Donal Lenihan: Has the time come to put faith in Harry Byrne and Craig Casey?
Craig Casey leads the way during a Munster training session yesterday. With an eye to the future, Donal Lenihan believes Casey and Harry Byrne warrant an appearance off the bench in the closing stages in Rome where Ireland travel to face Italy in their next Six Nations clash Saturday week.Â
AT a point in the championship when Andy Farrell has to consider where he’s going to turn to next in the search for incremental improvement, it’s worth taking note that the star of last weekend's Six Nations action was a young lad who turned 20 just five days before facing Ireland on the opening weekend in Cardiff.
Louis Rees-Zammit had been identified as a serious talent from the moment he became the youngest player, at 18, to play for Gloucester in the Gallagher Premiership.
Within a month he was in the record books again after becoming the youngest scorer of a Premiership hat-trick when he dazzled against Northampton Saints.
Despite his age, it immediately became a matter of when he would play for Wales, not if. It’s hard to live up to that level of expectation. On Saturday, he scored two magnificent tries (to back up the one he scored against Ireland) in a man-of-the-match performance that secured a scarcely believable one-point win for a Welsh side on the cusp of a hammering at one stage.
Scotland contributed handsomely to their own downfall in a game they should have won comfortably but a major factor in the Welsh success was the stunning composure of the young winger in a performance lacking a semblance of inhibition.
That is what talented young players bring to the cause. The dilemma facing every head coach is when to trust your instinct and throw that prodigious young talent into the mix. Rees-Zammit was so good on Saturday he immediately enters the discussion for Lions squad selection if that tour goes ahead. Wales would not have won without him.
Farrell will have noted the impact Rees-Zammit made. As someone who made history by becoming the youngest ever player to captain the Great Britain rugby league side at 21 years and four months, having been capped by England as an 18-year-old, you would think that he, more than anyone, would have no fear in backing youth.
Much has been made over the years of the decision by Warren Gatland and I, as head coach and manager respectively, to promote five new caps in John Hayes, Simon Easterby, Peter Stringer, Ronan O’Gara, and Shane Horgan against Scotland back in 2000.
The biggest debate surrounded the half-back combination, the drivers and controlling influence of every team.
O’Gara was under serious consideration for the World Cup a few months earlier but was behind Eric Elwood and David Humphries in the pecking order. In a tournament of that nature, experience counts for a lot.
After the disappointment of losing to Argentina at the World Cup, facing a very good England side in Twickenham in the opening game of the Six Nations wasn’t the ideal starting point for mass changes. That said, but for a knee injury in the week prior to that game, O’Gara would have started.
Stringer was on the bench in Twickenham but, given the way the game evolved, it wasn’t a day to throw him in at the deep end. The fact England beat us comprehensively made it easier to make the hard calls and go for broke.
Ireland won 44-22 in an extraordinary game, beating Scotland at Lansdowne Road for the first time in 12 years and the rest, as they say, is history.
I thought of Strings at the final whistle last Sunday evening when glimpsing a somewhat dejected-looking Craig Casey. It’s difficult when you take your place on the bench with seven other players and you are the only one left collecting splinters at the end. Still dreaming of that elusive first cap and what it would mean to you and your family, you begin to wonder when the opportunity will present itself again.
At least Farrell has a bit of breathing space with a free weekend coming up. That offers him time for reflection and space to access his options over the next few days. Despite two defeats in the opening phase of the tournament, there is much to be pleased about.
The scrum was outstanding against a very powerful French outfit while Ireland's lineout is benefiting already from the input of Paul O’Connell. The defensive lineout has been superb with four steals in each game while the only lost throw against the French resulted in the most unlikely of tries for razor-sharp hooker Ronan Kelleher, who was only on the field a minute before scoring the try that not only propelled Ireland back into the fight but also spooked the French.
Ireland’s breakdown work has also improved under O’Connell but defensive question marks remain with systems errors out wide and too many missed tackles, 11 in Cardiff and 25 against the French. Given that this was Farrell’s specialist subject as an assistant coach, I’m surprised he hasn’t had a bit more influence on Simon Easterby’s preferred approach.
The most glaring shortcomings surround Ireland’s attack. Our kicking game has regressed while we haven’t been able to stress opposition defences to any great degree. Teams seem to know in advance what we are doing and have prepared accordingly.
There are no inventive power plays off set pieces that yielded so many tries under Joe Schmidt and we haven’t been able to manufacture any one-on-ones of the type that generated so many chip-and-chase tries for Jacob Stockdale in his breakthrough Grand Slam season in 2018.
As attack coach Mike Catt has failed so far in his attempt to develop a productive attacking style of play. Teams are able to read us far too easily and our two championship tries to date have stemmed from mistakes off opposition lineouts.
For Ireland to get back to winning ways something has to change. Unfortunately, Billy Burns isn’t international standard and has durability issues. In his two starts to date, against Georgia and France, he lasted 43 and 41 minutes respectively. Even when he replaced Johnny Sexton on debut in 28th minutes against Wales last November, he only lasted until the 68th minute with Conor Murray filling in at No. 10.
It doesn’t help your cause either when you’re not a front-line placekicker for your province every week and in that respect, Ross Byrne is a more rounded option.
The problem here is Ross may not even be the best out-half in his family. His brother Harry was adjudged by Stuart Lancaster and Leo Cullen to be the better option for Leinster’s Heineken Cup game against Northampton last December, having impressed off the bench in the final quarter away to Montpellier the previous week.
Unfortunately, he was injured in the warm-up and never got to start.
Farrell has a strong relationship with Lancaster from their days coaching England and, I’m sure, he would have trust in his opinion. Harry Byrne and Craig Casey were the driving force at half-back that inspired Ireland to a magnificent underage Grand Slam in 2019. Like Stringer and O’Gara all those years ago, there is chemistry between them. That doesn’t mean they should be thrown in at the deep end on the international stage but surely, with Sexton and Murray likely to be available against Italy, that young partnership would be worth an appearance off the bench in the closing stages in Rome.
The big difference between them and the Stringer-O’Gara combination back in 2000 is the Munster pairing were already regular starters at Heineken Cup at that stage.
Casey and Byrne are still biding their time off the bench at that level but young players are far more developed and ready for the step up now than they were 20 years ago. The French squads that won successive U20 World Cups in 2018 and 2019 — bear in mind Ireland beat a French team captained by Arthur Vincent in a classic 2019 Six Nations game in Musgrave Park — are living proof of that with nine players already capped.
Incredibly three of those are props with Jean-Baptiste Gros, Demba Bamba, and Hassan Kolingar all having featured in a Six Nations campaign. In addition two out-halfs, Romain Ntamack and Louis Carbonel — both younger than Harry Byrne — have also featured at this level. Sunday’s No. 10 Matthieu Jalibert was 19 when he made his debut for France against Ireland in Paris three years ago. He is a comparative veteran at this stage.
Interestingly, from the England team that Ireland also beat in Cork in that U20 championship two years ago, centres Ollie Lawrence and Cameron Redpath, both capped in this championship by England and Scotland respectively, were only introduced off the bench that night. Redpath has had an interesting journey since then. Casey would have been the first from that team to be capped had he come on last weekend.
The time has come for Ireland to offer a glimpse of the future and the Eternal City could not provide a more inspiring venue for the first of that special Irish U20 side to take that final step.
