Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Conservative coaches, not blooding enough of these ex u20s to provinces or national team, or maybe they never progressed further.

'The IRFU will have no choice but to make a change'????????????

Seriously? Have you thought for one second about that?

I go back to what I said earlier....the issue so much isn't the coaching ticket in terms of focus, skill set and ability to man manage and deliver. At some point though (probably during the Schmidt era) the 15men on the pitch lost or the responsibility for the game plan was taken away from them and put on the shoulder of the head coach...the issue here is that the head coach can only do so much from the stands.

We need to be able to be dynamic, change based on what works and doesn't in the first 5mins and continue to re-evaluate and implement based on what happens, not just wait for halftime or the subs to come on. We need someone who can read a game...not just implement a plan who is on the pitch. There are probably one or two I can think of, but no one does...they need to take some responsibility to change dynamically.

The worrying factor is the coaching teams only tactic is " the team to show more character " 🙄

The IRFU have always been proponents of the sunk cost fallacy alright.

I think that shows how key Sexton was to the success of previous Farrell teams. That game plan was more player driven, which suited that team because they had a leader in Sexton who knew how to vary the approach when needed.

We are lacking that now in our team. We're devoid of real leadership up front and in the backs. I love Doris as a player and a backrow forward. But as a captain I remain very unconvinced. Ever since that nonsense in the post match interview about the acoustics of the stadium messing up Ireland's lineout I've wondered is he captain material. But then again there's no obvious alternative.

I think too there's an element of that dearth in leadership that resulted in Healy, POM, Murray and Sexton staying around as long as they did. Farrell kept selecting Earls too beyond his prime for simialr reasons. I think Farrell struggles with the game management side of coaching in the absence of natural on pitch leadership.

My Italy team

Loughman

Sheehan

Clarkson

McCarthy

Ryan

Beirne

VDF

Doris

JGP

Prendergast

Stockdale

McCloskey

Osbourne

Baloucoune

Crowley.

16. Stewart

17. Milne

18. Furlong

19. Edogbo

20. Conan

21. Casey

22. Byrne

23. Ringrose

I’d think ROG’s disciplinary record and failure to rebuild LAR in the last few seasons would go against him. He’d also need to give up his media obligations (newspaper article, OTB regular and analysis) to take the job. Would he be keen to leave La Rochelle? From the outside in he seems to have a lovely life there. Would he want to move back to the fishbowl of Ireland?

McCall has been at Sarries for a long time now and is moving up at the end of the season. Not sure he’d be looking to relocate his life at this stage of his career or indeed life. I would have thought the right moment for him would have been after JS left when his stock was at its highest.

Whoever replaces Farrell, for me it’s only a matter of time and he won’t make the World Cup, can be Ronan Ogara as he is no worse then the South African coach.
What’s needed now is the IRFU to get serious , new head coach, bring back jones, get a former ref into the coaching ticket, get better coaches.
time also for Irish rugby to grow up, what we all knew was coming is here now, we need to start picking foreign based players. We need to clear the bottlenecks.
yes it will hurt the provinces short term but it will long term breathe life into Irish rugby.

we need the ref in the box like the South Africans do, it helps Farrell and its puts pressure on the match ref.

Drawing conclusions from the 90s on foreign based players is not helpful, doing the same things going forward Is not helpful.
if we let players go abroad we will grow the number of professional players available.
we need to start producing players not for what the provides require but just produce good rugby players ready for all markets.
Why have so many young players wasting their youth at the provinces trying to make the provincial team, why force players to move inter province when they might not want to.