Kidney short on front-row options

NO area of recent Irish teams has provided more problems than the front-row of the scrum.

Even though John Hayes has accumulated more than 100 caps, Marcus Horan has pulled on the green jersey 66 times and Cian Healy has shown potential over the past year or two, the Irish scrum is not up to true international standard.

Since the season began, we have seen encouraging developments as far as the prop forward positions are concerned. Munster have chosen Tony Buckley ahead of Hayes at tight head in both their Heineken Cup matches while Mike Ross turned in an outstanding performance for Leinster in the number 3 jersey against Racing Metro and again stood up well when sticking it out for 77 minutes against Saracens at the weekend.