Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

If I had to pick either a full strength Ulster or Leinster 9-15 I know which I’d pick.

Allot comes down to the coaching at each province and Leinster are going backwards at a rate of Boks.

it’s all well and good to say “Stay away from social media” but it is an area of life where players can make extra money with brand deals and influencer perks etc. Majority of professional players will have Instagram accounts.

Didn't you accuse me of this the other day... (wrongfully I might add).

Unless I'm sorely mistaken... it wasn't me and it was just one poster (who I genuinely have never seen elsewhere on here) who liked it.

SP has 60k followers on IG which isn't huge but having followers and creating content is different to paying attention to what people in comments are saying about you. A lot of athletes who focus on the stuff outsource a lot of the management and monitoring. It's straight forward to be business savvy while not getting into the gutter and destroying your mental health. 2 very different arenas.

I’m sure they are, but they’re still living in the real world and Ireland is small. Even if they aren’t reading stuff themselves, the odds of their friends, family etc coming across stuff is still very high.

Some players have spoken about this before, the thing they find tough is seeing family members upset etc.

Crowley had videos up of him doing extra off season work (I don't follow anyone online but I saw this pop up somewhere, do they all do this?).

I don't think he was playing as bad as was being made out at all on here, certainly not bad enough to get jettisoned after winning the league and Six Nations for a newbie, game-time for both could have been better managed in retrospect. Farrell was right to look at options but not sure he was right to persevere as long as he did, just my take. Anyway, all that said, Crowley clearly felt he had aspects of his game that needed work and went about doing it. Left foot kicking was one and you saw in the hammering v Leinster evidence of the fruits of that work.

I thought Sam would come back this season a better tackler, he really hasn't. He's genuinely the worst tackling player I've seen at pro level. Until he has that sorted I find it hard to see how he'll nail down the jersey at club or international level and we see how high this ceiling is that we've been hearing about.

I've said before, if you're getting an armchair ride and you've to pick between the two 10s SP is arguably the better choice. He's a lovely short passer and picks good options, big boot, organises well. However you rarely get an armchair ride at international level or the business end of the season at club level and he needs to be able to play his part on the defensive side also. You don't see Craig Casey or Mikey Lowry shying from tackles or having awful technique, even though their stature can really count against them. Size of the fight in the dog and all that.

Would love to see SP spend the summer tackling forwards from the academy and come back more ready for that aspect of the game.

He's still young though. I'd be worried that such a fundamental part of his game is largely absent at this level but then again I'm sure with hard work, right coaching and attitude etc. it can improve

Has Osborne not been fairly poor at 12 for Leinster when selected there lately? And yet was very good for Ireland at 15 during the 6N.

I keep hearing this from Leinster fans, that Osborne is a 12 and it's his best position. Yet he started for Ireland at 15 in Keenan's absence and was very good.

It's crazy how the really bad Leinster coaches are in the European final and finished 2nd in the URC table and their players make up most of the Irish and Lions team. Just love it.

He’s a very good coach but there’s a collective amnesia at play here.

Thinking Lancaster could fix Prendergast sort of overlooks how badly H Byrne stagnated under him. Hoping the current coaching team gets fired even if we win on Saturday, overlooks quite how many finals we lost while Lancaster was at the helm.

Lancaster was a failure at Racing and while it’s great to see Connacht improving, they’re coming from a very low base and they’ve a way to go yet to prove anything.

This romanticising of him is a bit odd tbh.

One Munster fan… said he was disappointed because he was 'enjoying the party', and plenty of others liked the post.

This literally isn't true.

Meanwhile you were criticising people for hammering Prendergast while simulatenously being equally happy to hammer Crowley yourself.

And the "wanting Prendergast to fail" claims remain as hysterical now as they were then.

To re-iterate the point I've made from day dot; reasonable criticism is getting lumped in with the nonsense. And then nonsense is being returned in kind.

I've never celebrated Prendergast playing badly. You're just inventing that, and attributing things to me that I've literally never said.

And you're ignoring things that I actually have said; e.g. that I'd have started Prendergast vs France, and the things I praised him for in that game.

At best, it's not true, and at worst, it's hysterical, over-the-top, nonsense. Again.

To your credit, you admitted to leaky that he didn't, in fact, say he was "enjoying the party". Are you also willing to admit your swipe that "plenty other [Munster fans] liked the post" wasn't true too?

In other words, you're completely over-stating what has actually been said on here.

I’ve literally said I hope Leinster win in the Leinster thread! 😂

If you're going to continually ignore what I've actually said and continue to attribute things to me that I haven't said, it's no wonder we disagree… but you're arguing against fiction.

You couldn’t write this stuff…