Duncan Casey: Reasons for Ireland's Six Nations woes run deeper than Andy Farrell absence

The worst Welsh side in history put them to the pin of their collar but we attributed this to the bounce that came from Gatland’s departure and Matt Sherratt’s arrival at the helm. Being outclassed by France at home in the deciding game of the tournament, however, put things into sharp focus. The negativity started to appear and has only grown louder after their inability to definitively see off the Italians at the weekend, despite the hosts being a man down for half the game.

I feel for Simon Easterby. Everyone was lauding what a fantastic job he was doing after round two whereas now, there is lots of chat about Andy Farrell’s absence being a major factor in the attack not firing and the team not performing to its ability. I don’t believe the problems Ireland had in the last few weeks will be rectified by Andy Farrell’s return and they would not have been prevented by his presence over the last while.

There has been some focus on the age profile of the current group – many of whom are on the wrong side of 30, two and a half years out from a World Cup – and calls for an injection of youth to reinvigorate things. As I said after the defeat to New Zealand last November, let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water just yet. While this is a team with a core you could say is short on youth, it is one brimming full of experience.

That’s what a core usually is, after all – your most consistent, experienced operators over a period of time. There were a few blips recently but the fact is these guys are, by and large, still performing at an incredibly high level week in, week out. People can sometimes overlook the reality that there is a pathway to selection with Ireland. National coaches will generally select players on the basis of how they are performing with their province. Provinces will select the best players they have available in a given week.

Whether that player is 20 or 35 is immaterial if the 35 year-old is going to add more value. Take the Kiwi trio of James Lowe, Jamison Gibson-Park and Bundee Aki, for example. At 32, 33 and 34 years of age respectively, you could say they’re not the ideal age to be working towards 2027 with. They do, however, continue to be standout performers when they line out for club and country. It would be foolish to stop picking guys who are still performing because of the possibility they will start to slow down or be less impactful down the line.

One thing that has come up frequently since the France game is Ireland’s perceived lack of out-and-out pace in the back three compared to the other powerhouses in world rugby. Louis Bielle-Biarrey and Damien Penaud ran riot in the Aviva that day, bagging three tries between them. The Bordeaux duo represent a calibre of speedster we don’t produce all that often in Ireland, the value of which is clear in their club statistics – they have scored a combined total of 27 tries so far this season.

The likes of Lowe, Hugo Keenan, Mack Hansen and others aren’t slow by any means. They are international wingers, after all. At the same time, you wouldn’t put them in the same category as Bielle-Biarrey, Cheslin Kolbe or Kurt-Lee Arendse. Some commentators have been discussing the importance of players starting technical speed work at a younger age. While there is value in this and the earlier you can expose people to any type of training, the better, speed work isn’t going to transform anyone from moderately fast into a world-class speedster.

If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it. Speed is something you are largely born with or without and while you can refine it and give yourself the best chance of hitting your limit, the gains will be marginal in the greater scheme of things. It’s a little bit like size and power. In the same way Ireland hasn’t traditionally produced a huge number of world-class sprinters, the academies are never going to start filling up with 120kg+ behemoths. Even less likely are physiques like Emmanuel Meafou’s starting to appear.

Like speed work, the earlier you can get players exposed to proper resistance training that is tailored towards rugby, the stronger and more powerful you can make them. Even at that, you are never going to turn James Ryan into Meafou, or even Joe McCarthy for that matter. That’s why McCarthy is such a valuable commodity at 6’6 and 124kg. You will get a greater return packing mass on most players than trying to make them noticeably faster but that’s not where Ireland’s strength has been.

The success they have had over the last decade has come from being technically flawless, well-drilled and highly accurate. We can go toe-to-toe with larger teams physically and outperform them in the more minor intricacies of the game. Our lack of sheer power forced us to become ruthlessly efficient and it is what has gotten us to where we are today.

One thing that is noticeable when you look around the rugby world is the variety of ethnicities you see in other teams. New Zealand has had a strong Polynesian contingent for decades, drawn from the indigenous Māori population, Tongans and Samoans, while Fijians also feature regularly. Australia has a similar story, albeit to a lesser extent. In South Africa you have the big Afrikaners of Dutch descent, in addition to the English South Africans and those descended from various African tribes.

I was good pals with recently retired La Rochelle man Raymond Rhule when we were at Grenoble together. Raymond is from Ghana but moved to South Africa as a boy and represented the Springboks seven times. He speaks seven languages, including Xhosa, Zulu and Sotho. I recall him explaining how different tribes traditionally produced players of a certain type more than others. Captain Siya Kolisi is of Xhosa heritage, for example, whereas destructive prop Ox Nche comes from the Barolong nation.

Of course, there is no guarantee that someone of a particular heritage will play a certain sport or be a specific type of player. But having a diverse range of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds in the playing pool of any sport adds a huge amount of value, providing a wider range of athletic profiles and playing styles from which to select. Look at France’s team from the weekend as an example. Peato Mauvaka and Yoram Moefana are of Walisian and Futunian heritage respectively. Uini Atonio and Emmanuel Meafou were both born in New Zealand to Samoan parents.

Centre Gaël Fickou’s father is from Senegal and Bielle-Biarrey’s mother is from Réunion, a French territory near Mauritius. When people talk about Ireland’s ‘X-factor’ players, Lowe and Gibson-Park – both Māori – are usually the first names referenced, while our most destructive ball carrier in the last few years has probably been Bundee Aki. Granted, we don’t have the same history and migration patterns of the countries reference above. Inward migration to Ireland is a relatively recent phenomenon but we are a far more diverse country than we were ten or twenty years ago.

Finding a way to broaden the appeal of the sport into more communities around the country, capturing a wider range of the Irish population, is something that can only add value to the game. This applies to urban communities obsessed with football as much as rural areas where the GAA club is the focal point of community life. As is often pointed out, the majority of the Irish team comes from a handful of private schools in South Dublin and in recent years, the bulk of these have come from St. Michael’s and Blackrock specifically.

Rugby is still a niche sport and while its popularity has grown massively in the last 20 years, it is still considered an elitist sport by large swathes of the country. When at a glance, it seems the best chance of having your son play for Ireland is by sending them to a private school, it can be difficult to argue otherwise. The challenge for the provinces and the IRFU is to rectify that and make it the sport of choice for more young people across the island.

At a basic level, we all want our kids to play any sport that they enjoy. But selfishly, we have to accept we are fighting a bit of a battle with football and the GAA and we need to get creative about how to take a bigger slice of the pie.