Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

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.

I would debate that we're comfortably in 5th at the moment. Only a defeat of England in 2 weeks time would change my mind on that.

The difference is the guys Ryan & Timoney are proposing to replace did not play well last Thursday; Loughman did.

Replacing Stockdale with Lowe just means Lowe dodged the Paris bullet and gets rewarded with playing Italy at home for his poor form. It would be a pointless change.

If we’re trying to be positive we can’t ignore the impact of the Lions tour on those who travelled. They have had minimal downtime since pre-season 2024 so they must be fatigued, especially mentally, which may account for some of the poor start . They will recover, but probably not until next season when they will have a proper break and pre-season

Brex out for the Italians (big loss) however Capuazzo and Varney back for the game.

We’ll definitely be underdogs but I doubt it’ll be 2 score underdogs unless Ireland are dreadful this weekend and/or England are impressive. I suspect it’ll be like 7-8 points underdogs

Just for the sake of clarity, by "2 score underdogs", I meant in the 8-14 point region so we're not a million miles apart there.

Yes the Schmidt era has a significant gloss from France blowing hot and cold for the entirety of it but the collapse of Wales is on a whole other level. France could still show up throughout that period and notably ran England close in 2017 away from home, while currently Wales are utterly spent as a competitive force.