On Sunday, I was chatting away with one of my future in-laws and one of them said, “Jeez, South Africa are getting old, aren’t they?”

And he was right, they are. It’s actually been something of a talking point since the weekend, where they just about beat the Wallabies to avoid losing two at home on the trot. The general consensus after those two games against the Wallabies is that this version of the Springboks — one of the best teams the game has ever known when it comes to knockout rugby at the World Cup, in particular — is coming to the end of the line. Father Time, after all, is undefeated, even when tangling with guys like Eben Etzebeth and Siya Kolisi.

But then I thought… wait, aren’t Ireland in broadly the same boat?

It’s been a long-held idea of mine that this current iteration of the Irish test squad is old and getting older. Last November, for example, the Springboks and Ireland were the two sides at the top in terms of average squad age. In a general sense, this Irish squad is harder to get out of than it is to get into, and it’s quite challenging to get into it.

But is that accurate?

I went back to all the games since the 2023 World Cup and worked out who was being selected, and how old those guys will be this coming season.

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Top Usage Since RWC 2023 (15 Tests)

Players with 12+ selections out of 15 possible with their age in 2025/26 in brackets:

• 14 selections: Andrew Porter (30), Joe McCarthy (25), Josh van der Flier (33), Jack Crowley (26), James Lowe (33)
• 13 selections: Caelan Doris (27), Robbie Henshaw (32), Ronan Kelleher (28), Finlay Bealham (34)
• 12 selections: Tadhg Beirne (34), Jamison Gibson-Park (33), Ryan Baird (26)

To try and illustrate this, I went back and created a matchday squad of the players with the most appearances since the 2023 World Cup. The players in orange are 32 or older this season. 

#	Player	Age (2025/26)	Notes
15	Hugo Keenan	30	Mainstay fullback
14	Calvin Nash	29	High-usage wing
13	Robbie Henshaw	33	Heavy minutes at 13
12	Bundee Aki	36	First-choice 12
11	James Lowe	34	Ever-present wing
10	Jack Crowley	26	Clear #10
9	Jamison Gibson-Park	33	Primary 9
1	Andrew Porter	30	Cornerstone LH
2	Dan Sheehan	27	Main hooker
3	Tadhg Furlong	33	Rotated with Bealham
4	Joe McCarthy	24	Nailed-on lock
5	Tadhg Beirne	34	High-usage lock
6	Peter O’Mahony	36	Regular starter (retired now)
7	Josh van der Flier	33	Ever-present 7
8	Caelan Doris	28	Core #8
Bench (most frequent options)
16	Ronan Kelleher	28	Regular bench hooker
17	Cian Healy	38	Bench LH (retired)
18	Finlay Bealham	34	Rotated TH
19	James Ryan	30	Lock cover
20	Jack Conan	33	Back-row cover
21	Conor Murray	36	Bench 9 (retired)
22	Ciaran Frawley	27	Utility 10/12
23	Jamie Osborne	24	Centre/fullback/wing cover

To be clear, this isn’t who I think is Ireland’s most likely matchday squad — as you can see, there’s three retired players in it — but this is just an illustration of who has taken up most of the appearances in the two international seasons since the World Cup.

You can add in Mack Hansen to the #14 jersey, Casey to the #21 jersey, and Ryan Baird coming into the squad, with Conan jumping to be a regular starter in the back row. You can also factor in Crowley and Prendergast alternating between 10/22 and Jamie Osbourne starting to step into more starting combinations once Farrell can work out where he actually wants to use him as we go forward. Ringrose will also likely take that #13 jersey after his Lions exploits.

But that isn’t really addressing the elephant in the room.

Age Profile Going into 2025/26 (by total selections across 15 Tests)

• Under 28: ~36%

• Aged 29–31: ~23%

• Aged 32+: ~41%

Over one-third carried by players who will still be 27 or younger next season (Crowley, Sheehan, McCarthy, Baird, Casey, Osborne, Sam Prendergast etc.).

Just under a quarter in the 29–31 “prime band” (Porter, Keenan, Ryan, Ringrose, Doris, etc).

Over 40% in the 32+ “danger band”, which is unusually high for top-tier Test rugby and concentrated in the most-trusted jerseys (tighthead, lock, openside, centres, wing, scrum-half).

Even then, that doesn’t tell the whole story either, when a lot of our players in that prime band have a ton of high-level usage to the point of attrition. It’s shown in guys like James Ryan, Ronan Kelleher, Mack Hansen and Garry Ringrose already, and I think it’s a national miracle that Andrew Porter hasn’t missed significant time for club or country since 2021/22.

So it’s not at red alert levels yet, but it’s long past the point where real, tangible development needs to happen.

For next season specifically, Ireland are not “old” overall, but selection optics lean old whenever Farrell loads the team with these veteran starters.

