Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

In recent years Ireland have started the 6N very well compared to other teams before things level out towards the final round or 2.

It was often pointed out that this was in large part because the sizable contingent from Leinster were used to playing together and the club vs country playing style weren't a million miles removed from each other.

So it's perfectly logical to "blame" (he's responsible for winning games with Leinster only) JN for our lack lustre start this year as the 2 systems are no longer interchangeable.

The return to form against England is probably due to time spent running reps of the AF system

I dunno, what teams in this highly competitive championship are going to be playing 4 different no.10s in rotation across the 5 games? That's not a realistic expectation. Jack and Sam will share the minutes and rightly so. Better to have the 2 front runners dividing the playing responsibilities between them rather than diluting it across 4 players.

That’s what I would do. Keep the ball away from Ireland’s backs, make it a scrummaging contest and hope for a card.

Ah look, we do not have an outstanding ten at the moment but we do have 2-4 very capable guys who can do a satisfactory job depending on form and the game we are playing. Crowley on Saturday did grand, a few mistakes that didn’t cost us dearly and a lot of stuff that kept us moving in right right areas and decent decisions. Competition for that spot will give us the best out of that group, maybe one of them will pull ahead but for the moment none clearly the incumbent.

Andy Farrell offered £1.2m pa package from Saracens post World Cup apparently from Ruaidhri O’Connor

I dont follow rugby super closely - but question for ye, has Aki ever played as well for Ireland as McCloskey has the past few games? Or even Henshaw or Ringrose for that matter.

He has been absolutely outstanding.

Aki was player of the tournament at the RWC2023.

Henshaw and Ringrose have had purple patches, though it's hard to recall either of them being especially excellent in the last three years or so.

Definitely Big Stu's time now though.

Tbh, Crowley's last 2 performances are as close as we've seen to someone owning the jersey in a long time. He deserves to to be backed and start the next 2 games at a minimum, imo.

He deserves to own the 10 jersey for sure, but both he and Sam remain flawed and there isn'ta whole lot between them. Look back at the full game in Twickenham, there was a lot of both good and bad from Crowley. The fact that we were dominant in collisions, were clinical with try scoring and hige defence in the first 20 mins or so had a huge amount to do with how we all feel about his performance.

Jack was good against England. But the main thing he did was just let JGP cook. He didn't do anything especially impressive himself. He just kept the attack flowing. With Sam's poor performance Jack deserves to retain the starting spot. But I don't think there was anything in his performance to say that he is now the owner of the 10 jersey. He still had some poor kicks, missed a bunch of tackles and threw an intercept. Besides the 2 props he was probably out performed by every other Irish player on the pitch.

I wasn't trying to be very negative on Jack's performance. Like I said, he played well. But I think with the performance of every other player around him I think Sam/Harry/Frawley could have had a similar game.

Considering Sam's form is why I said Jack deserves to retain the jersey for the remainder of the competition. I just don't think there was anything in the performance to put the question to bed of who is Ireland's starting 10 leading up to the World Cup.