Leinster’s Jordan Larmour makes the step-up with ease

Keith Earls’ admiration for the next generation of Irish talent was obvious when he sat down to chat prior to Ireland’s latest trio of November internationals.

“Freaks,” he called them. He meant it in a good way.

So many are bigger, faster and stronger in their late teens and early 20s than he and his peers were just a decade ago. And many has been the established international who has exhaled appreciatively at the alacrity with which these new faces fit in.