Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

ah yeah no bringing others definitely made more sense, was surprised that ahearn didnt go. mccarthy was a bit disappointing tbh but i can see him growing into a solid player

yeah i watched it again and in fairness they had broken the line before it got out to henshaw. i still say if he were in aki's position he would have went for the line though, aki's drawing and passing was fantastic and i dont see RH doing that personally

surely if he couldnt execute then that would further my argument? anyway, im not saying he wouldnt be able to, im saying he'd most likely choose to go himself and power over the line imo. not necessarily the worst idea either

im not underrating him at all, just because i dont think hes the most creative centre doesnt mean i dont agree that he is one of the best centres around atm and irelands best centre. his strength lies in running incredibly intelligent lines rather than creating space for others. aki and henshaw works okay and has been even better recently as aki has improved as a playmaker, but it lacks the balance that henshaw and ringrose have. like i said, frawley and henshaw could work really well as frawley is obviously a great playmaker himself so the pairing would be nicely balanced, whereas pairing RH with someone like chris farrell or mcloskey would lack creativity

I see Gatland said if he was picking the Lions this year he'd have 9 Irish starting and 2 subs

1

2

3 Furlong

4 Beirne

5 Ryan

6

7 VDF

8 Dorris

9 JGP

10 Sexton

11 Lowe

12 Henshaw

13

14

15

Bench Sheehan, Porter

I'd say Genge at 1, Lawes at 6, VDM at 14

Maybe Farrell 12 wit Henshaw 13. Not sure who was better than Keenan at 15, maybe he'd go Hogg, Hooker could be any of them.

Shows what can change in a year

I don't think he's coming to oust anyone really and will add to the depth of any province without coming in as anything better than 3rd choice.

He has 5 appearances off the bench last season (11 in total over 3 seasons - no starts for just under 100 minutes) for the Force and Waratahs in seasons they struggled

I don't see him as a better option currently than any of the first or second choices at any province.

I don't see him as a better choice than as the likes of Foley, McCarthy, Patterson or even Colm Reilly or Ethan Coughlan either

He might come good as a 3rd choice for Ulster pushing aside the likes of Shanahan and Ulster appear to not be backing Finlay so possibly there's room there as I'm not sure there's solid promise coming up through the academy.

But ultimately just because he didn't play in Ireland doesn't necessarily make him automatically better than those we have in situ (the Oli Jager effect)

Having said all that he's barely 23 and shown good promise in a specialist position that Ireland have struggled to develop top class players in (compared to other positions) so I'm all for it.

If he can spend a season or 2 at (presumably) Ulster developing and learning then he might slot nicely into the post Cooney contingency plan. Cooney is 33 at the end of this coming season and I don't think the deal he signed this year is longer than 2 years. So there's room for another player as Cooney winds down.

And potentially more room if Doak delivers on the promise we all know he has and starts appearing in Green!!

If they released Finlay then Ulster makes the most sense for him to move.

I wasn't specifically referencing you when I said about the Jager effect. Just there are some people who get quite far ahead of themselves when referencing IQ players playing abroad.

We’ll have to match them to some extent or they’ll just roll over us at maul and scrum time. In this regard, the last few matches played by Leinster and Ulster should give us pause. One thing NZ managed over the years was to be good enough in the scrum to match the likes of SA, England and France while being much more mobile everywhere else. Against these power teams should Beirne be in the back row, for example? He’s not massive for a second row.

it depends on the gameplan i suppose. taking a hypothetical game against SA tomorrow, if the plan would be to try and take them on physically then i dont think beirne plays tbh, as you said hes not the biggest so it probably would be henderson (lets say hes available) and ryan in the second row, most of our backrows are bigger too so you'd have some combination of coombes/ doris/ conan at 6/8 probably. for me, this would be a terrible idea as whoever we play still won't be as physical as any SA team.

if however, the plan was to try to outsmart and 'out-skill' them, then beirne starts with ryan. neither are going to bowl bigger guys over but theyre both skillful enough to be able to hold their own