Time is weird these days. I was walking a few days ago and trying to recall something from last year as I was doing it and I slowly realised it wasn’t last year – it was the year before that I was thinking about. 2019. You know, the year of the last World Cup. To give a bit of time comparison, by this stage after the 2015 World Cup Munster fans were already beginning to hear the rumours of Rassie Erasmus possibly going back to coach the Springboks so time might seem to be standing still but believe me, it isn’t.
We are at the approximate midway point of Andy Farrell’s four-year contract and, while contracts aren’t always a guarantee of job certainty these days, they do provide a progress map of sorts. Where are we relative to where we want to be in our first game at the 2023 World Cup?
On the one hand, it’s far enough away to be a “tomorrow” problem but on the other, it’s something that will have to be a “today” problem sooner rather than later.
Barring injury, I think the lines of succession for Ireland at scrumhalf are pretty clear. Murray is still the #1 for now at Munster and Ireland but, with a bit of luck, Craig Casey looks like he’ll be the guy there at both province and country before long. You might disagree with that statement but Casey is currently in the Irish Six Nations squad at just 21 years of age and 21 professional appearances at Munster for a reason. He has shown repeatedly at various high levels that he has the right stuff to be where he is now.
There are no such easy answers when it comes to the #10 shirt.
Right now Johnny Sexton is the clear first choice of the players currently available and, at 35 years of age, barring a catastrophic injury between now and whenever he decides to call it quits on his own terms, that will be the way it is for the foreseeable future. At least, that’s how it seems today.
The way I see it, the current pecking order at #10 of the players that are available and considered in the test “sphere” would look something like this;
- Johnny Sexton
- Billy Burns
- Ross Byrne
———— - Jack Carty
- Harry Byrne
- Ben Healy
Joey Carbery, for example, could possibly be as high as #1 or #2 on this list but until his fitness issues are resolved one way or the other, nothing is for certain there. Other players, like JJ Hanrahan and Ian Madigan, do not seem to be in consideration for test representation at the moment so don’t feature in the same way that younger players like Jack Crowley will be a year or so away from getting on the senior radar. Ciaran Frawley has been mentioned as a possibility in some other outlets but I would suggest that his usage as a #12 in every one of his seven starts this season points at Leinster considering his future in that position, so I’m not considering him here.
The two players of most interest at the moment are probably Harry Byrne and Ben Healy. Of the two, I would suggest that Ben Healy has the more significant game time but that Harry Byrne has the more complete game at the moment, although it’s hard to get a full judgement on that given the level of opposition he’s tended to play against for Leinster this season. He was very impressive against Scarlets a few weeks ago but, to balance that out, he was playing outside a hugely experienced pack and #9 against an extremely depleted Scarlets side.
Those details matter when you’re assessing where young players are, in reality, and I would say that both are a year away from being in regular contention to feature for Ireland at senior level, with a fair wind for both of them.
The difficulty comes in setting the launch structure for these players. What is an appropriate timeline to start exposing the likes of Byrne and Healy to the rigours of test rugby? There’s no easy answer to this question. Some would like these guys in there starting right now and it’s my unfortunate duty to tell you that this is something they probably cannot have, at least in the way they want in the short term.
The super annoying answer is that their elevation to the Test squad depends in part on the ongoing availability of Johnny Sexton and the medium-term availability of Joey Carbery at both province and country.
As ever, all of this is reliant on the vagaries of injury – especially in Carbery’s case and increasingly in Sexton’s – on top of the tricky, political decision making that takes place around contracting ahead of the 2023 World Cup.
If all goes well with fitness on both fronts – for me this looks like Sexton continuing to be available for 10+ games a year in a managed schedule over the next two years with Carbery returning to full fitness and regular availability over the same period – the main issue will come down to what it usually does, contracting and depth chart position. If you’re Andy Farrell, you are looking for a few key things when it comes to the next #10 and “form” doesn’t really come into it, at least not how you’d think.
Most sides will build their game around a few key individuals and none are more key to that than the #10. Any good side tends to reflect the primary qualities of their #10 so your choice of player here isn’t so much dictated by form, but by an agreed consensus that you are building around that player and their skillset going forward.
