Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

I wouldnt have any sympathy for Australia myself. If the player is Irish qualified then thats fair enough in my book. I remember the Australia squad that played Ireland in 2018 had an incredible amount of players that qualified under residency.

Koribete (Fiji), Kuridrani (Fiji), Kerevi (Fiji), Naivalu (Fiji), Genia (PNG), Tupou (Tonga), Latu (Tonga).

Personally I'd prefer if Ireland developed their own first and foremost. There is a good number of young 19-21 year olds THPs coming through. Bishti, Niall Smyth, Andrew Sparrow, Alex Mullan.

Kicking stats can be an inexact reflection of a kickers competence. I remember Chris Patterson having brilliant kicking stats but he never took a penalty kick that was much beyond 30 metres. If stats were broken down as to where the kicks were taken from etc that would be far more informative than simply how many went over. Someone a few years ago produced a really detailed analysis of the main kickers of that era involving a comprehensive list of detailed information on each kick. For example, David Humphreys if I remember correctly was rated as the 15th best while ROG was rated lower yet we probably would have put money on it being the other way round.

It is interesting that Murphy has a 'higher' success rate than Doak. It would be instructive to compare the kicks taken by each. I wonder is it possible that Doak attempts longer, wider kicks than Murphy for example. I have no idea if this is so. Just interested. S.P. at U20s seemed to be a fabulous goal kicker. Maybe he has been 'coached' to bits.

xG is stupid like many forms of stats. People don't seem to understand that the math that's used is infinite so it'll be never accurate over a small sample. And a small sample is 5k or less.

I wouldn't use it unless I could run it a minimum of 10k times and even then you are not guaranteed that it will be close to accurate.

Something like degree of difficulty of each kick and a stat not solely about kicking percentage. So attach a point score for each kick. A conversion under the posts gets one point, a conversion from the sideline or a kick from the halfway line in the centre gets three and so on. Accumulate the points and divide by the amount of kicks taken.

SP is an example of a natural kicker who's confidence is shot to bits from the tee.

Nobody can definitely say its a result of coaching. I would say though; coaching certainly hasn't been part of the solution.

He knocked them over from every angle at U-20s (Richie Murphy).

Well personally I don't see any difference between a kick in the first and eightieth minute.

People talk about pressure but that's just a player being badly prepared. It's fine to realise the moment but then you have to go back into your game mode, your ritual before a kick. All players should be prepared for this. It's on the management if they are not.

If you're not going to be first choice kicker in the match day squad, why would you bother with the extra hours of training.

Anybody can be trained to go into their normal routine for every kick.

It's pretty simple really. You can think about whatever you want in advance of your target but once it's time to kick you take a breath and go into your routine.

A similar thing would be the first round of a cup competition. You tell your guys that the first round is exactly like the final. If you lose you are out. The same applies to every match including the final. It's all about training the mind.