Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Not sure what is to be gained this week. We're going to put 40 points on Italy - anything less is a underperformance in my view.

Think Sam need to up his game big time. He needs to learn to use and connect more with McCloskey. He will create the space on the outside channels.

If I can see better 10,12,13 connection, I will be happy

It's pretty much a lose-lose game… Win well and "it was only Italy". Win by a small margin, and there'll be loads of criticism. Losing is pretty unthinkable.

I think we'll see a reaction and I think we'll play pretty well here. Prendergast will get far more of a platform, we should get more go-forward ball, and off that and I expect him to go really well in attack here.

I think Conan, Izzy, and Ryan all starting will make a difference and Doris in place of VdF means that back-row has way more punch than the starting back-row last week. McCarthy needs to step it up tho.

I'm hoping Baloucoune has a big game, you'd have to think a wing spot is up for grabs if he performs well here. We need to be getting him into the game, and in that regard, we need more from Ringrose and Osborne here.

Casey needs a big game here too, but I think we'll see him step up.

And really excited to see Edogbo goes off the bench. (And I think we need to use our bench early; we saw that last week in the circumstances, but I think it's something Farrell has on occasion been reluctant to do).

There are potential positives going into this, and hopefully we'll see them.

Disappointed for Stockdale who at least tried in Paris. Hopefully a good team showing. Casey needs to stop flapping his arms at every ruck and pull out a good performance, he should have the platform to do so and has the skills.

Can't see anything but a win. 10 points or more.

What did JGP do against France that Doak couldn’t do?

Nathan Doak has hit a new level this season and I honestly think the fact that he now knows he is the undisputed Ulster No.9 has helped significantly.

So it got me thinking. If Farrell said to Casey, the jersey is yours for the rest of the Championship I wonder whether that would liberate him a bit.

Maybe the same theory should apply to 10.

He’s played 27 games for Ireland with 10 of them as a starter . That’s a decent amount of starts considering he’s been behind arguably the second best scrum half in the world over the last 4 years.

To be fair, if you look at this Tier 1 minutes going back to the last RWC, it looks as follows:

You're really not giving a guy much of an opportunity to come on and influence the game when they're getting such scant minutes off the bench.

The last time he started was vs SA where he was going well JGP's absence, and was unfortunate with his injury. (And unfortunate at the timing of his injury for the 2024/25 6N).

He's spoken about really well by guys in camp, I'm hopeful we'll see a performance from him here.

Given some of the reactions I've gotten on here in the last week, I don't see any value in going into this a week after the game has passed.

But based on this, I think it's fair to say we'd have some disagreements; imo, it wasn't close to a "pretty solid display of tackling".