Munster with Ronan O’Gara, for example, would have gone through periods where his form might have been up and down but there was never a question that he would be jettisoned for big games as a result unless he was injured. O’Gara was Munster’s #10. If he was fit, he was the starting guy and that was that.
The modern game runs on the same principle of certainty. If your primary #10 is injured or unavailable then there will be a natural flux between the back-up and younger players – this is natural – but there is rarely a question that your starting #10’s position is under threat on a week to week or even season by season basis bar something disastrous. In reality, these things run in cycles of two or even three years.
As an example, look at Leinster during the two seasons that Johnny Sexton spent in Paris with Racing 92. I think that Leinster had a clear decision to make with regards to their future game plan in the winter of 2012 when it became clear that Sexton was leaving for at least two seasons. They could either move to something that better reflected the qualities of Ian Madigan – the defacto younger replacement already in the squad – or look for a player better suited to slotting into the existing structure that was heavily based on Sexton’s qualities from outside the province in the hope/expectation that Sexton would be back in two years.
If Leinster changed to the type of game that would fully suit Ian Madigan as he was in 2012/13, I think it would look quite different from the type of game that Leinster had been playing to that point. That kind of change in approach is not easily implemented or reversed, once you’ve committed to it. Maybe that’s why Leinster signed Jimmy Gopperth – a player with a lot of shades of Sexton physically and phase for phase – as opposed to looking at a staggered three-year cycle aimed at making Ian Madigan their guy at #10.
Ireland were in the exact same boat as Leinster. They could have chosen to let Sexton have an Irish exile of sorts while they explored building around guys like Madigan, Keatley or Jackson. They wouldn’t have had to deal with Racing and international release windows at the time either too, which they would have liked, but Sexton was Ireland’s attacking fulcrum and a cornerstone of Schmidt’s aims at test level, as Sexton had been for him at Leinster.
In reality, there was no one else even came close to what Schmidt wanted from his #10 still in the country so exceptions had to be made to allow Ireland to play as Schmidt had envisioned when he took the job.
How is this relevant to Ireland in 2021? I think we’re currently in a flux situation where our current incumbent is a slightly janky fit for what we currently need at #10 while still being the best option of the players currently fit and available. Joey Carbery seems perfect for the kind of fluid 3-2-2 system we’ve been using under Catt but he has been consistently injured since early 2019. Ross Byrne, Jack Carty and Billy Burns are decent players but neither have the ring of Ireland’s long-term guy at #10. That naturally turns the focus to the younger options – Byrne, Healy and, sooner or later, Jack Crowley.
And yet, despite this, Andy Farrell will be more than aware that he cannot fully build around any #10 at test level that is not a key cornerstone player for their province. A lot is made over Warren Gatland’s decision to start Ronan O’Gara against Scotland in the 2000 Six Nations but O’Gara was already established as Munster’s #10 at that point in his third full year as a professional. He started every Heineken Cup game prior to that Six Nations so, in the environment of the time, he was a known quantity to Gatland as a player who was taking on key responsibilities.
With that in mind, there are a few key contracting scenarios that will be key to the next two years for the Irish #10 shirt.
Contract Decision #1: Johnny Sexton Re-Signs on a 1+1 Option
Sexton is currently Ireland and Leinster captain so I’d be quite surprised to see him not extend his deal this Spring to take in at least the next season with a possible joint option to extend to the 2023 World Cup. His current importance to Ireland and Leinster is such that it’s close to a certainty that he signs on for the next year at the very least to take him up to 2022.
We don’t know the exact duration of the Byrne brother’s contracts – only that they signed new deals in June 2020 – but it would make sense that they signed on two-year deals at that point that would take them to June 2022.
That would mean that the next season is played out with Leinster having three senior players in the position without the usual swathe of test-window games that has typically allowed them to stack players across multiple depth charts purely from a “game time” perspective. Budgeting for these players is a more complex concept and, at least over the last few years, weaved in with their central contract players and the extra budget space that allowed.
