Donal Lenihan: Is Irish rugby's talent pool deep enough to compete against the best?

Ireland’s Jacob Stockdale takes flight after been tackled by France’s Gael Fickou in the Six Nations match at the Stade de France last weekend. Donal Lenihan believes the Ulster star is a gifted athlete but believes his concentration always appears suspect. Picture: James Crombie
You can dress it up, sugarcoat it anyway you want but sport without the fans just isn’t the same. The alternative, no live sport of any description in the already challenging environment we find ourselves in, would be a million times worse. We should be grateful for what we have.
Sport in lockdown, even if diluted, is a massively welcome distraction but I can’t escape the feeling that the three Six Nations games played out in front of empty stands in Llanelli, Rome, and Paris last weekend were poor imitations of the real thing.
I have no doubt that dedicated followers of Munster Championship hurling felt a similar reaction when watching Clare host Limerick in the opening round of action. Something just didn’t feel right. There wasn’t a hurley broken.
That said, the quality of fare served up by Limerick and Tipperary, in the most appalling of conditions in Páirc Uí Chaoimh last Sunday, only served to increase my admiration for these outstanding amateur sportsmen even further.
I’ve been one of the lucky ones able to attend live Guinness PRO14, Heineken Champions Cup, and Six Nations games at the Aviva Stadium since August but sitting there in splendid isolation in stand only served to reinforce the vast difference that exists and the impact it has for the players on the field.
It’s the supporters, in particular the large presence of travelling fans, that differentiates the Six Nations Championship from anything that southern hemisphere rugby has to offer. Without them, the whole thing had a real hollow feel to it over the weekend.
Perhaps it’s also the realisation that Ireland have slipped in terms of being real contenders. That might appear a strange thing to say, given that the facility to win the championship outright was still in Ireland’s hands going into the final match. However, once the teams were announced, I never harboured any great belief that Ireland were going to win in Paris.
The French matchday squad was stronger overall and it showed, especially in the second half when it came to offering an impact off the bench. Things would be appreciably different if Tadhg Furlong, Iain Henderson, Garry Ringrose, Keith Earls, and Jordan Larmour were available for selection.
In that scenario, the likes of Andrew Porter, Tadhg Beirne, Robbie Henshaw, and Hugo Keenan would have offered the type of positive impact they delivered in a very competitive first-half performance, but instead, off the bench in the final quarter to counter the best the French bench had to offer. That reality puts the spotlight firmly on our strength in depth and whether the quality we have coming through, while good enough to make an immediate impact at PRO14 and Champions Cup level, is good enough against the best international sides.
All well and good looking the part against Italy, the real measure is how you stand up against England, France, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. If we ever want to seriously contend in a World Cup, then that is the standard we need to measure our players against.
Take Jacob Stockdale as an example. Everything he touched turned to gold in his first international season, scoring a record seven tries in a winning Six Nations campaign, bagging a very rare Irish Grand Slam on the way. That is the stuff of dreams and had a Lions tour taken place in the summer of 2018, he would have walked on the plane.
Stockdale is a gifted athlete. He is naturally big and strong, has great pace, and plenty of football. It’s how you apply that talent that differentiates the good international player from the great ones however and, right now, his performances are blighted by far too many errors for Warren Gatland to even contemplate bringing him to South Africa.
For me, Stockdale’s concentration levels always appear suspect. He switches off far too easily and far too often. Only a few minutes earlier, he got away with a carbon copy of the handling error that led to the French penalty try, but failed to learn and adapt when presented with the same scenario.
New Zealand just wouldn’t accept the same high error count from any player, as Rieko Ioane found out when dropping the ball over the line in the act of scoring in the opening Bledisloe Cup test against Australia recently. He found himself on the bench for the subsequent two tests.
Despite the fact that Rory Best was the only one to retire after the World Cup, Andy Farrell is putting his personal stamp on the squad with a number of new players being introduced to international rugby but without the benefit of playing a lot of rugby over the last nine months. That presents a challenge in itself.
In addition, a number of last weekend’s squad have come a very long way in a short period of time. Three of Ireland’s bench — Ed Byrne, Jamison Gibson-Park, and Ross Byrne — are not first-choice for Leinster, with all three starting on the bench in the recent Champions Cup quarter-final against Saracens. Likewise, Dave Heffernan wasn’t always the regular starting hooker for Connacht last season.
Hugo Keenan and Will Connors only made their Champions Cup debut in that defeat to Saracens while Andrew Porter regularly starts on the Leinster bench behind first-choice tight head Tadhg Furlong. That said, Porter delivered a rock-solid Irish scrummaging performance on Saturday. The scrum only fell apart when the French auxiliary front row of Juan-Baptiste Gros, Camille Chat, and Demba Bamba were introduced.
Ed Byrne scrummaged well when covering for new centurion Cian Healy’s head injury assessment in the opening half but struggled, in tandem with Heffernan and Finley Bealham, in the final quarter. Consider also that Rob Herring, Farrell’s choice as starting hooker since Best departed the scene, spent years as back up to the former Ireland captain at Ulster.
The step up to international level for a number of those players is huge and the difference between having to do it against Italy and France was pretty obvious last weekend. At least Farrell hasn’t been afraid to offer opportunities to a wide range of emerging talent and needs to be applauded for that. The process needs to evolve in the Autumn Nations Cup tournament, scheduled between now and December 5.
With the 2021 Six Nations Championship only three months away, Farrell needs to use these four tests to clarify a number of selection issues, not least, his long term first-choice hooker, first-choice second-row combination, and whether Tadhg Beirne, superb against Italy and France, might be better utilised in the back row.
He will also hope that Dan Leavy, having bagged another 20 minutes of action for Leinster against Glasgow on Monday, might be ready to return to the international fold in the new year.
Behind the scrum, he needs to find out if Gibson-Park and Ross Byrne are of international standard as half-back cover while hoping that the forgotten man of Irish rugby, Joey Carbery, will return to competitive action sometime soon.
Farrell is spoiled for choice in midfield but with Earls fit, James Lowe eligible for selection for the game against Wales on Friday week, and Munster full-back Shane Daly waiting patiently for his opportunity, he needs to look closely at his options in the back three in order to decide on a settled combination for the 2021 Six Nations.
Incredibly, that’s only around the corner.

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