Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Let’s wait until they actually qualify before we start organising standing ovations. At this rate we’ll be giving out medals for turning up

People around here would literally wet themselves if we made past a WC 1/4 final when we are top 5 in the world. Hungary are 30 spots above us in rankings, Portugal almost 60. We have zero pro soccer teams. Beating Portugal and Hungary in the space of a few days is arguably a bigger achievement than the rugby team has ever achieved.

Cool story.

Great few days for Irish Football alright. What's it got to do with the rugby team?

The Cricket team have a game today, should they all do some kind of celebration for the football team aswell? Think there is an athletics meeting this weekend too actually. They should all clap before each race for Ireland getting to the playoffs in the football.

I like football, support a club and Ireland, but there is a strange need for many Irish football fans to talk down every other sport and constantly say how great football is and how terrible rugby, GAA, golf etc is.

You defintiely experienced GAA in an outlier place in that case as that's not even close to the norm.

On the rugby front, team selection is interesting again this week. I would love to see Mccarthy get another start with Porter held in reserve but I could see how that might be too much of a risk. As someone said above the Australia game has quitened some of the doom merchants for a while and taking a step back and looking at it broadly there's been a decent amount of change int he squad over the last year and a half. I do think though if you're not in now it's going to be very difficult to get a sniff of the squad before the world cup (rightly so but tough on a few lads who've been mentioned on here as possible additions like Doak, the Connacht centers, Gleeson etc.) could still see Edogbo / aherne once fit as they are the kind of physical freak athlete who might be dropped in joe Mccarthy style

Poor effort. 0/10. Must do better

in what way was it a poor effort, what reading between the lines am I missing?

He needs to back Crowley or Prendergast. And SA is the ultimate test at the moment.

He needs to back Crowley or Prendergast.

WHYYYYYYYYY?

The RWC is two years away and both these lads are first choice for their province, they are both going to get loads of game time between now and then. There's no need to back one or other, let them have it out with each other.

i think people are over-reacting to some comments.

whoever is chosen to start at 10 on the weekend will be perceived as being in the driving position.

this thread is fast becoming my least favourite thread on this website. I thinkI will excuse myself from further discussion for a few months.

enjoy the weekend folks.

We have decent candidates for those positions and real depth elsewhere, for once. Seeing how good the A team could be gives me some confidence that it’s not as grim as it looked 6 months ago. Mad to think VDF may become a bench option rather than a dead cert starter. And would be nice to see one of the possibles join the party on the wing, there’s still room for another solid pick on the left.

I would definitely go with Crowley, and I'm a Leinster supporter. I can see our scrum and line-out coming under a lot of pressure on Saturday, so if we can win, it'll be built on a good defence, and we all know that's not going to happen when the rest of the team can't rely on the out-half to do his bit.

https://www.the42.ie/ireland-springboks-possible-6879349-Nov2025/

Prendergast, VdF, Ringrose, Aki all may or may not be starting according to Kinsella.