Exciting, freshened-up Ireland team we’d love to see start against Fiji

Patrick McCarry

Injuries and the need to give players, and combinations, game-time will influence the final tea, selection.

Andy Farrell will reassemble his Ireland team at the IRFU High Performance Centre in Abbotstown, on Monday, and start plotting for the next game of the Bank of Ireland Nations Series.

South Africa proved to be just as tough a test as everyone expected, and then some, as the world champions pushed Ireland to the brink, only to rue some refereeing calls and the lack of a specialist goal-kicker.

That 19-16 victory for Ireland consolidated top spot in the World Rugby rankings, with South Africa dropping to fourth behind a resurgent New Zealand and a captivating French side. Fiji dropped some ranking points, after their loss to Scotland, but leapfrogged a Samoa side that lost heavily to the Italians. Fiji are 11th in the latest shake-up.

Farrell looks set to be without Tadhg Furlong [ankle], Conor Murray [leg] and Stuart McCloskey [arm] for the game, as well as Ciarán Frawley [knee] and possibly Joe McCarthy [head] following two tough assignments for Ireland ‘A’ and the senior side, in less than 24 hours.

Ireland South Africa player ratings

Andy Farrell set to mix and match his Ireland team

We are less than a year out from the 2023 World Cup, so Andy Farrell has three ways of looking at this game against Fiji, and selecting a appropriate team:

Go with his strongest XV to simulate back-to-back World Cup games
Select a number of fringe players and prospects
Mix and match of the first two options

Given how punishing that Springboks fixture was, we would expect Farrell to err on the side of caution and select a number of players that featured in Friday’s ‘A’ loss to the All Blacks XV, and give some of his bench players from Saturday a start.

The side we have selected [below] would see only three players from the South Africa game – Hugo Keenan, Rob Baloucoune and James Ryan – retain their starting spots. Jimmy O’Brien, Cian Healy, Kieran Treadwell and Jack Conan all came off the bench in the 19-16 Ireland triumph.

If Robbie Henshaw is cleared to play, we would put him in at inside centre, and give James Hume a Test start there. Our half-back pairing, with Murray out injured, would be the Munster duo of Craig Casey and Joey Carbery, backed up by Caolin Blade and Johnny Sexton. Calvin Nash could feature, but we have opted for Shane Daly as our backline back-up.

POSSIBLE IRELAND TEAM TO FACE FIJI

15. Hugo Keenan
14. Rob Baloucoune
13. James Hume
12. Robbie Henshaw
11. Jimmy O’Brien
10. Joey Carbey
9. Craig Casey

1. Cian Healy
2. Rob Herring
3. Tom O’Toole
4. Kieran Treadwell
5. James Ryan
6. Cian Prendergast
7. Nick Timoney
8. Jack Conan

Replacements: Dan Sheehan, Andrew Porter, Finlay Bealham, Ryan Baird, Gavin Coombes, Caolin Blade, Johnny Sexton, Shane Daly.

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