Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

The team has rediscovered it's cutting edge after a long time of substandard outings. Suggestions of filling the team with subs for Wales is foolish. This is a Championship, not a free game in the CC. There is a huge amount of cash and prestige at stake. Running the dirt trackers against Wales would be the height of folly. I would imagine the 23 from Saturday will be bursting with energy again and all will want to play at Home in front of our own fans. They will want to back up the win.

As I pointed out above, despite our steamrollering of England in most facets of the game, we still conceded 3 tries and only heroic efforts stopped then scoring more, not just the McCloskey and Baloucoune tackles too. There were a number of times when England were within a gnats chuff of scoring. WE did hold them out of course. Looking back at England's loss to Scotland, they were unlucky in conceding the 2 tries that they gifted to Scotland. Genge's howler was uncharacteristic and Ford's drop goal charge down was stupid and not something he would have done 99 times out of 100. That was 14 points given away and they lost by less than that. Scotland were very lucky then and very lucky against Wales who also should have won. Seeing these 2 future games as gimmes is naive. Best side we have both times please. Players can show their worth back at the Provinces. Let's stuff them, never give a sucker an even break.

Lol, have you watched any game he's played? He's kicking regularly. Maybe the coach wants that but he's definitely doing the 10s job a lot.

I find it funny that you want to drop JGP to give younger lads more minutes but you want Tom Farrell to be given a go at 32 years of age.

I would be pretty certain that Big Al has watched every game Doak has played for Ulster.( He has probably watched every game Nathan;s father, Neil Doak played for Ulster too. He also was a competent goal kicker who also played 9 and 10 when needed, He was a member of the Irish rugby squads in 2002 6 Nations and 2003 RWC. I don't think he actually played. He was also an Irish international cricketer who was a fellow member at Lisburn C.C. with me.)

Nathan isn't a 10 playing 9. It's very simple. He is a 9 who can goal kick to a high standard. In a break glass in an emergency situation, he can put in a shift at 10 at which he is more than competent. Do you think players like Morgan Parra, (9), Ellisalde,(9), Ramos (15) and Greg Laidlaw (9) are / were all 10s masquerading as other positions? They all could and did play 10 when needed. Michael Kiernan was a goal kicker for Ireland for years who played centre. As was his uncle Tom, a full back , for years. Michael wasn't a 10 pretending to be a 12. Ireland ..and others… have a fixation that only the 10 is the one who kicks at goal. Daft thinking,

I'm not ruling him out at all, all I'm saying is, if Farrell has Casey (as he has at the moment) as the back up to JGP then he needs to give him more game time there. I'd be saying the same if Doak was his preferred choice and only getting 7 or 8 minute here and there.

After your comment re TOB two weeks ago and how that actually turned out over the weekend I’m sure you’ll forgive everyone reading your current comments for treating them for what they are, complete nonsense.

🤣🤣 I suppose they should be admired for even turning up on here after being so consistently proven wrong on so many occasions!