Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Farrell was also asked about Stockdale's return from the wilderness, he made a couple of references to Stockdale maturing and "having a word with himself", thought that was interesting.

It's actually pretty informative if people give it ten minutes of their time instead of just defaulting to slagging Farrell off.

Stockdale played in the Autumn last year, so he was back in the fold at that point to some degree at least, and (typically) got injured again. I think people seem to have forgotten that.

He responded well to that first lineout mis-fire to be fair, which seems like it was called on him. He needs to put a run of games like this together, imo to really grab hold of that 6 jersey.

What the actual f*ck are you talking about?

I don't need to Google Dan Kelly. I judge my rugby players on actually watching them and not just reading off the internet.

You made the ridiculous claim that he's a cert to start at 12 at the World Cup in 2 years time and you cited one game against Leinster as your evidence, and then you started harping on about Paddy McCarthy as a deflection tactic because you seem to be of the opinion that others are making the same claims when they are not.

"Up in arms" - ah, so now you're putting words in my mouth. Nobody is up in arms. It a stupid statement to make and I was having a discussion with others about it. You're the one who seems to want to make it into something it's not.

As for saying it's 'very hard to take anything you say seriously' - you must be talking to yourself there mate, because this started with you making a ridiculous claim that Dan Kelly is a 'cert' to start at 12 at the next World Cup in 2 years time based on just one game.

The funniest part here is, it's whataboutery in response to their own claim.

Very hard to know. They seem intent on selecting him at 6 where possible, but I still feel it's a position where Leinster are a little light right now (pending someone like COT or Spicer actually breaking through, if that happens).

I like him in the mould of that big rangy blindside, and definitely adds some power into the pack.

Head injuries to both have ruled them out of this series, not the type of injury normally associated with durability.

The Gleeson thing too was a freak impact incident in the Leinster game.

Not sure any of this points to a lack of durability in any of the players mentioned.

I think the style of play from Ferris & O'Brien was at least as much a feature of their injury history as their size. Would probably put David Wallace in that category too.

If you carry and hit as aggressively all the time as those three did, you're going to pick up a lot of injuries.

Stockdale is a confidence player and his head was seriously not right for a few years there. I do think he's matured and seems to be a leader amongst the Ulster team.

The other thing Farrell said is that Stockdale was concentrating on his point of difference. Rather ominously for the Irish attack, Andy identified that as "beating defenders and scoring tries"...

I don't buy the "one big mistake every game" line. It seems to me to be a vague, undisprovable criticism. I don't know that he makes more than anyone else - I do think his mistakes are seized on and dissected. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Confirmation bias.

The player he's replacing turned the ball over four times last game, kicked a ball long over the dead ball line and let McKenzie (I think?) waltz past him untouched on the way to one of their tries. I don't remember any posts about his error count, and what they cost the team.

To be clear, Stockdale isn't the second coming, but "makes one big mistake a game" just seems facile and woolly enough that I don't really pay any attention to it. Especially given we are far from the ultra-processed Schmidt team of yore, when mistakes were unfathomable.

If someone could actually show me a convincing breakdown or analysis of his mistakes vs other players' mistakes, I might listen.

I appreciate you'll have seen a lot more of him over the recent years than myself, but I have seen him play plenty and have concentration lapses throughout his whole career. Maybe they stick out more as they're often of his own making rather than great play by the oppostion exposing him. Maybe its front and centre in my mind as he dropped a pretty simple kick off receipt against the Bulls recently which led to them scoring. It was a brainfart, but he's had quite a few over the years and I don't think he ever managed to eradicate them from his game. You can get away with those in the URC but not in tight matches at international level unless you're contributing a lot on the other side of the ledger like he did in 2017/18 to compensate. It's not fair to expect zero mistakes from any player during a game, but unforced errors like that kill a team.

I hope you're right and that it is confirmation bias on my part as we could do with some serious cutting edge out wide but it won't make much difference if we can't get quality ball to him which is something we couldn't do for our wingers last week.