Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Well you've hardly engaged with this topic constructively - it's incredibly frustrating the repeated assertions that the Irish coaching team are either "poor evaluators of talent" or even worse the occasional insidious suggestions of bias, supported by nothing but your gut feeling.

You ignore a glut of data suggesting Crowley was likely the biggest beneficiary from the EI tour, you claim they give no chances to players (when shown we've capped nearly 2x as many players in the past 4 years as SA you double down and claim they throw guys in in big games, until you then see they haven't debuted a player against NZ since 2017).

It all comes tinged with the typical bullshit provincial nonsense too - see the only players you're whining about getting minutes over the last few years over this sequence being Joe McCarthy, Jordan Larmour, Harry Byrne and Ciaran Frawley.

I feel iv engaged here just as legitimately as you have im not sure why you feel otherwise. You feel the coaching staff is perfect in every way perhaps but i doubt they do..

IIv used leisnter players as examples as they make up most of the irish squad for whatever reasons you believe so chances are ill land on one. Id rather we avoided the accusations of provincialism if you wouldn't mind

You know exactly what I'm talking about.

And players should be. But i dont think its unfair to say a player shouldn't have to make a tour that maby runs every two years in order to make an international squad.

What point are you trying to make?

Absolutely nobody claimed Jack Crowley wouldn't have made an international squad without the EI tour, but it is almost certain he wouldn't have been capped as early as Nov '22, made the 2023 6N Squad and from there the RWC squad without the EI tour.

We're just repeating ourselves now, and obviously he'd have pushed through at some point, but given he'd barely played for Munster at 10 at the beginning of that season (and wasn't really playing at 10 regularly until the Champions Cup knockouts in April), it is wild to suggest he'd have made the 6N squad without the EI tour.

But sure this has been my point we have no idea how much hed have played. If he was playing significan mins for munster and i think he would have then no reason not to bring him in ei tour or not

I think irelands coaching ticket is clearly extremely talented but im not sure why that would impact it

Well the conversation was surrounding jack crowley not likely playing in autumn, 6n, wc warmups and wc without thr ei tour

He did play for significant minutes for Munster - he just played them in positions that weren't 10.

If we assume Munster's injury issues unfolded exactly as they did, and it's important to bear in mind that even after he returned from the EI tour in early October, 7 out of his next 8 appearances for Munster were in positions other than 10.

He wasn't going to be picked as a 10 in the Irish 6N squad if he wasn't playing there - as it was, he got picked having played very little rugby for Munster there at 10, but that was solely because he'd showed what he could do in SA, and then from there got the cap against Fiji, then the game against Australia.

It's all basically a number of steps or links in a chain - one thing led to the next etc.

Do you honestly think he is sitting on the bench against Fiji or starting against Australia without having gone on the EI tour?

But the coaching staff loves utility. No real reason to believe he wouldnt make the squad in a utility role as most of our backs do.

I dont but for other reasons that i dont think are worth bringing up not because of the ei tour

Also, FWIW - I'm not claiming the EI tour had some massive impact on Crowley's development or made him a better player or anything like that, I'm just saying if we realistically look at it, he wasn't (justifiably) on the Irish coaching team's radar in September 2022, and the thing that changed that was the EI tour. It sparked the chain of events which led to him making the RWC squad less than a year later.

I really like the concept - I just wish they were even a week or 2 earlier. Happening during the typical window for pre-season games would be fine by me tbh.

I mean your logic seems to be were not selecting players from other provinces so we have to accept any alternative or else were never happy. Not sure thats fair