The ‘Raging Potato’, BOD and Monaghan’s greatest all feature.
Welsh rugby writers Simon Thomas and Anthony Woolford were tasked with compiling their greatest ever Ireland XV by Wales Online.
The website is already in a lather ahead of the [next] championship-deciding match in the Six Nations.
The vaunted rugby correspondents were locked in a room with a flask of tepid tea and a plastic platter of triangular sandwiches and not allowed out until they settled on all fifteen names.
The introduction to today’s feature reads: ‘The Emerald Isle has produced some of the finest rugby players to ever walk the planet, it’s a good job they didn’t all play in the same time.’
Only two current players, Paul O’Connell and Tommy Bowe, feature while recently retired midfield talisman Brian O’Driscoll is paired with the legendary Mike Gibson. Here is the rest of the team.