Tommy Martin: Must Ireland play a different tune with boyband outhalves?

Farrell was asked if Ireland would have to become a different team without Sexton, like when Queen went on the road without Freddie Mercury.

LEADING MAN: Jack Crowley during an Ireland Rugby squad training session at The Campus in Quinta da Lago, Portugal. Pic: Brendan Moran, Sportsfile

Their morning’s work done, they sloped around the patio area of the smart café that adjoins the Ireland rugby squad’s Portuguese training camp: Ireland’s number ten pretenders. You think to yourself that you know you’re getting older when the Ireland out-halves start looking younger.

The heir apparent, Jack Crowley, first up. Crowley has what they call ‘main character energy’, the sort of unforced charisma and self-assurance you need to march 900 kilos of hot and bothered forward meat around the pitch at the arbitrary diktat of your hand or boot.