ANDY FARRELL SALUTED Ireland lock James Ryan for his response to his exclusion from Ireland’s starting 15 for the Six Nations curtain-raiser with France in Marseille, likening his response to that of Peter O’Mahony when the Munsterman was dropped to facilitate Caelan Doris during the 2020 championship.
Leinster co-captain Ryan has been in fine form for his province and returned to Farrell’s starting side for Sunday’s 36-0 success over Italy at the Aviva Stadium, calling a spotless lineout and putting in a serious defensive shift.
But a test window during which many people expected that Ryan would be named Ireland’s captain has not yet panned out as the 27-year-old would have liked, with Leinster teammate Joe McCarthy and Munster’s Tadhg Beirne establishing themselves as Farrell’s top two locks in Marseille.
The Ireland head coach, though, had nothing but praise for Ryan, as well as Ulster skipper Iain Henderson, for the attitudes they have displayed since being overtaken in the second-row pecking order — for the moment, at least.
“James is always going to try to prove a point. Iain Henderson, actually, has been outstanding off the bench in the last few games he’s done that,” said Farrell.
Elaborating on Sunday starter Ryan specifically, Farrell added: “He’s a team player. Nothing but.
“And you know the best example of that? Peter O’Mahony got dropped a good few years ago [for Caelan Doris]… And he was the first one to not whinge and moan about it but to help Caelan to be as prepared as he possibly could be.
“When you’ve got examples like that, it shows what it matters to be a team player for Ireland.
“And people follow that type of example, and James has done exactly the same, y’know?”
Farrell confirmed that new Ireland skipper O’Mahony, tighthead Tadhg Furlong and centre Garry Ringrose will all be available to train ahead of Ireland’s meeting with Wales at the Aviva Stadium in two Saturdays’ time, while there were no further updates to the injury status of Hugo Keenan as of Monday night.
Finlay Bealham, who become a father for the first time in the lead-up to the Italy game, deputised to excellent effect for Furlong on Sunday while Andrew Porter provided answers — four of them, to be precise — to critics of his scrummaging as Ireland monstered the Italians at the set piece.
And Farrell was pleased with what he believed to be an increased aggression from his side at scrum-time, which he described as being hugely influential on the eventual outcome.
“We’ve got an honest group and we always review things very thoroughly anyway. An honest group would say last week, they wanted to improve on that and rightly so. And I thought there was a lot of intent in how we scrummaged [against Italy].
“I thought they were aggressive in how they went about that. So, lessons learned from that and punching forward to the Wales game, we need to build on that.”
The Ireland boss described Wales’ 16-14 defeat to England at Twickenham as “gutsy”, and expects Saturday fortnight’s opponents to build upon the positive aspects of their defeat and land into Dublin confident of an upset.
Ireland’s campaign, meanwhile, was only beginning, insisted Farrell, with three consecutive games against their oldest opponents due to determine whether they can become the first team in the Six Nations era to win back-to-back Grand Slams.
“England put it up to them with linespeed in the first half and Wales needed to find a way. They did — and they put England under a lot of pressure.
“I’ve no doubt that they’ll gain a lot of confidence with the type of performance where they should have, would have, could have in Twickenham – but I’ve no doubt they’ve another couple of weeks to get on the right side of the result at the Aviva, so it’s going to be a tough game for us.
“The tournament has just started for us now. It’s a good start but with all the Triple Crown games coming together, it’s going to be an exciting middle and end to this tournament.”
