Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

He definitely didn't start a Champions cup game before he started for Ireland.

He was a starter for Ireland in the Autumn internationals and the Champions cup starts in December.

How many games did he start for Leinster before the Autumn internationals and how many games had Leinster played at that stage?

And how many games had Leinster played by the Autumn internationals?

If he only started two out of six games that doesn't make him the confirmed starter for Leinster even if he was away for some of them.

It may have looked like it was trending that way but nobody can say with any level of certainty that he was the Leinster no.1.

He definitely became Leinster no.1 after he started for Ireland just like JGP did.

Completely agree on Sexton re: learning his trade elsewhere 1st. I'd apply that to a number of the other coaches in the Irish set-up.

I'll give him this though; at least he has come out this week and owned the coaching mistakes they made in Paris.

“I felt even before the French game, maybe underdid a couple of things, and then probably got the balance right against Italy. So hopefully get the right balance this week.”

What did he feel was underdone before the Six Nations defeat to France in Paris?

“Well, we knew that the game was going to be a certain way,” replied Sexton.

“And when you’ve got a short lead-in time to a game like France, we tried to prioritiseise things and probably just didn’t do enough of, you know, the ball in the air, the live contests, picking up the scraps.
“Now, maybe I’m just being critical of myself because that didn’t go that well and we were a little bit unlucky in a couple of instances. We improved things in the second half, but yeah, just putting more of an emphasis on that over the last week and into this week.”

It was surprising to hear that Ireland may not have spent enough training time on the aerial contest and winning scraps ahead of the France clash, given that the contestable kicking game was such a central aspect of their game plan in Paris.

That is refreshingly honest to hear from an Irish coach.

I still have a real gripe with what Farrell said after Paris.

"You've got to show a bit of fight and intent and we lacked a bit of that in the first half, which is very disappointing."

He was wrong to do that and it wasnt the real issue. At all. That was a head coach struggling for answers. The issue was his selections and his gameplan. The latter no doubt heavily swayed by Sextons coaching 'strategy' based on what we heard from him previously on the kicking game.

Of the 6 players he dropped after Paris I expect only James Ryan and the two wingers will keep their place. Which will further undermine his unnecessary comments.

The only person in the Irish setup to have stood up and taken some ownership of the performances has been Sexton. Fair play to him.👏

More importantly hes also the only person who spoke brilliantly about the racist abuse that Edogbo received.

"It's horrible to see that in this day and age, it still exists like that," said Ireland assistant coach Sexton.

"In terms of how he is, he's good. I don't think he would have paid too much attention to it, and I don't know if he would have even seen most of it.

"He's a pretty humble guy, really level-headed, but it's not right, some of the comments that were made.

"I feel for him, I feel for his family, it marred a pretty special day for him."

Again fair play to Sexton.👍️

I cannot wait for the day when the Edogbo, Prendergast and Ward brothers all line out in the same team to represent IRELAND.💪