Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Here, wingers make their debuts at 27/28

Our wingers are rarely the athletic freaks you get in NZ. Stockdale is about the only one in the last few years (at least) who has size, pace and attacking ability and he made his debut around 21.

Of the back three in the current 6N squad, Keenan, Osborne, Baloucoune and Stockdale all made their debut aged 24 or younger. If Hansen was fit, he’d be in the same bracket.

Only Lowe (project player) and TOB (ravaged by injury) were older than 24 making their debuts.

If anyone is interested in facts like.

I think the argument would be more the fact that they didn't trust healy for more than a few minutes per game. So they left Porter on for over 70 minutes. Turns out they had a viable option in Boyle who they could have played for the more normal 20 or 25 minutes per game.

Nobody wants to play Porter for 75 minutes per game. That only happened through perceived lack of options. But it turns out Boyle was a viable option who was blocked by Healy, who they didn't really trust

That's the argument I would make.

I doubt it. It's very unusual to plan for a prop to play over 70 mins per game. It's not something coaches do by choice. It made sense for Healy because he was too old to do much around the pitch except set piece. Boyle could move around the pitch and could do the job in the set piece.

I think it they played Boyle earlier, they would have realised he was able to do the normal sub role and play 20 minutes rather than 5 minutes at the end.

Boyle literally got nine minutes against Wales. In the URC final, three months later, he got five. Porter stays on because he has a massive engine, not because Healy was old and if Boyle was as good as he’s now being made out to be, he kept it to himself.

But this is utterly irrelevant. Boyle got two caps in the 6N, it’s simply not credible to say that if he’d had another 15 minutes against France then everything would be different. He’d still have been behind McCarthy in the Autumn. And since he’s out injured anyway, nothing we could have done last year would have made a blind bit of difference for this year.

There is literally nothing to do except see how Milne, Loughman, Bohan and maybe TOT or Bealham get on and hope for the best

he was also a number 8 the whole way through his career until he went into the 7’s programme.

he scored some fantastic tries for Ballynahinch.

This competition is funny. If somehow we get this first win we will be hands down the favourites for the tournament. Lose as expected and they have an obituary for the team in the paper. Of course neither is true, it's just one game.

Let’s take a simpler line of work, the Olympic 100m. Apparently, in the past ten competitions the average age of champions was 24 and Usain Bolt set his record at 22. Obviously, speed is just one requirement of a winger but it does tend to peak fairly early in adult life.

That disallowed try by Tector was exciting. It’s great to see an out-half do that.