Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Crowley is better than Utility, he is a top class international 10…

Prendergast is a generational talent if he could tackle better than his grandmother… He is getting better but team know to target him on that weakness.. His kicking and descisions and skill on the line is very good. International teams have guys trying to figure him out for over a year now and they are still trying to crack the da vinchi code

Harry is better than his brother, actually way better but really untested. Even this season, he has had 6 starts for Leinster, Sharks (Home), Zebra (Home) & Dragons (Away) are all second string teams.

It would have been better if it was Saturday Night game.

It could have been played 7:10pm our time quite comfortably.

Winter Olympics has only Womens Ski Jumping and Swiss v Canada Womens Ice Hockey to compete.

No Premiership and Nantes v Lyon in french league(attendence last time was 32,000 (not a sell out).

No Boxing title fight at that time.

Phoenix Open in Golf but coverage doesn't start until 8:30pm

No Rugby being played in France or Ireland at the time or even UK.

So they should have gone to own the night for Rugby, it would have huge tv audience.

We talk about expanding the game, why not give us prime spot.

RTE and Virgin it turns out have also being offering their allowance of 2 in game adverts to potential clients. Thankfully none have been sold as of yet.

Ireland simply haven't got to grips with the shift in the "meta" to aerial contests. We're playing that game too, but we haven't got the fielders to regather the ball. And we haven't the defensive fielders to cover the France attacking kicks.

We've seen that we still have the ability to generate scores through multi phase rugby, but you can't play that game all the time anymore.

Osborne is a centre not a fullback, needto start playing players in their best position.

Virgin Media highlighting the positive play between Prendergast and Crowley switching at first receiver and how it allows both an extra split second to pick a pass and put a player through a gap. Leinster have played better with two distributors in the backline. Would like to see that with Ireland.

We Will struggle against Italy next week, Brex and Menoncello could tear us a new one

Their centres are excellent and probably the best in the championship but Irelands pack should have too much next week. Could easily see a close game but would be a massive upset to lose at home to Italy, even with their big improvement and our decline lately.

We were pretty poor in Rome last year. If Italy don't have any major injuries after this weekends game they will make a game of it next week in dublin.