Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Completely agree. It's like watching games from 2016, except even moreso… kicking and winning contestables now seems to be hugely over-rewarded since the change to the escort laws, and it's clearly at the expense of fluid attacking phase-play, which is what Ireland built their success on.

When one of our best attacks on Thursday is a bomb into the 22 that Garry Ringrose is a hand away from recovering, you know something is off.

That said, we haven't adapted to it as well as other teams have.

If we're going to persist with this, we need to be selecting our best back 3 players under the high ball. Keenan would make a huge difference here. Mack Hansen would help too (and at stepping in as first receiver). That leaves one wing option.

For me, Osborne is good, but I hate him as a wing option. Imo, Calvin Nash is amongst those next up as being a quality option for contestables.

I think it's more to do with how the breakdown is refereed now.

There seems a very clear trend in refereeing over the past 18 months or so where jackaling players are unduly rewarded, and teams run a high risk of conceding penalties when attempting to play phase-play attack.

This leads to a scenario where teams seem very reluctant to attack from deep, because the risk of conceding penalties is so high.

The real solution to this is the way the French play at their best - a high offloading game which avoids the need to commit high numbers to the breakdown, but's it's obviously not without risk in and of itself. You need to largely be winning collisions to play this type of game.

I struggle to think of any Irish sides who've ever had an awful lot of success with a heavy offloading gameplan.

Yeah, agreed.

There aren't many teams anywhere who've been hugely successful with it as a strategy tbh. Toulouse are so so good at it, but with their quality of players, they'd be successful playing almost any strategy in all likelihood.

It is not just the escort laws. It is also to do with the breakdown. The new laws with regards head contact/croc rolls etc make it harder to remove the jackaller. So the more rucks there are the more likely a turnover is. Even just slowing the ball down. It is much harder to play a high phase count game.

What France also did is a lot of offloading in the tackle to remove the ruck. If we want free flowing running rugby we need to get better at offloading and running support lines.

We also need to have better support lines in the chasing of the contestable. Not just the catcher but others to pick up on the scraps.

I watched the most of the other matches at the weekend. No other team in any way matched the speed/power/accuracy of France. England was probably the closest but even they were probably only approaching 75-80% of what France were bringing.

We also need a reality check. The same French team beat us off the park in Dublin last year with their best player off the field injured.

We then laboured to a narrow victory over Italy and followed that up with an autumn campaign that included losses to an average NZ team and a beat down to SA.

The trend is obvious. Our level has fallen and we're in the pack now behind SA, Fra, Eng and NZ.

England are at the forefront of the game when it comes to the revamped escorting laws. Ford is an excellent kicker and they always have at least three players at every contestable. One to jump and slap back and another two or three to pounce on the ball. It's a very well coordinated effort and one that takes a long time to develop accurately. It's not just what happens with those three or four players. If England win the contestable the entire team then needs to snap into a new attacking shape to make the most of the quick turnover ball against a disorganised and retreating defence.

Ireland, in comparison, look at least a year behind the leading sides. The kicking is mostly fine tbh. JGP hung up some excellent contestables. But our chase and slap down needs so much work. TOB and Stockdale were really struggling to win anything. The odd time we won a battle in the air we made metres in the following phases. It's the best tactic for making those entries into the opposition half. We just aren't that good at it.

What from that analysis would you disagree with?

As critical as I've been of Farrell's conservatism in the past, I can't see him picking that starting 15. But if he does, I think it'd be a huge disappointment…

I like the look of your 15 tho. I'm not sure I love Beirne at 6, but it is a way to get all of McCarthy, Ryan and him into the start 15 so I'd be fine with that. Personally think Crowley needs to start this one at 10, he needs minutes there, with a view to starting Prendergast in the rest. I think that'd make it easier to pair him with Casey, who also needs to gametime too, imo. I've no idea who I'd pick to cover 10 from the bench then tho, think you could make an argument either way….

It does feel like a pretty significant and difficult selection for Farrell this time round tho…

My thinking on 10 in general is the constant changing isn't helping either of them. I think they need to just give one of them a run of games. I would though be in favour of giving Crowley the Wales game to try build some confidence. It looks shot at the moment.

In relation to the bench spot, I think Ireland will be leading with 60 minutes or so gone, but it will be close. I would be rather Byrne on to close it out, mainly due to his kicking in general being better than Crowley. That said if we losing with 20 minutes to go it would be Crowley that I want to bring on. So it really swings on what position they see Ireland being in with 60ish minutes gone.

But this:

Well saying Ireland are “part of the pack” behind the 4 sides mentioned [SA, NZ, Fra and Eng] when in the last year the sides in that pack we beat in comfortable fashion

isn't accurate? Correct me if I'm wrong here but, as you mentioned, England are the only team from that group we've beaten in the last year, and that was a 1 score game. This time round we're away from home versus them, and the're on, what, a 12 game winning streak?

The "beat in comfortable fashion" realistically came from our opponents in our 4 losses vs SA, NZ and Fra (twice).

That's the reality, unfortunately. I think we're currently miles behnd FRA and SA, and definitely behind NZ and Eng. Let's hope we can turn that form around in a couple of weeks in Twickenham, but at the moment, it'd very much be against form and expectation. I reckon we'll 2 score underdogs going into that game.

Italy confirm that Brex is unavailable for selection this weekend. Capuozzo is available however.