Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Ah the auld black or white, right or left, all or nothing polar BS. I call people out for moaning all the time and about things that might not even happen and that gets equated to saying people are never allowed to ever moan.

People can moan and have opinions. Of course they can. I do. Moaning [i]all the time[/i] and/or moaning about things that haven’t even happened and/or moaning about almost every aspect of things (“that selection is crap because youth”, “that inexperienced selection performed crap” etc etc) which suggests that the coaches simply can never win. That’s not the same thing.

This forum has been dominated recently by people spending the vast, vast majority of their time moaning, taking pot shots at coaches, taking pot shots at players and even in one case actively hoping a person loses their job. It’s been relentless and joyless and at times pretty pathetic. And the level of context that gets ignored in order to facilitate that behaviour has been utterly crazy. It’s already driven a number of long time posters away from the forum. It’s going to drive others away too. Just so this place can become another 42 comments section of whinging and moaning. I’m sorry if I’m not happy with the near complete collapse in the quality of the discussion here. But hey, that’s my opinion and I’m entitled to it I suppose.

One thing that did make me happy today was the new heritage jersey. I like it. I like it a lot.

https://www.elverys.ie/Elverys/Christmas/Christmas-Featured/Christmas-Irish-Rugby-Range/Canterbury-IRFU-2003-Heritage-Jersey-Grn/p/000000000001118071_GREEN?feefologon=www.elverys.ie%2Ftesting&givexIframeUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwwws-uk1.givex.com%2Fcws%2Felverys%2Fconsumer%2Fclp%2Fmy_cards.py&feefoMerchantIdentifier=elverys-sports-testing&siteName=Elverys+Ireland&siteUid=elverys

Your last sentence is bang on.

Not only are people just pure determined to find negatives in absolutely everything, they defend the negativity by saying its "just their opinion"

Someone whose actively trying to opine such negative thoughts constantly and complain about it all just kinda wears me down. Hence rarely posting or scrutinising this thread.

It's just not good for me. I work hard to keep myself in a good mental state and there's people in here that just wear me down. It's why I stopped visiting the Ireland subreddit too.

It appears the intersection on the Venn Diagram of "Irish forum posters" and "people who find flaws in everything and moan about it" is extremely large....

Life is short folks, it's only rugby, try smile see some good in things. Your mental health will thank you :)

Reading the article in the 42 I think he pretty much is guessing. The way he was phrasing the article didn’t sound anything like some form of inside track. It was just an educated guess from him I reckon. He’s probably not far off of course, as I said this needs to be the warm up for next week. Otherwise next week becomes a complete waste of time at best and a massive issue for our development and consistency at worst. Farrell still has to manage the squad beyond also managing our depth and upcoming talent.

The actual team won't be out until Thursday so yesterday was a bit too early for Murray to have the exact team. I'm sure he will have at least 90% idea of it tomorrow evening

Yesterday he might have seen training and who was taking reps.

Alternatively the 42 makes money by clicks so putting in a few bombs on the team automatically draws more traffic to the comments section.

I think we all know the team for Japan will be at close to full strength. And In a number of positions there is not a lot between players.

Any 3 of Bierne, Ryan and Henderson could be picked in second row.

Any of the players in the squad could start in the in multiple combinations in the back row.

Its a pity the US game was called off last weekend. It think if that game had gone ahead we would have had a number of combinations tried out over the 2 matches.

I'm suprised when that game was called off the IRFU didn't organise a 4th game even for a "wolfhound" team this weekend to get additional game time into players.

Maybe they tried and failed?

With no URC games oncurrently An original squad of 45 or so could have been announced for 2 weeks and then reduced down to 35 or so after this weekend for the last 2 games

I agree. Couple of youngsters in the forwards and a couple more in the backs. See how they go.

Start Kelleher and Doris or Coombes (have the other on the bench). Start either JGP and Byrne or Casey and Sexton. Have the other combo on the bench. Start Hume in midfield or Balacoune on the wing. If they perform ok against the ABs they're ready for the 6 Nations.

We are but I seriously worry if we are going into this game playing Sexton when its clear we have real problems at finding his replacement. When you struggle in a position it doesnt mean you sit back and do nothing and hope the problem fix's itself, it means you go out there and fix the problem. If we have problems at 10 then use the Japan and Argentina games to look at the alternatives.

I’d absolutely hate it if anyone in the Ireland set-up thought like that tbh.

I’d hate them to think that it’s a meaningless game that they are highly unlikely to win. You know, the thing you said in the post I quoted.

You're missing the point completely.

It's not about giving new caps.

I have never once criticised Farrell for not giving enough new caps. He's done brilliantly in that regard.

I'm not sure how Farrell giving new caps in the summer (which I was happy about and never once criticised him for not giving new caps) is relevant to the out half discussion.

Farrell is clearly going all in on Carbery as his no.2 (wouldn't have been my choice but that's the direction he has gone. So what better opportunity than an Autumn international against a side we'd expect to beat to have him steer the ship and gain experience against.

If Carbery doesn’t start this weekend he will come off the bench. He’ll then almost certainly come off the bench against NZ and start against Argentina. How much benefit the extra 30-40 mins vs Japan will be in the long term is very debatable. I’d argue it isn’t going to make much difference come September 2023. So is it really something to be getting hung up on?

The problem I and a lot of others have with this style of posting is that you are effectively setting criteria that you can use against the coach if he doesn’t do things “your way”. What if Sexton starts and he gives both of them 40 mins? That’s wildly different to Sexton starting and playing 75 mins. Yet your position is pretty categorical despite your knowledge of what is going to happen being anything but. You make no allowance for the nuances of what might happen or what the plan might be.

You haven’t acknowledged that the USA game may have led to a totally different approach more aligned with what you are thinking and the cancellation of that game needs to be accounted for. All this stuff makes you seem unwilling to give credit or allowance if the exact thing you want doesn’t happen.

I’d love to see Joey start this weekend. But if it doesn’t happen I also understand why. Because I’ve made at least some effort to consider this from Farrells perspective. Farrell has shown absolutely no issue throwing young lads in once he feels they are ready. He’s also made plenty of effort to look at other options at 10. Hopefully Carbery and Byrne can repay the faith he has shown in them. But we need to acknowledge that this isn’t a coach who refuses to back youth, or a coach who doesn’t have a longer term plan or anything like that. He’s already proven that he is those things. So from that perspective at least we should all be able to cut him a bit of slack.

And maybe I’m being harsh given some of the other posts on the topic. If so, I apologise. I just see so many posts that set out a “if this doesn’t happen then Farrell is wrong” stuff that seems to be designed as a kind of pre-emptive strike.

Well I definetly dont accept sacrificing a game just to give a 10 game time ( thats the mindset of a loser, something we dont need if we want to compete at the RWC) but I agree about playing Sexton being a waste of time in this fixture. Realistically we should beat Japan with any of our 3 10s playing and if anything playing a more experienced team might be detrimental as they may have 1 eye on NZL the following week and may not give 100% and as a result struggle and create a negative vibe with the public, something we dont need going into the NZL if we want to have any chance in that.