Ireland's out-half situation less clear than ever
MATCH WINNER: Ross Byrne is congratulated by teammate Andrew Porter after Ireland's victory at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
It wasn’t the easiest of kicks. Come to think of it, Johnny Sexton had missed a crucial attempt at the very same posts and against the All Blacks nine years earlier when the ball was rested on a perch much closer to midfield and with a good ten yards or so less to travel.
Ross Byrne was on the pitch maybe five minutes when his moment dawned on Saturday night. He hadn’t played for his country since Andy Farrell saw fit to offer him just a single minute at the back end of a Six Nations game against England that had long been won back in March of 2021 and now Ireland were deadlocked with the Wallabies with four minutes to go.
No pressure.
The Aussies would shun a three-point effort of their own from a similarly difficult spot before the evening was out but James Ryan, acting captain since Peter O’Mahony had exited the field, saw little need for discussion when his Leinster teammate was in the vicinity.
“So we had a penalty and I didn’t even have to make a call,” said Ryan whose decision to instruct Joey Carbery to go for the posts late on against France last February, with Ireland six down, was heavily questioned. “He came up to me with the ball and had a smile on his face.
“And yeah, it’s just he’s a very confident player and I knew when I saw that there was a very good chance that he would knock it between the sticks. Yeah, he’s a very confident player, it’s one of his strengths. I was delighted for him to come in late and come onto the pitch and knock over the kick was brilliant.”
Byrne’s redemption story came on the back of Jack Crowley’s unlikely scramble from third-choice Munster ten to starting Ireland out-half in the space of a blink of an eye, his progress from there to here a salutary lesson for any player in the Irish pool that the so-called strength-in-depth is never much more than surface deep.
Crowley did himself no harm on the night of his first senior start and if that doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement then it was no small thing given the scrappy and attritional nature of a game that disappointed as a spectacle. If he had little enough to do then he did it effectively. Bending games to his will is for another day.
“It was a big ask for a young man to come in and play 70 minutes against a team as good as that, and then to come out on top,” said O’Mahony. “It's easy to see he is a good kid, he is hungry to learn, he is hugely ambitious. He has no fear of asking questions or saying the wrong thing.”
Widen the lense on all this and the question to be asked is if Farrell and his staff have any better idea as to where they stand in the attempt to future-proof them in terms of Sexton’s back-up. The answer as they reflect on the November series is that they certainly aren’t anywhere they expected to be.
Farrell touched on this on Saturday night when he referred to the volume of moving parts that comes with the gig and his belief that they are never ‘going to get the clarity’ they want on the squad at large because of it. He’s right: Joey Carbery only got 46 minutes against Fiji and Ciaran Frawley didn’t make it onto the senior stage at all.
Those two were numbers two and three in the queue before Ireland met the Springboks earlier this month and, as the figures show, Sexton has recorded over 300 minutes more game time for his country than the other half-dozen out-halves that have been tried across Farrell’s 29 games in charge to date.
The harsh reality for Byrne is that his kick against the Wallabies likely won't bump him up the ladder, Jack Carty has managed just one minute, away to France this year, under the current management, Billy Burns hasn’t featured since a cameo against Japan 16 months ago, and Harry Byrne hasn’t played rugby at all this season.
Carbery has 37 caps now but has only started three Tests against top sides that aren’t called Italy. The head injury he suffered against Fiji was just the latest in a long line of misfortunes that have hampered his progress as Sexton’s understudy and Farrell badly needs him fit and firing in 2023.
Maybe the only other question left for now is whether the head coach goes with Crowley or Frawley in the New Year. The Munster man has a head-start now with two caps tucked away but if the last three years have shown us anything it is to expect the unexpected in this more vital of departments.
As things stand, Sexton isn’t just Ireland’s best ten by a street. The 37-year-old is the most durable, and by a distance.
Johnny Sexton: 19/1 (Start/sub); 1,324 (Minutes) SA - Nov, 2022 (Last game).
Joey Carbery: 6/9; 513; Fiji - Nov, 2022.
Billy Burns: 2/4; 193; Ita - Feb, 2021.
Ross Byrne: 1/9; 192; Aus - Nov, 2022.
Jack Crowley: 1/1; 106; Aus - Nov, 2022.
Harry Byrne: 0/2; 56; Arg - Nov, 2021.
Jack Carty: 0/1; 1; Fra - Feb, 2022.
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