Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

The Red Lion in Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village is a good place to watch the games. Close to Washington Square which is always good fun, watched the European Cup games there this year, there are Rugby jerseys on the walls, mainly English as you would expect but good international crowd and cover bands later on.

Why do we always seem to moan about everything?

I just asked a question

I see little if any pundits (especially from the southern hemisphere) are giving Ireland a hope of making it past the quarter final again. Our "history" keeps coming into the conversation. I still think that despite us being the form team of the last 18+ months the traditional strongholds of world rugby don't rate us. This is a good thing in my opinion.

If you swapped our record with any of SA, NZ, AUS, France or England they would be runaway favourites for the tournament. I suppose it is fair given that we simply have not come close to putting a decent showing together in previous World Cups. Losing is one thing but the manner of our loses were even worse.

I'm the eternal optimist and really hope this time is finally different (although those were my sentiments in 2015 and 2019 also lol). The draw is so cruel though. We could easily surpass any previous world cup performance by some margin and still not make it past the quarter final. Just hope we do ourselves justice this time.

Hope I'm wrong but I don't get the almost overwhelming optimism from both pundits and public that we're thing to go deep in this world cup. Whichever quarter final we get is 50/50 at best. Can't see Sexton staying injury free either unfortunately.

I note that Conan didn't appear in yesterday's training photos at all. He had previously trained and was hoping to back it up with an increased workload.

Makes me wonder if there has been a set back there. I can't see them leaving Prendergast at home and starting Doris in 4 consecutive games (which now seems relatively likely) if they knew Conan was likely to be absent for the Romania and Tonga matches.

Obviously won't happen but is there anything to be said for putting out the second string against south africa, given that there's not much difference between playing France or nz in the quarter... 🤣

Posted these criteria before somewhere, taken from Wikipedia, but the concerning one for me is the head to head results, second tie-breaking criterion. If we lose to Scotland and beat South Africa it would be very dodgy, as it would then go to match points scored head to head, bonus points against SA and Scotland will become very important, then total points difference in the whole pool.

Tie-breaking criteria for pool play

The ranking of teams in the pool stage is determined as follows:

1. Points obtained in all pool matches;
2. Points obtained in the matches played between the teams in question;
3. Points difference in all pool matches;
4. Tries difference in all pool matches;
5. Number of points scored in all pool matches;
6. Number of tries scored in all pool matches;
7. Official World Rugby Rankings;

For example, if SA get more bonus points than us and Scotland they’ll top the group, and then if Scotland beat us we’ll be out, regardless of whether we beat SA or not.

So the only way to look at it for now until the mathematics of it become more clear as the pool progresses, is we will have to be prepared to need to win all matches.

Furthermore, points diff (as well as bonus points) against Romania and Tonga could become very important in a three-way tie.

No clearly not, because that puts us at risk of not qualifying, even if we did beat Scotland.

Beirne did play there a few times for the Scarlets and was found badly wanting. Think he started the Pro14 final in Dublin there and was near anonymous. They had to move him on scrums, I recall.

According to all.rugby Beirne got five starts at 8 for the Scarlets in '17/'18.

O'Mahony started at 8 against Gloucester in '13/'14 and versus Sale the following season.