Nov 25,2024
When the final whistle blew in Ireland's 52-17 win against Fiji , their line-up was a jumbled mess.
Injuries to Jamie Osborne and Jacob Stockdale in the opening 50 minutes meant that Conor Murray had spent the final 30 minutes playing out on the left wing, while Caelan Doris got to run through the final five minutes as an inside centre.
The Ireland captain had moved out to midfield after Bundee Aki was withdrawn – thankfully without injury – late on, with Rónan Kelleher coming on for Aki and moving into hooker, which in turn sent Gus McCarthy to the back row.
All of those changes came in an already much-changed side, with seven new players coming into the line up for the visit of Fiji.
Two years ago, Andy Farrell had also made a raft of changes for their November game against the Pacific Islanders, but was left frustrated with what he saw as Ireland laboured their way to victory.
This time around it was a different story. Ireland started with intent, and kept their foot on the throttle. Eight tries in total, while even with a flurry of substitutions early in the second half didn’t throw them off beat for long.
"I think it's our best [performance] of the three," captain Doris said of the performance.
"Felt pretty dominant out there. Good start to the game, similar to last week and the message at half time was to have a ruthless start to the second half and to kick on.
"Our attack hasn't quite fired in the second half over the last couple of weeks, but it was good today, we got a few tries off the back of it."
With two 21-year-olds in the line-up at hooker and out-half, and another debutant at blindside flanker, there would have been worries before the game that Ireland could have been disjointed, but aside from a few sloppy errors, it was a largely positive performance.
"It's pretty pleasing, I think like Faz [Farrell] mentioned, there was a bit of an onus on some of the older, more experienced guys to take a bit of a load off the younger guys, and I think there's a pretty even spread across the week, even the guys who weren't playing stood up and allowed the young guys to do what they do best.
"I think the way the environment is, it's seen as an exciting challenge as opposed to a burden or something to fear.
"You look back at Scotland in 2023 when so many people were out of position at half time quite early in the game. I was off, Ronan [Kelleher] was off, Church [Cian Healy] was in at hooker, Josh [Van der Flier] was throwing in, it's from there and there's an excitement about it and wanting to figure it out together on the pitch as opposed to being, 'Oh s**t, what are we going to do now?’ So it was pleasing," Doris added.
Farrell (above) was similarly pleased with how his side reacted.
The Ireland coach was full of praise for his debutants fared in their first starts, and he stressed the importance of building depth in his squad, bit by bit.
"Oh, it's everything, you know? I've always said it about the competition for places, we need to give people the opportunity to create that competition," he said.
"Again, a lot of players have got a lot of potential. It's how they use it with the experience that they've just had.
"Yeah, it's pleasing, and obviously it was like the wild west towards the end in terms of substitutes and people playing out of position, but managed that, so the group grows in situations like this."
