There’s always a narrative about something. Right now, a lot of people are convinced that this Irish team is dangerously old. That they have been allowed grow old together and that, the way things are going, Ireland are going to be too old at the next World Cup.
Is that what Andy Farrell thinks?
I was 34 at the last World Cup. Peter O’Mahony was 33. Johnny Sexton was 38. Bundee Aki was 33. Keith Earls was 35. Dave Kilcoyne was 34. Rob Herring was 37. None of that bothered Andy. Were we able to contribute something to the team? That was the only question on his mind.
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The IRFU’s system for contracted players is designed to produce longevity. For Irish players to be playing at a consistently high level well into their 30s is a tribute to the system. As a contracted player your playing time is targeted towards the most important parts of the season. That not only gives your body a chance to recover but it guards against mental fatigue too. You knew you were going to have breaks when you could re-set.
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I was 36 when I retired earlier this year and my body still felt good. I know that was also the case with Peter O’Mahony and Cian Healy. Cian was 37 when he finished. We didn’t retire through injury, it was a personal choice. We felt the time was right.
It’s a contradiction for people to praise the system that looks after Irish players so well and then wonder why so many of them are being picked for Ireland in their 30s. When I was part of the squad, I found that narrative about ageing very frustrating. I knew that Andy didn’t care about a player’s birth cert. Every player was judged on their capacity to deliver for the team.
Bundee Aki is 35 now and has probably played the best rugby of his career in his 30s. Tom Farrell got his first cap at 32 last week and is 100% playing the best rugby of his career. I imagine if you asked him how he feels, he would say he never felt better. I’ve seen it with Andy over the years: he will pick you if you’re good enough. Age is not a factor in his thinking.
People think about the World Cup as a four-year cycle, but that shouldn’t mean four years of sacrificing everything to build for the next tournament. You must focus on the now as well. Ireland need to win Test matches. More often than not you pick your best team to play for Ireland.
Andy will never bring a young player through for the sake of it just because there is pressure from outside. There will definitely be a macro plan to take Ireland from here to the World Cup, but that won’t be the biggest influence on their selection for this week or next week or for the next Six Nations. The players who are good enough now will start.
Australia will be tough. Unpredictable. The form they showed in the last two Tests against the Lions has been missing in recent games but I wouldn’t read too much into that.
It probably sounds strange to label any Joe Schmidt team unpredictable. By the end of his time with us the biggest criticism was that we had become too predictable. Teammates of mine from that period have said it and I’ve argued the point with them.
My view is that we just didn’t play well in 2019. At the World Cup, we made too many mistakes. Let’s call it a predictable game plan if people want to call it that, but I’d love to have seen us nail that plan and see where it got us. The problem was we failed to execute.
From the moment he was appointed I thought Joe was the perfect fit for Australia. They were in bad shape, so in many ways it was a blank canvas. He would bring the detail and the structure and these incredible Australian athletes would bring the flair and the X-factor. Joe was never afraid of that. He wanted players to express themselves too.
We haven’t lost to Australia since our series win down there in 2018 which adds up to a four-game winning streak. But every one of those Tests was a one-score game. We needed a brilliant penalty from Ross Byrne to beat them in the Aviva three years ago. That’s what I’m expecting again this weekend: a game that goes down to the wire.
I don’t think too much can be read into Ireland’s games over the last fortnight. I think there were legitimate some reasons for sub-par performances. But for week three, we can expect more cohesion and fewer mistakes.
The lineout was a big talking point after the All-Blacks game and it was still a serious issue in the first half against Japan. I can imagine what Paul O’Connell was like this week trying to sort it out. He’s a perfectionist.
The lineout is complicated. It’s thrower, lifter, dummy jump, calls, the opposition marking up, even the diagrams they have drawn out – it’s a lot of moving parts. I attended loads of lineout walk-throughs in my career and I still didn’t know what was going on.
But Paulie won’t back off. Ireland went to the tail with their first lineout on the 15-metre line last week and I was watching the game with people who were wondering why Ireland didn’t just go to the front to secure the ball. The reason is that Ireland hold themselves to a higher standard than that.
Ireland don’t narrow their game for safe lineout calls just because they’re under pressure. They believe in their line out. A ball to the tail benefits the backs. Paulie is not going to say, “Right, the backs are going to have to deal with safe ball off the front because our line out is a bit shaky.” He won’t accept that.
Ireland’s lineout has been a problem. We have the people to sort it out. This week, we’ll see a difference.
