Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Personal opinion. Casey even at half mast is ahead of Doak at peak. I feel Doak is a 10 adapting out of necessity to being a 9 whereas Casey has all the instincts & pace to be a bigger menace & threat.

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Agree with all of this. Most natural 9 to me after JGP & Casey is Gunne. But he’s 2 years younger than Doak / Murphy and not getting significant game time yet due to JGP factor and McGrath being both the ‘go to captain’ for Leo when the nationals are out and showing good form with most Leinster caps. But age is in his favour at both ends of that equation. I don’t worry about the transition as the system is working well

to be fair the only ‘top international halfback’ at the moment is JGP, but others will get there in time including the 10 shirt

As of right now, Gunne is all potential and hype. Scored a nice try in the URC final last year but other than that he’s yet to actually do anything. Murphy and Doak are both important players for their province and actually have a body of work to their name. Gunne should be nowhere near those two until he actually shows something.

People say “oh we can’t play Casey or Doak because they’re not good at X or Y and they’re not as good as JGP”.

But here’s the thing. JGP wasn’t as good as JGP, until he was given a go. Casey and Doak are better scrum halves now than JGP was when he first got capped for Ireland in 2020, when he wasn’t even Leinster’s starting 9. But this was in a time when Farrell wasn’t so conservative and was actually willing to give guys a go. So who’s to say that if they got a run of games, one of Casey or Doak might actually turn out to be quite good? They’re both good for their province. Why not Ireland? We’ll never know if course, because we can’t possibly leave out the great JGP for a game because he’s so amazing. Except once upon a time, he wasn’t.

The problem is, Farrell found a core group of players who could win him games from 2022-23, and ever since, has refused to move on from anyone in that group unless someone retires.

I also think the statements about how poor or inexperienced JGP was prior to getting capped are overblown. Leinster signed him in May 2016 as a 24-year-old who already had 35 games (800+ minutes) of Super Rugby experience under his belt, and he then played 93 times for Leinster, starting 44 times for 3,806 minutes before he made his Irish debut in November 2020.

Unquestionably he improved a lot over that period, with his kicking particularly coming along a huge amount.

Literally whenever someone mentions the possibility of anyone else getting a go at 9, we hear “we can’t because JGP is just so darn good”

Farrell capped a load of guys from 2020-21. Doris, Kelleher, Sheehan, Keenan, JGP, Lowe, Hansen. Fresh talent added to the team who all developed into quality players (some world class) who contributed to some of the best ever Irish performances over the next couple of years.

Has new talent just stopped existing since then? Or has Farrell become more conservative?

So, that’s a no then

He'd started 6 games of Super Rugby when he signed for Leinster.

He was definitely second choice for his first few years at Leinster, but it wasn't clear cut by the time he was capped. But the season before he was capped he played c. 200 minutes more than McGrath and started plenty of games (including URC/Pro14 final).

This idea that "Casey gets one game a year, puts in a 7/10 performance and it's used as evidence why he can never start again" doesn't hold water IMO. Casey has 25 caps at this point, despite having missed a good chunk of time to injury over recent seasons (when he definitely would have racked up more caps). His form domestically has been patchy though this season.

If he's healthy anyway, I fully expect him to be in the squad and play good minutes in the 6N.

Doak is still very young for a guy who's racked up a lot of experience, but he's much improved this season versus the Doak of prior seasons. I expect him to be involved.

this entire debate / thread is about potential, that’s the point. It’s not hype to call one of the up & coming Leinster squad a good prospect. A year ago Sam P/ Gus McC/ Paddy Mc were in that exact same discussion. As I said before an injury or retirement can change the play dynamics very significantly

Is that not part of the point, tho? JGP was, what, 28 before he got his international debut? As far as I remember, he was elligble for the 2019 RWC squad and there were zero calls for him to be included. He was Leinster's 2nd choice scrum-half when he made his debut, which was a bit of a surprise.

I've previously suggested Casey's amount of game time was too low; for example the he only got 22 mins vs Tier 1 nations in the 2024 Autumn Internationals. This season, it was up to 31 minutes. I don't think that's enough for our 2nd choice 9 when our first choice 9 is 34 next month.

All that as part of the argument that Farrell was too conservative and we had an aging squad, and it could catch up with us.

I think it's fair to say I got considerable blow-back on that.

Essentially, on the one hand, you're not saying "we shouldn’t give others a game.". But on the other you're saying Farrell isn't conservative.

Those 2 views don't entirely align.

It's this, very obviously.

If anything - the arguments being made about JGP (and his willingness to accelerate lots of other players over the past few years) illustrate this very clearly.