Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Strange comments around Leinster and rose tinted glasses. Deegan is having a good season for the team at the top of the table, along with doing well on Friday. Coombes played poor on Friday and has played three times this season for the team in 14th. Not too sure who needs to take off the glasses here.

I love these contributions, starts with speculation stated as fact (Coombes defo dropped), that fact leads to an insight..Coombes, in his misfortune as a Munster player is shown the door while Deegan (no better) gets the girl. Rassie level.

Don’t think Bundee looked bad defensively against the All blacks. He has been terrible for Connacht though

Everyone fit it will be + Beirne, POM & Hansen

Deegan is third choice behind Dorris and Conan who are the 2 best 8s in the country. The 3rd best is probably Deegan(he was the best in the urc last year). Coombes has the advantage though as he doesn't have anything close in competition and gets to play in Europe.

Coombes played well against the Maoris but to say you can't recall Deegan doing that, I remember against Connacht before his injury Deegan had 26 tackles none missed, a try, assist, 18 carries for over 50 meters. Has Coombes ever been that busy?

Deegan is getting back to his best, its harsh on Coombes but he was really poor on Friday, I've never seen Deegan play as bad as that...

Yeah Deegan didn't play the Maoris because he's behind the 2 best 8s for club, if he was with Munster and Coombes was with Leinster Deegan would be first choice and Coombes 3rd. I've said before I think Deegan would probably be better off moving for his Irish career.

We're lucky to have 4 top quality 8s(and a few coming through) however as you said Dorris is in pole position with Conan right behind so Coombes and Deegan are probably looking at an Italy game at best 6 nations

OK I was making the point that Deegan has played games where he's shown a very high ceiling, on last season he'd the best stats out of the Irish 8s. Has Coombes ever made more than 20 tackles in a match?

Yes. Coombes has absolutely also had games where he's been the stand out player with comparable stats

Devil's advocate etc; have Coombes' stand-out performances been in the more mundane URC games? Maybe I'm being hard on him but I've never come away from a Leinster-Munster game thinking "wow, I wish he had Gavin Coombes", or likewise in a European knock-out game?

Like, we're focusing on this one dropping, but equally he's 25 next months and has 89 minutes of test rugby against USA and Japan on his CV.

I would go this week, lowry, balacoune, McCloskey, Ringrose, O'Brien, carberry, JGP, Conan, VDF, prendergast, Henderson, Treadwell, bealam, herring, porter.

There was also a Leinster/Munster League knockout game where Coombes was a standout. Maybe three seasons ago or something? Munster played poorly overall, but Coombes had a lot of standout moments.

Those New Zealanders are pretty good. They test you in ways others don't because they marry physicality with technique and an innate understanding of the game. Coombes tried to physically dominate by just running straight. They're too good for that and took advantage by putting in hugely physical and technically excellent tackles. I think Coombes is a smart enough rugby player. We wouldn't see such good handling and awareness of space from him if he wasn't. Hopefully he'll try to exploit soft shoulders a bit more in future. I don't even know if that's the right way of putting it. It's not as if he usually just runs straight into defenders. He just looked a bit slow on his feet on Friday. Can he get a bit more nimble? Doris is excellent at twisting and turning and shifting his weight so he can eke out extra metres because the tackler can't get a firm grip on him.

Ultimately Coombes was pretty dreadful against New Zealand last week and clearly the coaches think that's more important than URC games. The whole team being poor isn't really an excuse when a handful of players, including Deegan managed to look a bit more competent. The team being poor also doesn't get Coombes pushed back 5+ yards from the base of a scrum.

Players being dropped when they put on **** show performances and looking like theyre not motivated when playing in an Irish jersey is perfectly fine by me. Coombes got 1 on 1 man handled multiple times by NZ backrowers and had nothing in response, its ok to get your body position wrong occasionaly but you have to be able to bounce back and get that back by dishing the same back on your opponent the next chance you get. Coombes got mauled and then stayed quiet for the whole game.

And to be fair Coombes is getting all the attention unfairly because Timoney did absolutely nothing either, no big hits, no attempts at the jackal, no big carries...zero. When Deegan came on he looked aggressive, swithched on and hungry for work which is exactly what the starters werent showing and thus he is rewarded.

If players get repeatedly selected when not performing it sends a bad message to the players, competition is good. I'd personally have added hodnett in instead of Timoney also.

But i think they want both Penny and Hodnett getting gametime and the best way to do that is Hodnett vs SA 'a' and maybe Penny off the bench for Fiji.