Essentially, Leo Cullen could tell a player behind two internationals over the last three seasons that they would have X number of minutes during a PRO14 season and, with every minute being an opportunity, it allows a player to play with the idea of earning more, bigger minutes in a game where there will usually be one or two injuries.
That could well be the case next season – that Leinster expertly balance Sexton, Ross Byrne and Harry Byrne – but there will be a lot less test-window games in which that can be easily achieved. There will be a “minutes” squeeze for everyone and Leinster are no exception.
If Harry Byrne someone that Leinster think can be their primary guy in 2022, he needs exposure to big games during the tail end of this season ideally and absolutely has to be making moves up the depth chart by the end of the proposed Rainbow Cup. It’s unlikely that Ireland will have any summer tour this season and the November Internationals are as up in the air as anything so, bar a wild change for Italy this Spring, we can’t be sure how Harry Byrne would do at that level.
If Harry Byrne isn’t close to starting ahead of Sexton in the 2021/22 European Cup pool, how confident can Ireland be about investing in him as a guy who can start for Ireland in the 2022 Six Nations? That leaves Leinster (and the IRFU) with a key contract decision to make if Sexton and both Byrnes are contracted to 2022. Go with Sexton if he’s still fit and available with Byrne as the defacto protege? Ross Byrne seems like the easiest fall guy here as a player who has comfortably shown his ability at European level but has consistently found it difficult at the very highest level of test rugby. All this seems like the most likely scenario to me at Leinster.
Contract Decision #2: Healy, Crowley, Carbery and The Heir To The Throne
Things are a little less complex at Munster but they have a serious question to ask.
“Can we rely on Joey Carbery as our primary #10 until the end of his current deal in 2022?”
Ability-wise, there’s no question that Carbery has the skillset and mentality to be Munster’s #10 but his injury record since the spring of 2019 has to be a concern. Who’s to say how his ankle will hold up in the medium term? If he returns from his indefinite injury hiatus fully fit and firing, then great! But until he puts down serious time without another layoff over the medium term, I’m not sure how you can consistently plan for Joey Carbery to be your main guy.
My own pet theory is that his year and a half out with injury would well lead to a renaissance of Joey Carbery as a killer second playmaker at fullback but a theory is all that is.
Meanwhile, Munster have had to go about their business as best they can without the guy they signed in 2018/19 to be The Guy. JJ Hanrahan has done a relatively good job in the position as both Ian Keatley and Tyler Bleyendaal have left the province but not to the point where he has entered consideration for Ireland. His contract situation beyond this season is yet to be confirmed as of the time of writing but I think it’s fair to say that, given his age profile, Munster or Ireland are not looking at Hanrahan as their go-to cornerstone player at #10 for the next three seasons.
That leaves a few scenarios that Munster have to plan for and all of them include the development of Ben Healy and Jack Crowley as priorities. If Munster sees Healy and Crowley as being players who can step up for province and country in the next two or three years, then they have to be cycled up the depth chart regardless of Carbery’s status.
The big decision will be if Munster re-sign Hanrahan on a one/two-year deal to cover the process of upscaling both Crowley and Healy while Carbery’s fitness status remains a question mark. Hanrahan might have better offers too, by the way, so his re-signing isn’t a guarantee but you can see where the process gets complicated.
The cleanest option, for me, comes with risk and it’s banking on Healy and Carbery as your primary guys for next season – possibly playing them together – with Crowley getting an expanded role in the depth chart at 21 years of age. If Ben Healy, for example, is starting big games for Munster in the Rainbow Cup and PRO16 next season and doing well, I think he’s making Ireland squad’s in better stead than Harry Byrne because he’s showing that he can be a cornerstone player.
It’s dependent on him actually performing in those big games too, which is far from a guarantee for a young player, but today’s contracting decisions can help to clear the way for Ben Healy to soar in importance nationally while also giving Joey Carbery the best chance possible to come back from his long term injury. They are also helped by the possibility of playing week to week with the man who, depending on contract news this season, looks to be the future at scrumhalf for Ireland – Craig Casey. That is an advantage that Munster have not been able to utilise since 2013 with Conor Murray but have key young players in position to make it happen this time around.
