Half-a-dozen changes to the starting side. More tweaks on the bench. Team selections have long confirmed the truism that you can’t please all the people any of the time. Andy Farrell would have needed no reminding of that before revealing his hand for Italy.
The accusation is that the Ireland head coach has long been too conservative, too loyal, with his choice of players. That long-term needs – World Cup cycles to you and me – were being sacrificed on the altar of immediate demands.
Whatever happens this Saturday at the Aviva Stadium, the Ireland head coach has now chosen 34 different players across the last three games against Italy, France and South Africa, with Edwin Edogbo the latest to make his Test debut at the weekend.
Go back to the last time Ireland and Italy met, in round five of the Six Nations last year, and there are ten different faces in the ranks now with injuries, retirements and the suspension for Bundee Aki contributing to most of that.
Still, Farrell has made big, big calls this week.
Rob Baloucoune in, James Lowe back in. Craig Casey getting the nod at nine. Joe McCarthy getting another go. A fourth cap for Cormac Izuchukwu. No Tommy O’Brien, Jacob Stockdale, Cian Prendergast, Josh van der Flier or Michael Milne in the 23.
Tadhg Beirne and Jamison Gibson-Park delegated to the bench.
Transition is a filthy word in sporting circles. Players and coaches look at it with a disgust reserved for shit on a shoe, but Farrell was blunt when asked if there needs to be some short-term pain for long-term gain here.
“That’s just a fact of life but opening your eyes to the reality of it all… That’s pretty obvious.”
There’s no unifying thread to the changes. Van der Flier and Beirne could probably do with the shorter shift, Cian Prendergast didn’t do much wrong in the Stade de France, and Nick Timoney must have been hoping for a start. Lots to chew on there, and more besides.
This is the point where we would usually say: ‘lads, its Italy’. The Azzurri haven’t won in Dublin in the history of the Six Nations. Their one win over Ireland in the 25 years of this event came in Rome in 2013 when Ireland really were in worse than dire straits.
It may be that Ireland get this job done without much fuss. They could even ‘do an Australia’ on it and mimic the convincing nature of their win over Joe Schmidt’s side here last November, but Gonzalo Quesada’s side deserve respect on recent form.
And Farrell made a point of saying that this was not a rotation selection. He cut through the PR haze by stating clearly that players had ‘left doors open’ with that “lack of intent” in France, and that those stepping in needed to walk through the threshold.
The heavy schedule – three games in three weeks as the Six Nations is constricted further this year – was thrown into the mix too, but the message was clear: do your jobs. The question is, what if the radical surgery doesn’t work? What if the malaise continues?
Deepens.
The debate over conveyor belts slowing to a snail’s pace have soundtracked the last week. The Ireland XVs side was brushed aside by English counterparts in Limerick the day after the French lesson in Saint-Denis. Stocks aren’t infinite.
Of the dozen or so absentees, there isn’t any likelihood of seeing some of the most keenly missed – Ryan Baird, Hugo Keenan or Mack Hansen – back in green any time soon. So the question is: where exactly does Farrell turn next if this gambit doesn’t work?
How many cards does this coaching ticket have left to play?
If it clicks and the likes of Izuchukwu and Baloucoune and Edogbo step up to the plate then the brains trust can look at lubricating the wheels of change even more come the summer and in November. More of the same stutters and the questions and doubts only multiply.
It’s a situation only heightened by Farrell’s words after the loss in Paris when he publicly speared his players for that absence of fight. Some of his men have echoed that since, but it was still quite the call to say what he did, when he did and how he did.
He has carped at the failure of fresher faces to grasp chances in the past, his public utterances were sour enough in the November window, but this was another level again. That’s always a risk in elite sport.
That gauntlet was thrown down again on Thursday as he challenged his senior players to set the standards for people like Izuchukwu and Edogbo to follow. That’s all well and good but the buck ultimately stops at the door of the man in charge of the wider operation.
If Ireland were off the boil in Stade de France, who’s fault was that? And it prompts one of sport’s eternal debates: is that on the guy in the shirt, or is it on the guy that gave that shirt to him?
