The Ireland head coach gave an insight into some of his big team selection calls.
Jacob Stockdale at fullback, Hugo Keenan on the left wing, Will Connors at openside and two more uncapped players on the bench. Not many of us saw that Ireland XV to face Italy coming.
“I’m here. Let’s go!” Andy Farrell may have had it up to his ears with Zoom and Teams calls, but the light at the end of the tunnel is getting bigger and brighter.
As most of the country heads towards even more time at home, as part of a ‘Level 5’ lockdown, Farrell and his Ireland players are gearing up to get out on the park and face Italy in a long overdue 2020 Guinness Six Nations battle. Both sides were set to meet, originally, on March 7 but we all got there eventually, and Farrell says he and his team ‘are desperate to help lighten the mood’ of the nation.
Farrell was looking at different players and combinations up until the Tuesday training sessions and believes it helped keep the wider squad on tenterhooks. That sense of uncertainty ramped up the competition levels during set-plays and drills at the IRFU’s High Performance Centre, with the players only discovering who was starting against the Azzurri this morning, before training.
“You’ve got to be adaptable,” says Farrell. “Keeping people on their toes is the reason for the selection today.”
So we have relatively fresh looking second and back rows, and back three, but the old familiars of Conor Murray and Johnny Sexton are saddling up again in the 9 and 10 jerseys. Asked what made him certain they were the combination to start again, Farrell said:
“Just how in sync they are and how they adapt to the rest of the backline and the rest of the team that’s in front of them. They’re generals of the game and they’ve got the authority to play the way we want to.”
Farrell is excited to see Will Connors in the openside role and notes how the openside has been ‘chomping at the bit’ for seven months now. He was in line to face Italy, back then, and has done enough, since rugby returned, to have the Ireland coach hand him the No.7 jersey for his Test debut.
On the other debutants [starting and prospective ones on the bench], Farrell says Hugo Keenan has ‘had a great start after lockdown’ while prop Ed Byrne is a ‘real student of the game’ and scrumhalf Jamison Gibson-Park is ‘a calming influence’.
Quinn Roux and Ronan Kelleher, who has yet to fully train with the wider squad, were the only players not considered due to fitness concerns while Farrell sympathised with Josh van der Flier – not even in the matchday 23 – as he is ‘doing nothing wrong’ since rugby got going again.
On selecting Bundee Aki and Garry Ringrose as his centres, Farrell remarked how Ireland was stacked with options in that regard. “It’s unbelievably tough,” he muses.
“All five of the centres always seem to be fit which is a great place to be. We have massive trust in Robbie Henshaw. He has played a hell of a lot for us and he is going to come off the bench and do a great job but Stu McCloskey and Chris Farrell are great players that we all admire as a coaching staff.
“You are able to have a conversation in camp between them and to tell them the truth about where they are at. I’m sure they are all waiting for their chances and that when they do they will grab it with both hands as well.”
Ireland and Italy are catching up on their round four fixture before the Guinness Six Nations goes to decision day on Saturday, October 31. As it stands, Ireland, England and France are all in a position where they can win the title.
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Season 3 returned on Monday, October 19 and you can catch up on all our episodes from the past two seasons and interviews with Conrad Smith, Victor Matfield, Simon Zebo, Sean O’Brien, Drew Mitchell, Jean De Villiers, Finn Russell, Mike Brown, Brian O’Driscoll, Tana Umaga and much, much more.