And this is where Rassie Erasmus and Andy Farrell are quite similar — they don’t truly trust players all that easily, because they know that their core drivers are vital to performance levels, albeit in different ways. For Ireland, Farrell has a core of players that he’s invested a ton of time into as part of his heavily involved and detailed playing system. They have so much inbuilt cohesion with his system and each other within the system that moving these players out can be highly unpredictable. Erasmus doesn’t have as involved a playing system — it’s much simpler, in fact, even with Tony Brown’s attacking system — but he really values players, forwards in particular, who he knows he can rely on, tactically, emotionally and physically.

Erasmus is quicker to try players, for sure, but if you look at his squad selections in the forwards in particular, he is least likely to stick to new players in the long term there, unless injury forces his hand.

Both men are correct to take this approach or, at the very least, I can’t blame them too much for not deviating from a formula that they know works.

From an Ireland perspective, we have to start looking at longer-term options sooner rather than later, given we’re just over two years away from the 2027 World Cup.

I will also state here that the IRFU don’t necessarily look at the four-year World Cup cycle in the same way that South Africa or New Zealand do. The view that I’ve consistently encountered when I’ve asked about this — as counter-intuitive as it might sound — is that we’re a small rugby nation, and that too much voluntary experimentation could lead to disastrous ranking slides or financial instability if too many losses start affecting attendances or sponsorships.

So it simply isn’t feasible for Ireland to sacrifice a test season with the intent of developing young players en masse. The last time this was tried — between 2010 and 2013 by Declan Kidney — results took a disastrous turn and the people I’ve spoken to are wary of that happening again, with Andy Farrell’s wobbly 2020/21 used as a further example.

You only get 10/12 test games per season, and losing half of those will have most test coaches in the top five or six ranked teams in the game under pressure for their job. Anything that is seen as costing losses, outside of possible experiments against Tier 2 sides, is unpalatable.

But time ticks on, and senior players take on more attrition every single season. Nobody wants to rock up to the 2027 World Cup with a matchday XV of players in their early or mid-30s in 50/60% of the positions, but at the same time, nobody wants to endure the unpredictability of trying new combinations either.

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Summary

• Most in need of new blood:
  • Centres (#12, #13) → Both of the most used options are 32+, with Ringrose already in his early thirties.
  • Tighthead (#3) → Both main options, 33+ and Clarkson still unproven at the highest level.
  • Back Row Blend → Van der Flier 33, no nailed-down small forward successors, likely a role change in the back row to cover for him. Peter O’Mahony has retired, leaving a clear run at #,6 but the most likely successor to that jersey is the 33-year-old Jack Conan, and the somewhat overrated and inconsistent Ryan Baird.
  • Scrum-half (#9) → Gibson-Park 33, Murray gone, but Casey needs consistent starts in November and beyond.
• Secondary pressure points:
  • Left wing (#11) → Lowe 34
  • Lock (#5) → Beirne 34

Fundamentally, if we look at 2027 and remove anyone who will be 33+ at that tournament — because we cannot assume that they will make the World Cup at all or whether or not they’ll be the same players when they’re there — we start to see where the problems might lie.

Position	Player	Age at RWC 2027
15	Hugo Keenan	32
14	Mack Hansen	30
13	Garry Ringrose	32
12
11
10	Jack Crowley	28
9	Craig Casey	29
1	Andrew Porter	32
2	Dan Sheehan	29
3
4	Joe McCarthy	27
5
6	Ryan Baird	29
7
8	Caelan Doris	30

Some of these are punts. Will Ryan Baird work out as a consistent test starter? If it comes down to how many breathless articles proclaiming that the next few weeks will be really big for him get written every test window, you’d hope so.

Will Mack Hansen continue as a starter for Farrell after a deeply patchy 2024/25, despite his central contract? I genuinely can’t say. He is too unpredictable, which, in itself, is a problem.

I have Casey down as being an automatic successor to Gibson Park, but will Farrell give him the starts he needs? I don’t #10 is a huge issue because, barring injury or a catastrophic collapse in performance, it’ll either be Crowley or Prendergast, and Porter, Sheehan and McCarthy look like front-row mainstays, even if I’m perenially worried about Porter’s android-like minutes coming back to bite him. Ireland will be hoping that James Ryan can pull out of the five-year plateau he’s been on and bring the positive 26 minutes in the second test against the Wallabies for the Lions into the next two seasons in the second row because, once again, we’re relying on Tadhg Beirne’s miraculous run of availability going on until he’s 35/36.

But even then, there are too many blank spaces for my liking, and it’s beyond time we saw some genuine options being looked at in midfield, that crucial third midfielder spot at #11 and tighthead.

Sure, there are possible options who can step in and become new core players but until they do, it’s like trying to predict a Lions team in 2029 — a waste of time.

All you can really go on is who the coach currently trusts in some capacity, and who will be at the point in their career where almost all players degrade in performance to the point that selecting them en masse is destructive to your ultimate aim.

That’s why new blood is needed. We’re not necessarily an old team right now, but we have all the hallmarks of a team that will get old overnight without radical change this November.

Time waits for no man, or coach, or team.