Ireland reveal 'A' team to take on England in Bristol

There are five Connacht players in the XV, four from Munster and three apiece from Leinster and Ulster.

CHANCE TO IMPRESS: Munster's Shane Daly will start at fullback for Ireland A against England on Sunday. Pic: ©INPHO/Laszlo Geczo

Opportunity knocks in a range of different ways for Ireland’s cast of Test wannabes. Two Emerging Ireland tours have served as fast tracks for more than a few in the last three years. An 'A' game against England in Bristol on Sunday provides another.

It’s over two years since an Irish team last played under this guise, when a New Zealand equivalent put a 47-19 beating on them at the RDS. The narrative since then is that many paid for that collective failing with a slowing of individual progress through the ranks.

That’s undoubtedly true but others have stepped up in the meantime. Calvin Nash, Jamie Osborne, Ciaran Frawley, Craig Casey, Joe McCarthy, Cian Prendergast and Jack Crowley were part of the roster that night. It hasn’t done them any harm.

Some – Frawley, this weekend’s captain Max Deegan, Tom O’Toole, Diarmuid Barron and Shane Daly - who featured that night will do so again in Ashton Gate as part of a side drawing on players at different stages of their journeys.

That sort of experience is buttressed by men with solid CVs at provincial level and then a sprinkling of youth and relative inexperience in the form of players who are just at the beginnings of their professional chapters.

Your Hugh Gavins at midfield and Evan O’Connells and Darragh Murrays in the second row would fall into that latter bracket and they will need a decent framework around them from the six men with Test experience to their name already.

Overseeing it all will be Munster attack coach Mike Prendergast who is being supported by Sean O’Brien, Jimmy Duffy, Colm Tucker and Mark Sexton. Getting all the component parts to work together will be the making and breaking of this expedition.

“It’s something Sean O’Brien spoke about,” said Deegan. “We’re there to make each other look better. If everyone has the same idea about how to do that then we will all look better out there on the pitch.

“If people go out doing individual things no-one is going to look good and we’ll all struggle in the game. It’s all about making the guy beside you look good.” 

England ‘A’: J Carpenter (Sale Sharks); T Elliott (Saracens), M Ojomoh (Bath), W Butt (Bath), O Hassell-Collins (Leicester Tigers); C Atkinson (Gloucester), J van Poortvliet (Leicester Tigers); P Brantingham (Saracens), C Langdon (Northampton Saints), G Kloska (Bristol Bears); H Tizard (Saracens), T Lockett (Northampton Saints); J Kenningham (Harlequins), A Balbeary (Bath).

Replacements: G Oghre (Bristol Bears); T Haffar (Northampton Saints), L Green (Northampton Saints), R Capstick (Exeter Chiefs), G Fisilau (Exeter Chiefs), W Porter (Harlequins), J Shillcock (Leicester Tigers), G Hendy (Northampton Saints).

Ireland ‘A’: S Daly (Munster); T O’Brien (Leinster), J Postlethwaite (Ulster), H Gavin (Leinster), S Bolton (Connacht); C Frawley (Leinster), N Doak (Ulster); T O’Toole (Ulster), D Barron (Munster), J Aungier (Connacht)r; E O’Connell (Munster), D Murray (Connacht); M Deegan (Leinster), A Kendellen (Munster), S Jansen (Connacht).

Replacements: S Smyth (Leinster), P McCarthy (Leinster), O Jager (Munster), C O’Tighearnaigh (Leinster), A Soroka (Leinster), F Gunne (Leinster), H Byrne (Leinster/on loan to Bristol Bears), B Gleeson (Munster).