FOR YEARS TO come, we could be looking back at tomorrow’s Six Nations opener between France and Ireland and remembering it as the day a new era started for this Irish team.
With Johnny Sexton now retired Jack Crowley gets the opportunity to make the Ireland 10 jersey his own, the Munster man backed to pull the strings on what will be his first Six Nations start.
Crowley could be Ireland’s leading man at 10 for the foreseeable future, and tomorrow’s meeting with a much-changed French team will be a serious test of his composure at Test level.
If Crowley represents the future in the Ireland backline, Joe McCarthy does the same in the Irish pack. Irish rugby doesn’t tend to produce players with the athletic qualities of the 6’6”, 112kg Leinster lock and the decision to put him in from the start ahead of James Ryan tells you everything you need to know about how highly Andy Farrell rates the 22-year-old.
Those two names alone made yesterday’s team announcement one of the more interesting selections of the Andy Farrell era. Throw in a second Test start for Munster winger Calvin Nash and Farrell’s decision to name a 6:2 bench split for the first time, and there was no shortage of talking points when the Ireland head coach met the travelling media at the squad’s Quinta do Lago base yesterday.
The changes are significant and come in key areas of the pitch, yet Farrell was typically relaxed in previewing what promises to be a fiercely contested start to this year’s championship. Both teams know whoever comes out on top at the Stade Vélodrome will be in pole position to win the Six Nations.
For Ireland, the challenge is to lift themselves from the pain of World Cup quarter-final defeat and add new dimensions to their game. Farrell will want to see his team take the game to their hosts physically, with McCarthy’s aggressive edge a potential game-changer for the visitors.
The Ireland boss expects a hard, attritional game and with scoring chances likely to be at a premium his team will need to be clinical when the moments arrive – with memories of missed opportunites against New Zealand in Paris surely playing on minds as Ireland tuned up for this testing championship opener.
“To be more ruthless is what we’re all (after), that’s the gold standard, isn’t it?” says Farrell.
“The reality is that when you’re playing against good sides like we are in France, it’s not going to be perfect. It’s how we deal with our disappointment, because our expectations are high, etc and just getting on with what’s in front of our face and not compounding (errors). So, the way that we train and pressure we put on each other.
There’s plenty of imperfections, but how we work on our mentality to get to that next moment is getting better all the time.
“It’s an emotional game, isn’t it? You need to get to a point to physically play this game, to be in control of your thoughts when things aren’t quite going your way. It’s a skill that needs to be constantly honed in on.
“We’re down that road, we’ve been down that road for quite some time but we’re nowhere near where we need to be.”
Crowley has nine caps to his name but in a sense, tomorrow feels like the proper start to his Test career. The Munster out-half has impressed the Ireland coaches with his attitude and application ever since his first experience of international camp back in 2022, but his rise to becoming Ireland’s starting 10 has moved at a rapid pace. In the reverse fixture last year Crowley was running water as Sexton started at 10 and Ross Byrne came off the bench. He featured three times as a replacement at the World Cup but in total, his Six Nations experience consists of just three minutes off the bench against Italy.
It’s not the ideal preparation for what will be a serious step up for Crowley, but when asked about the Cork man’s relative inexperience on the Test stage, Farrell simply pointed to the opportunity that lies ahead for him.
“You can’t just say that it’s just down to experience. It’s down to performing when you get the chance isn’t it? Someone like Jack and Ciarán Frawley, Harry [Byrne] not as much because he’s been injured quite a bit, they’ve had plenty of opportunities to show in camp that they’re capable of taking the jersey. Now they’ve got that chance and then on the back of that you have young Sam [Prendergast] who’s come in and had 10 days and is a pretty impressive young fella, who is hungry to make it as soon as he possibly can.
It’s not about just giving someone 50 caps and saying the position is yours, it’s what right for the team and what’s best for the team, and with that competition we’ll find out who’s up to the task.”
France are preparing for some half-back changes of their own, with scrum-half Maxime Lucu and out-half Matthieu Jalibert taking the jerseys usually occupied by Antoine Dupont – who is preparing to represent France in Sevens at the Paris Olympics – and Romain Ntamack – who has yet to return from the ACL injury which ruled him out of the World Cup.
“I think it’s pretty similar actually. I think they’re outstanding players,” Farrell said.
“I mean, what (Matthieu) Jalibert brings compared to (Romain) Ntamack is just as threatening really. The speed he plays at and the individual flair that he’s got, especially his little tricks in and around the attacking kicking game etc, we’ve seen that in abundance haven’t we, with Bordeaux this year.
“He isn’t a facilitator as a ‘10’ and neither is Ntamack. He looks for the line himself and the break himself. He loves to keep the ball going as well with the French flair that we’re all used to seeing. He’s in top form at this moment in time.”
The battle up front will be crucial but these are two sides who also like to play, and with dry conditions forecast this has the potential to be another cracking encounter after last year’s Six Nations classic in Dublin.
“We all want to see an open enough game. We know that pressure and territory is always part of that, but we know the type of game that France like to play on the break etc, they know the type of game we want to play. To marry that up with decent conditions is going to be good for the game you would hope.”