Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Yep. Italy have the makings of a very good spine of a team and are far from the walkover win we would have expected them to be a few years back.

Pound for pound, I would be expecting to beat them. However you can't take it as a given anymore.

We are pretty atrocious now by our standards, look we may well win as we are at home , but Italy must be thinking they have a great shot .

Our lineout while the best in a long time in the first half, did regress quite a bit in the second. As Bertie Ahern said, lots done lots more to do!!

What dreadfully inadequate response @ElisaAtWar. Shameful really. 10 minutes in the bin for you.

Intelligent and witty. Go @nr.8. After a while you just get tired. Apologies, I will do better

how would that work or how does it work with contracts. I assume at the start of the year there is a core group of players on central contracts and it’s expected they play the six nations and autumn internationals.

How are players rewarded per game they play for Ireland when they are not on a central with the IRFU and how does the current system essentially require status quo selection to function as in keeping the best players playing in Ireland so they can be managed best for Irelands needs?

Notwithstanding anything else for anyone who has watched Leinster this season lst nights performance was more of the same. Ireland have in the past benefited from the smooth transition from Leinster to Ireland jerseys for the majority of the team and yesterday was the flip side of this. Sort Leinster out first - in the meantime we have to develop an independent plan for the national side and that will allow us to pick players on form not familiarity

Poor result, we gave france too much respect in first half, constant box kicking was not working for us, set piece went well in fairness thought dickson was a real home town ref, missed a lot of French knock ons and forward passes and entering rucks from side too, the mauvacka shoulder charge on Doris when we were a few metres from line was a joke of a decision as was dupont slap down of ball, yellow card all day, we still would have lost but its way harder when being blown off the park ourselves and France getting away with a lot