Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Burns certainly didn't get 'plenty of gametime.' Nor really recently did Carty. Harry Byrne has done nothing to deserve it either. Ross Byrne is very underestimated I think.

Obviously the game changed when Sexton came on I never said or implied otherwise but you'd swear reading your post and others that we were never within an asses roar of scoring until Sexton came on and that wasn't the case. We could have Italy on the sword but for errors from players other than Joey but Joey seems to be the fall guy.

BTW, that's blatantly incorrect

I guess this is about expectations. All I ask of the coaching staff is that they make a decent fist of optimizing performance with the players available to them. Farrell has already done more with our passing game than I thought possible.

The present squad certainly does not have major deficiencies that need correcting. We lost one game by 6 points to the team that won the slam in Paris. We are in need of cover at prop and 10. Everywhere else we are in a good enough place, not to say we couldn’t do with more quality players or that no one should be allowed in but we are in a good place squad wise.

we played okay against an English team that had their dander up and were up for it and misfired against Italy but it’s hard to play in a game like that where it’s won after a few minutes.

on Baird I didn’t mention him at all I’m not really sure where you are going with that, it’s not that I don’t think some of those players might not be good enough to go to the World Cup my point was they need to get past the people ahead of them that are doing it.

It’s not blatantly incorrect. We spent a lot of the first half moving side to side across the pitch. Carberry taking the ball standing still was pivotal in this. As it meant the pods standing around him were taking it standing still too. Obviously Carberry wasn’t the only person on the pitch underperforming that day. He’s not being made a scapegoat for anything. His performance as a 10 that day was very poor though and he looked as if he is unable to play high tempo rugby. Carberry is lacking in confidence and it really showed in that game.

We scored 3 tries in 30 minutes, a BP try before halftime and we'd probably have scored two more but for crossing/obstruction and Hansen not gathering a ball in the wing. Yet your OP said we made no yards.

His post said we spent a lot of time going side to side and making no yards, not that we made no yards at all. As much as I’m not willing to disregard Joey at all, he wasn’t great against Italy and that has rightfully impacted peoples opinions of him. He has a lot of work to do to be good enough to start for Ireland in big games. I’m hopeful he can get there, but I think it’s more than fair to say that he isn’t there yet.

You can't argue with the results of this 6N, I think we scored more tries than anyone before? Ireland are top 4 in the world right now, arguably. But the circumstances are worth noting, Scotland are poor, England are a shambles who can only score off the tee and Wales are probably in the worst shape they've been in for a decade. France won't care about that as they polish their grand slam but if we are considering where we are at its worth thinking about.

A number of players were poor v Italy. Conan actually said in his post match interview that playing against 14 can affect your game plan. He said something like some players see a gap and go for it but the rest of the players are out of synch with him.

We had too many errors in that game and Joey seems to be the only one getting the blame for it.

I've said it before but worth repeating, Joey is not Sexton, he may never be but he's the next best OH we have. Judging him on Sexton isn't fair.

Also worth repeating giving him 20 seconds at the end of a game isn't doing him any favours.

The Brave and Faithful are really rising the level of debate by rehashing nonsense from TRK.

Anyway, Carbery doesn't have it at outhalf at international level. He has 32 caps and has shown himself to be nothing more than average as an international outhalf. He had his shot starting against France and Italy only a few weeks ago and was nothing more than bang average. The sooner people - and Andy Farrell - accepts it, the better for us all.

A couple of points in there. Most importantly, I agree we shouldn’t be comparing Carbery to Sexton really. He isn’t at that level, but few are.

That said, I think you’re taking the criticism of Carbery too harshly. People (at least those I can see) are calling out that he had a poor performance. They aren’t saying everything bad about the performance was on him. I think you’re finding something in the posts that isn’t there.

Sure, other poor performances didn’t help him, but some of the basics (I mentioned some earlier) were off. A lot of the others had performances that they could fall back on. Carbery didn’t. And he was in a position that we need the depth and he needed to prove himself. So it’s only natural he’s the talking point afterward.

I'd be hopeful but also fearful that I'm being blinded by my absolute love of the guy. I've missed 1 or 2 appearances, but every game I did see he was getting stuck in trying to poach, was strong in contact and busy for work. I think everyone winces when he goes into contact, it was such a horrific break, but personally I'm really hoping he gets back to that grand slam year form. He was outrageously good.

On a sidenote, VDF has really stepped up since Leavy got injured. He's some athlete.

I still think there is reason to be optimistic for the WC, with a few provisos. If we do well in NZ, win a couple of games at least (test & a Maori match) and have a good tilt at a slam next 6N, and we figure out our ten and front row backup situation, then I'd feel very optimistic about the WC. No reason we can't beat France or NZ if we beat both beforehand. I see a problem if France win another slam next year.