Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Fwiw, Trimble also mentioned some of his mistakes that included, for example, his effort on Jalibert, his hospital pass to TOB and his intercept.

Stuff that, when you point it out on here, gets you labelled as "desperately wanting Prendergast to fail" by some. It's an over-the-top correction too far in the other direction.

That's my point on this; reasonable criticism too often is getting lumped in with unreasonable stuff. And, ironically, leads to completely unreasonable criticism of those posters.

For someone who doesn't want Prendergast to fail, you've posted about him maybe 30 or 40 times since the game last Thursday.

While I agree about the unpleasantness of the current pile-on, Jacob Stockdale's international-level second season syndrome involved receiving death threats. This has been an issue for some time, and I'd hope there's a robust system behind the scenes to help folk cope.

Crowley's issue isn't his place kicking.

Don't recall anyone saying that but if that's a narrative then it's a stupid one.

I posted on this a few days ago, Doak is the most reliable kicker of those in the current squad. The difference isn't huge but 8% better means making 1 more kick out of every 12 attempts. Maybe adds up to 2-3 over the course of a 6N.

Below is combined URC / European Cup data for this season.

Doak: 79%, 30/38 kicks.

Byrne: 75%, 33/44 kicks.

Crowley: 72%, 36/50 kicks.

Prendergast: 71%, 24/34 kicks.

For context here are the tackle completion percentages for the no.10s.

Jack Crowley: 91%, 93/102

Harry Byrne: 74%, 32/43

Sam Prendergast: 64%, 37/58

And for balance, the number of try assists:

Sam Prendergast: 17 in 478 mins played

Jack Crowley: 12 in 661 mins played

Harry Byrne: 3 in 392 mins played

Based on statistics alone, there is zero reason to select Harry Byrne anyway.

Maybe, just maybe, the coaching team is not very good. Sexton and o Connell were brilliant players but they have no coaching experience. Farrell's message may be getting stale. Throwing the players under the bus last week was not a good look. If Leinster go to the Prem leaders next week they start 10 point favourites. These players are better than they have looked in the last few internationals. Look at Man. Utd in the last few weeks. Same players but they look entirely different with a new coach.

Seeing Bryn Ward doing media this week is interesting. Wonder if theres a chance of a debut, not sure ive seen someone to media who isn't involved in a long while

Yes but his try assists per mins played are very low. Approx 1 every 130mins i.e. less than 1 per game. How does that translate to better offence?

Byrne is worse in defence than Crowley.

Worse in attack than both.

Marginally better than both at place kicking.

If you want a good defender you pick Crowley.

An attacker to unlock defences it's Prendergast. With Crowley in 2nd place.

And if you want to kick goals Byrne will score approx. 1 more kick for every 25 taken than the other 2. Hardly a reason to pick him.

All statistically speaking of course.

The try assists are a relatively simplistic stat in fairness - a player could throw the pass that leads to a linebreak, and a team mate then draws and passes on the final man and the guy who creates the original linebreak gets no assist stat from that.

Opta's analyst hub has a stat on try involvements per 80 mins -

on that stat Harry Byrne is on 0.9, the same mark as Jack Crowley. Sam Prendergast is on 1.1.

Prendergast had a more positive impact on the game in my opinion. He was very good at the lineout, particularly the defensive maul, was decent in contact, and seemed to be unlucky to be penalised for what looked to be a good jackal (would need to see that again though).

I don't think Josh is done or anything but he was very poor at the weekend.

Think this is on the money re: Ward being out in front of cameras.