Farrell's embrace of new wave already paying off for forward-thinking Ireland

An evolving Ireland group recovered from opening-night defeat to end the tournament on a high.

Mon, 16 Mar, 2026 - 07:23

Brendan O'Brien

Ireland were deep into the physical part of their Six Nations prep in Portugal as a sodden January gave way to February when Andy Farrell turned to the task of training his players’ minds as well as their bodies.

The squad picked by the head coach not long before had listed no fewer than 16 players with 10 caps or fewer, and Farrell made a point of asking all of them to stand up at a team meeting one evening in Quinta do Lago.

The message was clear: this was an Ireland collective deep in the midst of change. There were new faces in Edwin Edogbo and Nathan Doak, and there were a host more whose number of caps wouldn’t fill a free coffee coupon.

Tommy O’Brien had just six to his name.

The Leinster wing added 50% on top of that again through this Six Nations with appearances away to France and England and a third coming in the Triple Crown-sealing win over Scotland at the Aviva Stadium.

He is 27 now, not a spring chicken. Winning something like this with his country is big for a player who could look back on plenty of injury setbacks and dog days turning out with the Leinster ’A’s or in the AIL on one of his long roads back.

One day sticks out in his mind: a nondescript friendly away to London Irish back in 2023 as he was returning from an ACL injury. A day trip to Sunbury is no-one’s idea of the big time. Now he has eight tries in his nine Ireland caps.

“There were definitely times where I doubted whether it was going to happen,” O’Brien said after Saturday’s 43-21 defeat of Scotland in Dublin. “I always had belief in my ability, it was just a question as to whether my body would play ball.” If much of the change witnessed in the demographics of the Ireland squad have come from necessity – no Keenan, Hansen, Porter, Paddy McCarthy, Boyle, Baird – then Farrell didn’t have to make the wholesale changes we have seen either.

The lightning elevation of Sam Prendergast to the No.10 jersey can be seen clearly now as premature, but in most other personnel decisions Farrell has been spot on. Take Darragh Murray. No-one was expecting him to play last Saturday.

Farrell could have gone with Iain Henderson, who had been brought in as cover last week. He could have recalled Edogbo or Cormac Izuchukwu or even Cian Prendergast to serve as a versatile option off the bench.

He went for the guy with two caps, earned against Georgia and Portugal.

Murray is so new he was gushing after this game about the chance to learn off players like James Ryan and Tadhg Beirne. His take on working with Paul O’Connell sounded like a house painter who had just shared an easel with Michelangelo.

“It’s an eye opener and I just want to keep coming back and getting better.” Farrell has stressed how experiences banked by green players in this campaign would serve them and the squad down the lines. In all, he used 35 players and eleven of those played in this Championship for the first time.

Edogbo and Doak got their first caps. Murray and Izuchukwu were drafted in at different times. Stuart McCloskey and Robert Baloucoune emerged from the shadows to carry the team into a new and hopefully glorious era.

The positive vibes imported from a high-flying Ulster were extended to the role Ulster’s Nick Timoney played, mostly off the bench, across the five games, while Tom O’Toole’s blossoming as a Test loosehead has been extraordinary.

O’Toole had 17 caps before this tournament but he was hardly mapped with Ireland. The loss of three looseheads opened the door. Injury to another in Jeremy Loughman made up Farrell’s mind that O’Toole rather than Michael Milne was the man to walk through it.

A tighthead with Ulster, he has converted to loosehead with aplomb. Superb in the scrum against the Scots, he made 20 tackles in the 65 minutes he spent on the field. Of all Ireland’s ‘finds’ the last five weeks, this was probably the most impressive.

“Obviously not being involved in November, the last couple of years I probably didn’t feel where I wanted to be with my own personal game and my enjoyment of rugby,” O’Toole explained on Saturday evening.

“Not being in the group allowed me to reflect on what’s really important and I knew that if I wanted to be back in this environment that I had to go back and perform really well for my province so I just tried to narrow my focus and that’s what I did.” It’s not just the players who pushed through who should benefit from this. Tom Aherne, Jack Boyle and Harry Byrne were others in that group of 16 originals with fewer than 10 caps. None of them were helped by injury and didn’t play a part this time.

“Faz is an incredible coach,” said O’Toole. “He’s an incredible motivator and he spoke to me a few times one-on-one in this campaign, and there is an expectation every time you put on the green jersey, that you have to perform.”

The door is open.