Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Osborne only went to 13 because Frawley was on the bench to cover FB.

Frawley will be on the bench again, TOB in for Lowe and Stockdale to cover wing.

In the unlikely event Ringrose is out, Osborne 13, Frawley 15, and Aki to the bench.

I don't see Andy changing much after last weekend.

Nah, as I said, I think there's more value in just letting Crowley get more gametime in the 10 shirt and keen bedding in partnerships.

My team for Wales would be:

(15-9,1-8):

Osborne, Baloucoune, Ringrose, McCloskey, T O'Brien, Crowley, Gibson-Park, Loughman, Sheehan, Clarkson, Ryan, McCarthy, Beirne, van der Flier, Doris

Reps: Kelleher, O'Toole, Furlong, Edogbo, B Ward, Timoney, Doak, Frawley

Wouldn't be surprised to see one of Izuchukwu or C Prendergast there instead of Bryn Ward though.

For Scotland, I'd be bringing Furlong back in to start, Conan back into the bench and rest on form.

Mod Edit

Warning issued.

Something we've seen this season is that players from the provinces other than Leinster are plenty capable of excelling at test level, but many have never played a European knockout; for Ulster its 7 years since they played in a 1/4, Munster haven't seen a semi in 6 years while Connacht are getting to knockouts only in the challenge cup. Using Europe as a measure for whether players are 'ready' is unrealistic given the performance of the provinces. But we can see form the Ulster lads that they're more than ready. I'm not disagreeing with eh observation about refining their game in green rather than at the club, but the Irish coaches do need to recognise that waiting for guys to perform a the highest level simply isn't happening for a lot of our players.

Agree on Timoney, he hasn't put a foot wrong and looks like a proper test player. He needs as much game time, and as many starts, as possible while keeping VDF firing and hungry. 7 is a position where we haven't had any depth until Timoney got involved.

Interesting question you pose.

Hypothetically speaking here

Ange Capuozzo

Would he get into the Irish team ahead of Keenan?

I bet he wouldn’t. Even though he’s a superstar attacker.

So what does a head coach do?

Change his team philosophy to maximise the attacking genius at 15 or stick him at wing?

Just trying to draw a line here between the talents of Casey & Doak.

Neither are superstars in the Capuozzo sense and therefore you pick the player best suited to the teams style or role you want him to play.

A lot of the commentary is on areas where we did well against England. What about the scrum? Admittedly, we looked better than we did against Italy but we’re still highly vulnerable. Is there anything encouraging to report or suggest?

Do you still think Balacoune can't tackle?

We were lucky. We could get into much deeper trouble if the ref got fixated on it. Some of the scrums against Italy were embarrassing.