Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Nobody is saying that he won’t, just that U20s performances aren’t a solid guide to senior Test rugby ability. Which they aren’t. We’re all hoping Crowley can translate that form to senior level. And his one start is certainly encouraging. But it is still incredibly early days for him.

I know what you're saying but at provincial level there often stuck behind a player who was a fantastic player, take Murray v Casey or an under performing Joey v Healy or Crowley at Munster, I'm a Munster man and Conor Murray was the best scrum half in the world for a few years but time moves on, we have to be brave, look at France with Intamack and Dupont for example.

Look at France, look at France. Okay let’s look at France. They have the biggest league, the most money and highest number of players of any other country in world rugby. Yet they haven’t won a damn thing in over a decade now.

France are not the model to follow. They may be on to something now. Maybe. But how many failures did they need to get there? And can they finally turn things around and actually win something? That still remains to be seen. Although this coming 6Ns is as good an opportunity as they are going to get given the current state of the other contenders.

The likes of Ntamack and DuPont are fairly special players. Once in a generation types. If we had guys like that right now then they would be getting the game time because they’d be demanding it. Our problem is that we don’t have options like those guys right now. They didn’t become that good by getting game time. They got game time by being that good. Some people here could really do with recognising the difference there.

The central contract conspiracy theory just doesn't stand up to scrutiny at all.

Keith Earls, Devin Toner, POM, Healy, Murray, Henshaw, Aki, Kearney

All of them have been dropped from the team at least once since the World Cup

I think Healy has shown enough over the last two seasons that he has a lot of ability. I agree on Crowley as he has not had enough games yet.

What disaster? They have two young 10s who look naturals at this level, it helps when you are actually backed at 10 rather than lynched every time you make a mistake like what happens in this country. Stop trying to use France as a whole to try sidetrack from the actual main point of the discussion.

He’s deliberately trying to move the goalposts throughout. We’re all wasting our time. Stick him on ignore and let him talk to nobody at all. We’ll all be better for it.

No one was talking about Healy in the Ireland context until Munster demolished an absolutely abject Scarlets a few weeks ago. They all looked like superstars because the opposition were a million miles from test level.

We have the right three OHs in the squad IMO.

In an effort to move the conversation on, half backs aside what are people looking for from this series? What would deem it a success?

For me I’d like to see some progress in our attacking game. We have been looking to put more width on things under Farrell and play more. But I’m not sure we’ve figured out where to play what players in order to make that happen. I’m assuming we want more ball players in the back line. Guys who can step in at first and/or second receiver as much as possible. We’d have to have some variety there. But who is being asked to do that? Are they (m)any outside of Sexton who can?

Are there other elements of our game that people want to see kick on a bit, change or whatever? How important are the results to people? What if the performances are rubbish but we are showing signs of developing our game in a positive direction?

People who saw Healy last season were advocating that a) he should be the starting ten for a Munster, and b) in time he could be in the green jersey. The first has to happen before the second is a serious option.