AUTUMN INTERNATIONALS IRELAND v SOUTH AFRICA: GERRY THORNLEYsays Jonathan Sexton's selection is further proof of the evolving of a genuine squad system as Ireland prepare for the next World Cup

TALK IS cheap. It’s all very well paying lip service to the notion of a squad system, it’s another actually employing one. The selection of Jonathan Sexton is the most obvious example, but the promotions of Peter Stringer and Tony Buckley to the bench, along with games granted to other members of the A team that beat Tonga when Ireland played Fiji last Saturday, count also. For all the players now involved in the Irish set-up, more than ever before, seeing is believing.

Declan Kidney and his think-tank are, as he sometimes likes to put it almost self-deprecatingly, multi-tasking. But in truth they actually are. Ever mindful of the failure to develop a true squad system for the previous two under-achieving World Cups, all the while they are keeping one eye on the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand.

That is why A games were added into this month’s schedule against Tonga and the Argentinian Jaguars, and why there will be a third match, most probably against the Maoris, in between Tests against the All Blacks and Australia next summer. It is also why there will be four matches next November, in a physically gruelling schedule against South Africa, Samoa, Argentina and New Zealand.

In this Test window, players have been selectively moved around between the two squads, both for match time and training practice, rather than being brought in and out of a month’s training camps with ne’er a hint of seeing some game time, without truly feeling a part of things or that there was any real window of opportunity save for a few token promotions to the middle leg of the autumnal series.

Now, not only Shane Horgan and Andrew Trimble, to name two, but even the likes of Kevin McLaughlin and Chris Henry can see there are genuine chances of breaking into what in the past would have been seen as more of a closed shop.

Most likely we would have seen this sooner had Kidney and co been put in place after the 2007 World Cup in time for the 2008 Six Nations and the ensuing end-of-season tour to New Zealand and Australia. As it was, the pressing need for world ranking points and that second tier World Cup seeding took precedence last November. Then came the Six Nations.

So, if not trying Sexton now, when would they have tried him? Come the World Cup, whether O’Gara or Sexton is the first-choice outhalf, at least Ireland ought by then have more of a proven choice.

At the last World Cup, Ireland were the only leading nation who effectively only had one outhalf, given Paddy Wallace was essentially an inside centre whose entire tally of starts at outhalf for Ireland were against the Pacific Islands and, in the months leading up to the World Cup, the friendlies against Argentina (when O’Gara and the other 14 untouchables were rested) and Scotland.

Otherwise, his only two appearances off the bench amounted to six minutes.

Eddie O’Sullivan has complained that if he had started a new season with a virtually unchanged side he would have been criticised, the difference being that this season’s vintage were a Grand Slam-winning unit. Thus, not alone did they deserve another outing en bloc injuries permitting, it also helped bridge the seven-month gap without a match.

Highly prestigious fixture though this is, there is no World Cup seeding to be secured via the rankings, and no Six Nations or World Cup points at stake, so it makes sense to try Sexton here and now.

Kidney and co would have weighed up the psychological blow this will have been to O’Gara along with the modicum of risk attached to playing Sexton against the current world champions.

It is indeed a blow, of course, for O’Gara and yet another test of his proven mental strength in what has been a fabulous career.

But there is a bigger picture here than either O’Gara or, for that matter, Sexton. As with rotational selections or bringing younger players into the set-up, whether at full 30-man sessions on Thursdays (another departure from the past) or for A games in November, it’s called Ireland.