Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

these schools have plenty of resources to put towards sport because the state pays teachers salaries so fees tend to go towards smaller classes and teaching/extra curricular resources, like sport.

This is true of every private school in the country - c. 50 schools.

But, having gone to one of these schools, you should understand that for many of them, and parents/alumni, jct/sct is an arms race and their ambitions towards it are almost purely cultural and abstract. It is a shared culture to prioritise rugby which is the social glue that allows these schools to express class solidarity.

Beyond the absolutely bizarre tangent on expressing class solidarity - the rest of this is making exactly the point I'm making about the culture and significance of rugby in these schools; of how important it is families etc. It's no different to Kilkenny hurling or Kerry gaelic football; this is a bigger factor than just the simplistic cop out of money.

There are probably 10 schools in that basket, they produce a lot of rugby players, and also business men, barristers, etc.

I genuinely have no idea what people think the relevance of this is to the production of professional rugby players.

What Leinster Rugby do incredibly well, and up until now, materially better than the other three provinces, is the level of support and coaching they do around the province, their talent identification, their underage structures and, most of all, the material level of improvement of players after they join the Leinster Academy. Guys like Hugo Keenan, Josh van der Flier, Tom Clarkson, Joe McCarthy are all prime examples of this.

The scale, quality and competitiveness of the competition though, which I would grant you is a factor, has nothing to do with money. It's just there are a higher number of schools which take rugby really seriously in Leinster.

The facilities are good - but there are lots of schools out there with great facilities producing **** all rugby players.

Bandon Grammar is a great example, a good coach rocks up, Regis Sonnes, with a bit of passion for it and imparts that to the players, gets some buy in from them, and all of a sudden you've got a place way out in West Cork producing elite rugby players. It wasn't money that did it there, it was someone who could come along and change the culture and get lads to devote to it.

So instead, they are investing money in Centres of excellence. One has opened in Cork, and there are plans for one in Limerick as far as I’m aware. There are also regional development centres and hubs opening.

These are all good developments that will get the best young players playing together, from an earlier age, and improving at a quicker rate than they otherwise would, while also allowing Munster to cast the net a little bit wider than they otherwise would.

Fwiw - I agree with all of this, think it sounds like absolutely the right approach, and would hope it starts to pay dividends. I just think it's something they should arguably have maybe recognised and taken some steps on sooner, but you can't fix that now.

I was talking about the previous AI games, in response to FTD mentioning they weren’t Farrell’s selections in the 24/25 season.

But I think you’re right, Easterby was only in place for the 6 Nations?

The fact he stayed with Farrell’s incumbents is exactly the broader point I was making.

We have one in the last three seasons

Yeah, it obviously needs money, but hardly an insurmountable funding challenge surely?

We’re moving the point away here a bit from the original argument. My pointy was that people kept making the “money” argument for why Leinster schools are so good at producing pro calibre rugby players, and it now seems you’re broadly agreeing with the argument that there are a lot more moving parts to it than just that?

For someone who's only 21 I'd say he's played exactly as you would expect someone of his age to play.

I've always maintained he has a high floor rather than a high ceiling.

Yeah they haven't experimented at centre, but it's not like fans appreciate when they do give players a decent run to build depth. Just look at the last example of giving a player gametime to build depth. Sam Prendergast.

Giving Sam the run in 2025 was even framed as giving him experience so he and Crowley could fight it out in a relatively equal footing. But the fan reaction wasn't to wait and see. It was game by game reactionary outrage. So calling for experimentation is fine, but fans won't reward it unless the experimental player is already an appreciable improvement (and then it's not an experiment)

You're absurdly dishonest. He had been out injured for about 3 months, that is why he didn't make the 23 for the final. Stop being so ridiculous.

basket case is a poor choice of phrase. He was written off as too injury prone by many / most , and then….