'It’s a trap': Andy Farrell warns against a narrative of Ireland being outmuscled

Conor Murray and Joey Carbery. Picture: INPHO/Billy Stickland

Size matters in Test rugby but as far as Andy Farrell is concerned it’s what you do with it that really counts.

A week on from Ireland’s 30-24 defeat to France, as a scaled-down squad reconvened for a two-day training camp ahead of next week’s preparations for the visit of Italy to Aviva Stadium for the third round of the Guinness Six Nations campaign, the head coach seemed to be a little weary of a narrative that has described his team as being “outmuscled”.

Not clever enough at times on the night in Paris perhaps, Farrell suggested yesterday, observing that the men in green had taken a step backwards in their evolution that has been winning praise across world rugby of late. Yet merely looking at the scales and seeing France’s starting front five weighing in at a combined 608 kilograms to Ireland’s 572kg, and replaced by 607kg compared to the visitor’s 455kg, does not tell the full story of how a nine-Test winning run came to an end.

“It’s a trap. I’ve seen Irish teams in the past fall into this trap of ‘they lost the physical battle’ and the next game, the sleeves are rolled up and the performance is worse because there is a reason why teams are physical or not,” Farrell said.

“There were elements of that game where we were unbelievably physical. It’s because of our know-how and accuracy. There is a lot of fuel that has to go into being able to be physical and one of the main aspects of that is being connected, working well with one another, and making sure we’re not doing things on our own.

“The minute it becomes going off on a tangent, ‘I’ll do it, I’ll roll my sleeves up’ then the opposition are allowed to dominate you. There’s a bit of learning in or around that space of the game for us because it was more of an understanding about how physicality works, you have to earn the right to be physical and that’s something we have to learn.” 

Just to be sure, Farrell addressed the weight versus technique debate one more time, adding: “Well it obviously depends on how your team is made up. If we’ve all got 135kg locks, just wind them up and let them go but we’ve not got that so we’ve got to be a little bit smarter.” 

 So too at the breakdown, where the concession of penalties allowed full-back Melvin Jaminet to kick five three-pointers in the first 43 minutes last Saturday.

“I thought at times we reverted a little bit back to type, of 18 months ago or going back even a little bit further. Sometimes that comes from a little bit of pressure from the opposition.

“Of course, we’ve got to be better than that because there were opportunities out there for us to be in sync and be ourselves and play to the space and we didn’t see that sometimes because of some of our inaccuracies.” 

The Stade de France experience was not all doom and gloom for Ireland, though and there were positives to take from the defeat, which also earned a losing bonus point that keeps them in the title picture, though it will need the French Grand Slam bid to end first. The performance was certainly a significant advance on that given by a less cohesive Irish side at the same stadium, minus 80,000 spectators when they last visited for a delayed final-round contest in October 2020.

Farrell agreed had seen improvement since then.

“Yeah, I did and in between those two years I’ve seen a lot of improvement in other games. I think we’ve performed very valiantly in Paris, spirited in the way we fought back (from 22-7 to 22-21 in the third quarter), but at the same time we have performed better on late. There were a few opportunities left out there.

“The good thing about this is obviously the learnings from it. You compare the performance to two years ago to this one, there’s still a lot of room for improvement, that’s the good thing.” A training session hit-out against the Irish U20s yesterday was a step in the right direction but Farrell will have to do without first-choice hooker Rónan Kelleher, who will play no further part in the championship having succumbed to a shoulder injury after 25 minutes in Paris.

“It's disappointing for Rónan and for us. He has kicked off his international career with a bang. The more experience he keeps getting at this level, the better he's going to become. How Rónan deals with that injury as a young professional is going to help him down the track as well. Obviously him being out of the Six Nations will give other lads an opportunity to step forward.”