Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

And Osbourne to 12 ideally.

How is any coach watching Henshaw this season and coming away with the opinion that he's a viable option at 12? He's looked washed up playing in the URC, let alone international level. Put Frawley there, if you're going to insist on Osbourne at 15.

And I'm not sure JOB is that much quicker than Osbourne

We wouldn't be in this conundrum if Farrell picked players in form. Lowry playing out of his skin this season and can't get a look in. Baloucoune wasting time playing for the A team. Boltyn sitting in the stands. Frawley could be on the 23, given all of the lads picked cover 11-15 to various levels.

There's no excuse for playing lads out of position to accommodate Henshaw

No, because I don't think he's infallable whether he wins or loses. I wouldn't make a ridiculous argument in a discussion forum that the proof that a player isn't good enough, is that he hasn't been picked.

Counter factuals are impossible to prove. Ireland could scrape a win in the 6 nations with this team, or we could have won a grand slam with a better coached or selected team. In a discussion forum, we should be allowed to advocate for changes to our national team without someone trying to shut down the debate with an appeal to authority and unseen training ground work.

We could scrape a win in this upcoming 6 nations at the expense of the RWC in 2027 Its perfectly legitimate to criticise a coach if I think his win now strategy is coming at the cost of future performances.

I think he should be selecting bigger training squads and playing more players in meaningful games in rotation, instead of playing the same players for every big game, and then playing some scratch teams in A games or some rotation for Tier 2 opposition like Japan

This weekend, Thomas Ahern should have been on the bench at least. Play Baird at 2nd row from the start if he wants to give him time in that position, and have Ahern on the bench. If Ryan needs gametime to build up match fitness, play him, but Beirne doesn't need to play. He has already shown he is up to speed in the Leinster game and has plenty of minutes on the clock this calendar year and could easily be rested for the Japan game.

The Tom Farrell story needs telling.

Just brilliant to see a player like that reach the pinnacle despite getting rejected again and again and again.

Coolmine RFC, Castleknock, Lansdowne, 2013 U-20 World Cup (Thnks Mike Ruddock), Leinster academy, London Irish (A's), Bedford.

He only played half a season at Bedford and only because of an Injury crisis at Connacht he was signed up.

A great story and I hope he has a stormer on Saturday.

Mod Edit

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