Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Fantastic post. More of this type of thing!

You cite Wales and England getting to semis as a success. They didn't go on to win so its no better than going out at QF stage. That is a totally overblown so called failure. Ireland have been more successful than we could ever have hoped in recent decades.

A lot of Irish rugby fans (including myself) are post professional era so unless you are keen on sports history and stats the idea that Scotland were once considered a bigger better team than us is unbelievable.

As someone fast approaching my 70s I can remember a time when a win or two in the 5 nations was a success. I find when reading some of the posts on here remembering my father's words 'Stop complaining. You young bucks have never had it so good'

You need to experience the bad to appreciate the good.

I think thats fair and thanks. I just personally dont see the QF defeats as being the massive deal everyone else sees it as.

Obviously, if Ireland had won a WC that would be massive. If we had reached a final, and it had been like the NZ QF, that would also be a major achievement.

If we had reached a semi-final, and lost it, like Wales and Argentina have done a few times — I just dont see it as a big deal if we did or didnt.

On the other, long term - I am not that close to the game to know. But I would guess the u20s is a predictor of where the game will go for the next five years. To that end, Italy's u20 team is definitely on an upward trajectory.

Also, I think its unlikely we will benefit so much from imports as we have in the past - take Stander, Aki, Hansen, Lowe, JGP out of the Irish team; what does our performance look like? If you coach any team - and say, ok I am going to lose three of my best six players - its not the same team.

I think - WC QF or not, we have been close to the best we can be. Thats clearly not been the case for England, or until recently, for France.

And also we only need to look at Wales.

Won't get in to the bigger debate, both sides have good points, but I think your last 2 lines is a bit of a hard truth. That team was once in a generation. Honestly I think you could say out of the 6 Nations, Wales haven't had a team that good since the 70s, England since 03. Scotland probably never? It's why the negativity on here about the team declining is so annoying, as if it's because of some horrendous mismanagement

I do actually agree wioth you that the QF thing shouldn't be the massive all consuming negative that some make it out to be, but I do think unfortunately the weight of that history might have cost that team the 5-10% that lost them that game.

Aye, tyranny of size.

We're a small country inevitably reliant on "golden generations". For all sports that means the sheer unlikely coincidence of having a core of quality players at the one time. Soccer has gone through a long dreadful period after some years of success. Talent just wasn't there. Rugby will go through the same lull. We don't have the population (also huge competition for the talent there is between sports which sets us apart from New Zealand, for example) to sustain decades of success in anything.

On the upside it's the leaner times that leads to the excitement when things are on the up again.

We are heading into a leaner time for the national side but it will turn again.

It's not that simple and "golden generation" plays down the amount of intelligent work and decisions that went into teams like Irish rugby and Limerick hurling. Equally it's massively forgiving of the sht shows that are Irish soccer and Welsh rugby.

Behind almost every golden generation or massive collapse is a story of genius administrators or incompetent and or corrupt ones.

By my reckoning come tomorrow only Doris, McCloskey and Osborne will have started all 5 games. That has to be unheard of for Ireland in the pro era.