A big day for Earls, Prendergast and Byrne
CENTURION CLUB: Keith Earls will become the ninth Irish player to join the centurion club as he will earn his 100th cap from off the bench. Pic: ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan
He may not encourage the adulation but the veteran Munster winger deserves to be centre of attention at Aviva Stadium this evening as he seems likely to earn his 100th Test cap from the replacements bench. Earls, 35, becomes just the ninth Irishman to reach such an impressive milestone and the plaudits he has received from team-mates old and new this week indicate the breadth and depth of affection with which the Moyross flier is held.
Yet Earls will not just turn up and take his bow and nor can he afford to. With just nine days until Andy Farrell whittles his now 38-man training squad down to 33 ahead of next month’s World Cup, the battle for a seat on the plane to France is only going to intensify, particularly if there are only 14 backline places rather than 15 available in Farrell’s squad breakdown. Earls needs to showcase all the tenacity, guile and commitment tonight that got him to this point if he is to have one last hurrah on the biggest stage.
The Connacht forward this week saw off the unlucky Gavin Coombes, now back with Munster, in the battle for back-row places and he can advance his claim further this evening with a first start for Ireland as he wins his third Test cap. That the 23-year-old has been handed the No.8 jersey with regular incumbent Caelan Doris kept in reserve and Jack Conan currently injured gives Prendergast further scope to showcase his skills.
The Ireland management have been impressed by his consistent progress in training camp this summer with today’s captain James Ryan also highlighting his team-mate’s work in contact and hard-punching ball-carrying. Andy Farrell described him this week as a warrior with an improving balance to his all-around game but the Ireland boss will need to see a more polished performance from Prendergast in terms of his discipline with the Connacht man too often in the past guilty of conceding cheap penalties.
Four years on from a start at Twickenham that coincided with an ominous heavy defeat at the hand of Eddie Jones’s team, the fly-half is back in the Ireland number 10 jersey, deputising for captain Johnny Sexton once more. Head coach Andy Farrell made pains to alleviate the burden of blame on the Leinster man for the 2019 pre-tournament debacle and has backed the now-28-year-old to continue the upward trajectory with the national team he has enjoyed since his return to the fold last November following an 18-month absence.
Byrne has plenty to prove to the management with Jack Crowley having laid down his marker for the number 22 jersey as Sexton’s World Cup back-up with a confident outing in the victory over Italy a fortnight ago. And despite Farrell’s words of absolution, this will be a starting fly-half desperate to banish the ghosts of August 2019.
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