The World Cup clock is ticking. Can Harry Byrne force his way into Ireland 10 jersey?
Harry Byrne's passing can be sublime and a strong kicking game from hand is paired with consistency off the tee. Pic: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
Teams are either brilliant or brutal. Same for players and coaches. Same for referees and their decisions. Same for entire competitions and seasons. You stand either in Column A or Column B. Doesn’t matter which, just pick one.
It shouldn’t be this way. Sport is layered. It’s laced with millions of component parts, each of which can propel a perception, game or a career in a wildly different direction, but modern life tends to squeeze nuance and favour a dumbed-down simplicity.
Watch rugby in Ireland and you’re expected to plant a flag beside either Jack Crowley or Sam Prendergast. Or at least that’s how it’s painted. On the face of it, a straightforward choice between two, and only, two playmakers.
The waters are muddier than that. It’s not so binary.
Crowley and Prendergast had just shared more minutes, this time against Japan, when the Ireland ‘A’ side took to the field at Estadio Municipal de Butarque in Leganés outside Madrid early last month. Harry Byrne started and finished the game at ten.
Spain would take England’s ‘A’ side to the pin of its collar a week later but Ireland put 61 points on them and Byrne was a standout, converting eight of nine conversions and playing a key role in at least four of the tries.
A week later and Andy Farrell, when asked about the Crowley-Prendergast debate, insisted this was no “two-horse race”, that Byrne and Ciaran Frawley wouldn’t be taking anything sitting down. Another week later and Byrne’s name was uttered again.
Prendergast has been Leinster’s main man since Farrell elevated him to that role with Ireland 13 months ago, and he will start for his province on Saturday when they get their Champions Cup campaign underway against Harlequins in Dublin.
Byrne will provide cover from the bench but whispers have been heard in the run-up to this Pool D encounter that maybe the latter isn’t without merit for a more prominent role as the club looks to conquer ‘Europe’ for the first time since 2018.
Prendergast’s talents are obvious but so are his defensive issues, and he is inexperienced. Byrne is 26 now. He has 76 caps for Leinster, only four with Ireland, but with an educational and profitable stint with Bristol Bears under his belt as well.
There have been four starts in five games this season, two of them man-of-the-match efforts, and it has rekindled the possibility that he might yet reach the potential that made him Ireland’s hottest property at out-half only a few years back.
Bristol coach Pat Lam spoke highly of him during that six-month spell across the water. Byrne himself has talked up the benefits accrued from the temporary switch, and his Leinster scrum-half colleague Jamison Gibson-Park is clearly a fan.
“He's always very impressive in the way he runs a week and that kind of thing. It was very brave of him to go over and you have to applaud it. He's come back and he's been outstanding the first few games he's played. He deserves a shot and we'll see how he goes.”
It’s actually surprising to remember that Byrne played a role in Ireland’s Six Nations title win just last year, in 2024. That came on the back of starts for Leinster in massive Champions Cup ties away to La Rochelle and Leicester Tigers.
The momentum continued with runs off the bench in the round of 16, quarter-final and semi-final Champions Cup ties before Frawley was preferred in the 23 for the final and, alongside Prendergast, for the subsequent Ireland tour to South Africa.
Injuries have been a plague. The one suffered in the warm-up away to Northampton when poised to start his first Champions Cup game this time five years ago. Another at the start of Ireland’s 2022 tour to New Zealand when he was being sized up for the midweek team.
And again in Ashton Gate last February during the Ireland-England ‘A’ game.
But the sands have shifted in his favour since his return from England’s West Country. His brother Ross has since departed for good, to Gloucester. Frawley’s star has waned since that famous drop goal against the Springboks in Durban 18 months ago.
Nobody is saying that Prendergast isn’t, or can’t be, the man for club and country but Byrne brings his own range of skills. His passing can be sublime and a strong kicking game from hand is paired with consistency off the tee.
Both Prendergast and Crowley have struggled to get their kicking quotas up to a range deemed acceptable for Test-class operators so that alone provides a potential opening for anyone looking to crack the perceived duopoly.
There are two years until the next World Cup but, with just 17 Test matches between now and the first game in Pool D, Farrell has limited scope to work minutes into his still inexperienced out-halves. Can three into two go?
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