Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

That's fair enough and that's your opinion.

However, if Russell played in a dominant Leinster or Irish set up, my guess your view would be different.

i thought russell was overrated way before that. i dont think sexton was playing that well at the time either tbh

shunned by his country but he was good enough to be courted by another and has made their world cup squad with very little international experience....

i dunno what youre talking about with glasgow tbh

Ben Healy was not shunned by anyone. He just wasn't selected because he wasn't good enough. Unless we're saying 99.9% of rugby players in Ireland were also "shunned".

The critism of the Ireland coaches for not selecting Healy is completely retrospective because he had a good game in a friendly v Italy and a few decent performances towards the end of last season when he had already committed his future to Scotland. He form prior to that never warranted Ireland selection.

honestly, i think weir was pretty underrated tbh. wasnt the best attacker but was fairly solid

South Africa have been on a steady upward curve? I think they've been very up and down.

You sound a bit like Shane Horgan??

Think that game showed a lack of leadership more than anything. Scotland did a lot of things wrong that day highlighted by not kicking to touch. (As a ten there's times to kick and times to run it through phase to create a kicking opportunity. It would probably be easier to find a kicking opportunity out wide with your wingers as the opposing wing pushes up.) Don't believe Scotland won a single turnover at the lineout because they didn't put a jumper at the front. Any Ireland were dominant in that second and rightly pulled away. As I recall Sexton was god awful that day so I suppose you don't a need a performing ten to win test matches as you like to believe.

What’s amusing is seeing all these posts talking up a player with the only actual support behind those posts being what someone else said. You haven’t been able to actually discuss Russell as a player at all. The things he does well, the things he does badly and why the former outweigh the latter. It’s easy to have an opinion on something and easy to sneer. What’s not so easy is to have a rational, objective, concise and clear adult discussion with someone on a topic. You know, like you’d do on a discussion forum.

As for Ireland recent performances, I’ve seen some here reference our last 4 games. I was thinking that seemed like a random number of games to look back on until I looked at what game 5 was. The Scotland game where we convincingly won despite very real adversity with injuries. The general mood around Irish rugby after that game was one of huge positivity. Scotland were a coming force that really threatened us and we dispatched them comfortably away from home despite a number of set backs on the day.

Since then we played 1 game in the 6Ns, had a 4 1/2 month break before a scratch team played Italy in basically a pre-season game, our full strength team then played for the first time in pretty much 5 months against an England team that had a few games under their belt before we played another scratch team that in woeful conditions against a good Samoan side. That’s not exactly the most representative sample set of games really, is it?

We’re weeks away from needing to be at our best and while there are definitely areas of concern in the last few weeks, they don’t warrant some of the abject negativity on here from some people who are taking arbitrary facts to support a preconceived position. Most, if not all, of these are fixable things and there have also been positives in there too. We don’t have the depth that France and SA have and will need that bit more luck than them to make it to a final, but if we get that we’re up there with the rest of them in terms of our chances.

That’s a bit more like it. Actually discussing the topic without sneering. That I can get behind.

Youre right, he does seem to be maturing somewhat. And if he can then he could be genuinely great. He has the skill set. But we haven’t seen him put together a run of performances in games that really matter. The warm ups don’t really matter. Until he does, you can’t blame people for falling back on the performances we’ve seen in the likes of the 6Ns or HEC. And those performances have been very mixed.

Thst said, he is box office. I’d hate to be a Scot, but you can generally bank on him providing big moments. Not all good. The French game this year was one of the most up and down performances I’ve seen from any player in a big game in years. Massive plays and massive errors both making big impacts on the game. It was entertaining, but if I were a Scot I’d have been pulling my hair out.