6N countdown: TOL's Team-by-Team Guide Part 5 – Ireland … according to 'the veteran journalist'
Today at 07:00 AM
IN a quest to really get under the skin of the six competing teams, to understand their strengths and weakness, what drives them and what particular challenges they will face in this championship, Iain Morrison has spoken to six individuals with a unique insight to the country they have, through one route or another, come to call home.
Brendan Fanning is an experienced rugby correspondent currently writing for the Guardian, Sunday Times and Rugby Pass. He is also an author of two books with another, about how Ireland became the top ranked team in the world, in the pipeline.
Ireland
1. How will Simon Easterby’s Ireland differ from Faz’s … if at all?
“Ireland has a historical issue with absentee landlords but in this case punters will be happy if Easterby takes his instruction from the diverted boss.”
2. Does the loss to New Zealand in the Autumn give hope to the likes of Scotland that Ireland might be a little vulnerable at the moment, especially if they suffer an injury or two in the front row?
“Everyone came away from November thinking Ireland looked a bit tired from running into gaps that kept closing. It wasn’t the New Zealand game alone, rather the win over the Wallabies could just as easily have gone the other way, in which case a 50 percent return from the month would have been an ugly stat. Gregor Townsend will have read those signs, and others, but that’s hardly a new experience for him.”
3. How to rank the abundance of talent at 10 and who do you think will get the gig longer-term?
“Sam Prendergast has jumped the queue leaving Jack Crowley’s nose out of joint and Ciaran Frawley wondering how he went from the hero of the summer tour in South Africa, needing more games at 10 in Leinster to heap pressure on Crowley, to the likely 24th man on match days in this competition. It seems unlikely that Farrell said, on his way out the door, pick whoever you want at 10.”
4. Who would you have handed the shirt to?
“I wouldn’t have taken it off Crowley in the first place and couldn’t compound that mistake now by giving it back to him.”
5. With your coaches’ hat on, how should the opposition go after Ireland?
“The set-piece is the easiest door to open but that requires having the right cattle. Ireland will do the maths and ask how much of Leinster’s "D" they can perfect in time … see answer to next question re how long that takes!”
6. Ireland = Leinster, and Leinster seem to have bought into Nienaber’s defence-is-the-best-form-of-attack. Will we see Ireland adopt similar tactics?
“No. Ireland’s phase play has become a well read book so this is where Andrew Goodman (Ireland's attack coach) needs to earn his corn with a change in the plot-line. Only now, halfway through the season, have Leinster got to grips with the Nienaber hard-press and its implications. And that’s with the coach having a lot more access than at international level. It’s high-risk which is why the reward looks so good.”
7. Anything else that is interesting about Ireland?
“Haaah! Five of the six props are from Leinster. Consider France’s Rabah Slimani is also on Leinster’s prop roster and you can see that game time is not the strong point of Thomas Clarkson and Jack Boyle. Having once gone down the ‘scrum-club’ route to improve the depth across the country, the IRFU then, for some reason, put it away on a shelf in the store room on Lansdowne Road only to suddenly announce a new man to apply himself to just this task across the country. A bit like governance, it’s important if not especially interesting.”
8. Rank the teams in the final table from one to six, please?
France
Ireland
England
Scotland
Italy
Wales.
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