Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Preach!

People in here are just so determined to be negative.

It depresses me a bit to think that there are people out there and this is their default setting. Feck positivity and hope when you can just be miserable all the time.

If there were better players who were younger then they’d get those spots. There aren’t. That’s the problem. Our selection policy isn’t where the issue is.

Every country in the world goes through peaks and troughs in terms of talent development. Even the biggest. Just look at England and France. The two biggest and best resourced countries in world rugby. Not even they are immune to it. We aren’t either.

I think a lot of people just seem very entitled tbh. There’s some sort of expectation that there are always going to be top class players there to slot in when the incumbent gets towards the end of their career. But that’s not always going to be the case. And we’re seeing that now. That’s not a failure that someone needs to be blamed for, even though that seems to be the go to response. It’s just the way these things go.

Right now Ireland has better and more consistent depth than ever before. We can probably operate at a consistent level even with a few injuries. And we have some very good players. But by and large our players are simply good. We don’t have many average or poor players but then at the same time we don’t have many top level players either.

So as I said before, staying in the top half of the 6Ns and keeping our ranking about where it is would actually be a real positive. Because very few other countries have been able to do that during their troughs. And if we as supporters have realistic expectations of the team we can find those kinds of positives far easier.

I'm quite optimistic about the future. We have some weak points in the squad, with ten being the main concern but overall this is the best squad we've had in a long time IMO.

This would be a reasonable guess at our starting 15. Earls or POM could come into it but it’s very hard to be sure with the back 3. There are 5 players over the age of 28. 7 players 25 or under. The notion of and aging team just doesn’t match up to the reality of the squad.

Andrew Porter 25

Ronan Kelleher 23

Tadgh Furlong 28

James Ryan 25

Iain Henderson 29

Josh VDF 28

Jack Conan 29

Caelan Doris/ Gavin Coombes 23

Conor Murray 32

Johhny Sexton 36

Bundi Aki 31

Garry Ringrose 26

Jacob Stockdale 25

Hugo Keenan  25

Robert Balacoune 24

with the obvious number 10 issue, the age profile of our squad looks good there. A very good mix of youth and experience.

Good God! I saw Porter started a game a LH but i didnt realise it's 3 games! This sounds like its done and dusted!! That is a massive mistake. I presume its driven by Farrell and IRFU giving the green light to Alaalatoa?

.

Oldest 23 possible from the squad, still not too bad.

Healy 34, Herring 31, Bealham 30,

Beirne 29, Henderson 29,

O'Mahony 32, Conan 29, Van der Flier 28,

Murray 32, Sexton 36,

Earls 34, McCloskey 29, Aki 31, Conway 30,

Zebo 31.

Kelleher 23, Kilcoyne 32, Furlong 28, Dillane 27, Timoney 26, Gibson-Park 29, Carbery 26, Lowe 29.

Yes. Thats the way id see it. Although i thought he was coming in to replace Bent at the time. Bizarre

So we could have Finlay Bealham as the replacement TH v NZ?

And yet it is still better than everyone else objectively speaking. Haven’t England finished 5th twice now under Eddie Jones? France have a number of 4th place finishes. By the resources logic we should always finish behind them. We don’t and haven’t. Also by the resources logic, they should never have finished so far down the table. Yet they have.

The post above is almost the definition of entitled. You are very blasé, almost dismissive about Ireland finishing about where they should and will really only be happy if we over-perform. In sport more than anywhere that’s a recipe for frustration.

If we finished 3rd in the next 3 6Ns running I wouldn’t deem it a success. But I also wouldn’t deem it a disaster. And it would mean a decade in the top half of the table, which no other team will have managed. I won’t be celebrating that, but I will recognise it as a positive. Because it would be.

What’s the fascination with taking teams who have been hugely underperforming for prolonged periods and using them as a bench mark for stuff? Aussie rugby has been in the toilet for years. And let’s not forget that Rennie also brought 33 year old Cooper back because, wait for it, the 21 year old he had initially backed wasn’t up to it.

So it’s better to wheel out a very clearly inferior player, against arguably the best team in the world? For the sake of what, experience?