Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Harry Byrne is the best fly half and goal kicker in the country.

9. JGP, 10. Byrne

21. Doak, 22. Frawley

I would hope Doak would come in for Casey. He is really not good enough at this level. He has been given too many chances and is still woeful

VDF comes onto the bench instead of Timoney

Beirne to 6

Doris to 8. Conan to bench

Izzy drops to the bench

Odogbu drops out

I also noted ringrose taking a heavy strapping in the second half. He may need to be replaced.

For Wales and Scotland yes, give it a try.

For England, jgp, Crowley, Doak, Byrne.

I’m more concerned about our scrummaging than anything else. How are we going to prevent a similar collapse, or ascent heavenwards, against England?

Agree,you can win at home with a dodgy scrum but rarely if ever away.Maybe Edogbo heft is a must at least for 50 mins till their props run out of steam.Cant see Farrell playing Edogbo from start so I think we will just need to swallow the inevitable unless we can keep knock ons to single figures.New reality ,you can't hold your scrum against opposition put in you are in big big trouble,some will say same as it ever was ,but it seems somehow more stark nowadays.

He is the best option at 13.

He is also the only option at 13 and if he is injured then a big problem need fixing and the solution is something like Tom Farrell, Aki hastily going to the CAS, Osbourne, James Hune, Dan Kelly etc etc.

When would Aki go TO CAS

So where do Ireland go from here. Firstly, Italy were excellent and realistically unlucky not to leave with a victory, we should be calling that out more. Ireland though were very poor and have been for some time, I'm not going to get into the 10 debate, I am more concerned with our poor scrum, how little our "frontline" players seem to be able to play, whens the last time Dan Sheehan made it past 50 minutes, and Furlong got destroyed in the scrum when he came on. The coaching seems to be lacklustre, thats my problem, all these players havnt fallen off a cliff in the same few months in terms of performance, but I do think its all got very comfortable. One of my big bug bears is these warm weather training camps, jolly for the boys, warm weather camp to play games in Ireland, England and France in February and March, hardly needed, theres no bite, no fight …Little competition for places, Balacoune is what 26 or 28 and thats his first 6 nations game and said in an interview afterwards that it almost seemed impossible to get into the squad, TOT being played out of position, why when Milne, unless he was injured, did well v France. Whats our game plan anymore, we kicked the leather off the ball last week, not as much this week, we seem to have no identity. Compare that to France, run from everywhere, offload, no matter the opposition.