Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

I think Furlong may have struggled with injury early in his career, he only managed 220 mins in his first two seasons out of the 20s. Marty Moore made his breakthrough at that time and was very impressive, but I remember the narrative at the time was that Furlong was an even better prospect who would surpass Moore when fit.

Furlong then got 25 games in his third season (14/15) and made his Ireland debut in the world cup warm ups.

Yep Tadgh was a slower burner compared to some others.

And Moore and Ross were top top class established tightheads at the time so game time would have been harder to come by

Player development is essentially a lottery. Look at Kelleher and Sheehan. Kelleher was ready for top level senior rugby about 2 seasons before Dan despite them being similar ages

Speaking of Moore, is he just terrible now? Hasn't gotten a sniff of the Ireland camp despite being a solid starter for Ulster. I like bealham, who i think is rather unfairly dismissed at times, but you'd think Moore would be worth a look again.

How does that leave us for likely bench cover? Treadwell I assume or am I missing someone.

Im delighted to see Joe McCarthy get the call up considering he's only played 4 professional games of rugby, the fact he's the sort of player we dont produce often (A big monstrous SR) I can see why Andy was interested in calling him up. I know I'm getting way ahead of myself so forgive me but I would even see him as a massive outside bet to start for Ireland at the RWC because he could be the player that gives us that power that we may need against the big physical sides that we've been crying out for, him being athletic doesn't hurt either!

I'd say we won't see much change next week, something like below I'd expect, possibly Henshaw or Herring might start but I wouldn't think any other changes:

Heard a few people say this. He is very tall for a hooker (6’3’) so probably looks lighter than he actually is. Not sure he would want to put on more than a few kgs or else you lose his USP.

Ireland were favs on Saturday with most bookies - not by much but they were favs

I never thought I'd be quite so furious in the aftermath of a bonus-point victory in Twickenham. The scrum humiliation, the indiscipline, the asinine off-loads, the poor decision making. A 15-man England would certainly have beaten us, or so I thought at the time. However, I've since come around on a couple of points.

The broad context is, we now sit two points behind France in the table. They can actually draw with England this weekend, and we can win the Championship, despite losing to them. Why? Tries. Lots of them That's what we now do. A TBP against Scotland would mean the max points from 4 out of 5 matches this year, better than the 3 we secured during the GS year in 2018, (in the remaining seasons under Schmidt where bonus points featured, it was 2 and 1). In the only game we'll (likely) not get a TBP this season, our 3 tries nonetheless helped secure the LBP.

So whatever way you chop it up, tries help. We were pining for more of them under Schmidt. We are now getting them. But of course, with every yield there's a cost, and the cost right now for switching to our new try-oriented style is occasionally poor decision making. The process is not yet so automatic for the players that they can turn it on and off when needed. So we'll see daft offloads, knock-ons etc. We'll see a more frantic game than is needed against 14 men. We'll see us renege on playing it safe as our scrum is being harrowed.

But I have no doubt that the more we play like this, the better we'll become at deciding when NOT to play like this. If that makes sense. Right now, they'll be working solely on bedding in the new system (and state of mind) during the very limited training windows afforded to International sides. The fear right now is surely that any focus on "playing the old way" might undo the learning and progress over the last few years. So they're right to push it. But hopefully as that learning curve reduces, and the style becomes more automatic, they'll have more mental capacity to slow down the tempo and use territory and defense when needed.

So with that said, hats off to Conor Murray and to a lesser extent Jack Conan. The oft maligned "solid-but-not-spectacular" players who were EXACTLY what we needed to tighten the screw in the second half. Encouraging too was Murray's crisp, quick passing, particularly in the phases leading up to Conan's try. I wouldn't rule out him re-establishing himself as our starting 9 at some point.

"hopefully as that learning curve reduces, and the style becomes more automatic"

I am not sure about this. When are they going to practice the new style of play so extensively that it becomes automatic? You are right to state that the training opportunity for International sides is very limited. I can't see us perfecting anything based on a few matches spread across 18 months.

(PS Sorry about being a pedant but a 'learning curve' gets steeper as proficiency improves, it doesn't reduce.)

Yeah thought at the time we should have had an advantage. JGP i think was in front of Ringrose(would need to watch again to be sure) so technically because it came off of Ringrose boot he was ahead of the kicker

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard "Ireland only won in the last 10 minutes" today as some detraction from the performance - have I missed something here? Did World Rugby bring in a rule that the last 10 minutes are less valuable than any other 10 minute stretch in the game?

We were not "very poor for most of the match". We played all the rugby and were dominant in pretty much every aspect except the scrum. England played absolutely zero rugby. We had a lot of frustrating errors and conceded way too many penalties and that took the gloss off it.

England were absolutely clueless when they had the ball so unless Charlie Ewels is somehow central to their game plan, I don't think his absence changed much to be honest.