to the All Blacks, so a very mixed bag of a 24 Months . At the moment it seems like the general trend of the team is downwards, but maybe this is the time for that?

I refer to this post which done the work for me

The stats don't back up this so called "issue"

Anyway it's been done to death

The fact is "fans" don't want players or new players in the team, this has been proven with prendergast and others over the years. They want players from their province and then dress it up as wanting rotation.

If the player rotated out of the team is from their province, even if not playing well, they want that player back in

We can't live our life just constantly focusing on RWCs.

There were Grand Slams and 6 Nations' Championships there to be won in both years, and we haven't won enough of them to turn our nose up at them now.

This window now - 2 years out from the next RWC, is time enough IMO to start focusing on what the team will look like by then, and I'm hoping we'll see some options emerge over the next few weeks.

I genuinely don't think we're overrun with excellent options though.

Ire

Irrelevant, you can only pick 23 players er squad.

It’s hard to tell what player has been ignored because how many have been given a chance?

We whinge about “a lack of pace” yet select Lowe and Osborne in the back three and send someone like Baloucoune, who has insane wheels, with the A squad…and the likes of Stockdale in the stands…so maybe start there.

Here’s a mad thought, if you want pace in the team…stop picking players that aren’t…you know…quick.