Leinster and Ireland outhalf Ross Byrne is continuing attract to interest from abroad, with an English club – believed to be Leicester Tigers – apparently joining the race with Montpellier to sign the 29-year-old.
Byrne is in the final year of his contract and out of favour with Ireland, which in turn has led to restricted opportunities for him at Leinster this season. A durable, 29-year-old goal-kicking outhalf with a placekicking ratio consistently in the mid-80s is a highly prized commodity in the Top 14 and the Premiership.
The former Leinster, Wallabies and Argentina head coach Michael Cheika – who is now at Leicester – is understood to be a fan of Byrne. What’s more, Handre Pollard, the Tigers’ two-time World Cup-winning outhalf, is also out of contract this season. Reputedly being paid more than €700,000 a season by Leicester, Pollard is widely expected to follow the popular Springboks’ route to Japan and sign for Suntory Sungoliath.
Byrne is Leinster’s third-highest points score of all time behind Johnny Sexton and Felipe Contepomi, with 1,120 points in his 168 appearances for the province, and has already attracted firm interest from Montpellier. Although clearly still valued by Leo Cullen and the Leinster coaching ticket – hence his inclusion in Leinster’s 23 for all of their six URC games this season – Byrne has only started one of those, as opportunities have been afforded Sam Prendergast and Ciarán Frawley. It seems likely Byrne will move on.
The Counter Ruck: the rugby newsletter from The Irish Times
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Prendergast has seemingly moved above Frawley in the Irish pecking order and, after his eye-catching debut off the bench in Friday night’s 22-19 win over Argentina, it seems highly possible he will make his first Test start next Saturday against Fiji at the Aviva Stadium.
Andy Farrell has used 16 players in Ireland’s two starting line-ups to date in this autumn series. Overall, he has used only 27 of the original 35-man squad, including Thomas Clarkson, who also made his debut as a replacement against Los Pumas after initially being named as one of five training panellists.
Along with Prendergast, Cormac Izuchukwu was a first-time inclusion in the 35-man squad and his chances of being given a Test debut soon have risen following the unfortunate head injury sustained by Ryan Baird within three minutes of being introduced on his return against Argentina.
But it’s not Farrell’s style to necessarily give game time to every member of his squad and he sounded cautious about rotating too much against the Flying Fijians, who did experiment for their 33-19 win over Spain in Valladolid on Saturday, a week on from their historic win over Wales.
“If we give those lads that you’re talking about a look next week you need to put the right people in place around them so that they’re able to give the best version of themselves,” said Farrell. “Otherwise, you set them up to fail.”
As well as Izuchukwu, Dave Heffernan, Cian Prendergast, Nick Timoney, Stuart McCloskey and Calvin Nash are yet to feature in this series.
“We’ll see how the bodies fare up, but we do need to have a think about how we roll on because Fiji are unbelievably dangerous as we saw last week against Wales,” said Farrell. “At the same time, so are Australia. Four games on the bounce, we’ve got to manage that realistically. We need to pick a side that’s going to perform and what you don’t do is give everyone a game that’s been unfortunate not to play so far.
“If you’re trying to work out how lads are going to cope at international level, you need to put good people around them to be able to judge them in the right manner, so there’s a balance there.”
Jack Crowley played every minute of last season’s Six Nations and the first Test in South Africa, but he was replaced around the hour mark for the third game running last Friday night when, for the second match in a row, Ireland were leading.
Although the Irish coach sounded understandably happier with the brightness of Crowley’s first-half display, he was evidently less pleased about his performance in the third quarter, when the Munster outhalf was replaced shortly after kicking out on the full.
“Some real good stuff actually,” was Farrell’s initial comment when asked about Crowley’s performance, “and then some bits that you’d obviously like to tidy up like everyone else. You always ask a question about an individual and I have to answer the question, but at the same time it’s a team game.”
Yet, by contrast, when asked about Crowley’s replacement, the 21-year-old Prendergast, Farrell said: “I thought he was excellent. I thought he was really composed, playing your first cap in that type of position, that type of situation, I thought he was really composed. He played at a nice tempo at the line and started to make things happen. That just shows what type of character he’s got.”
