This summer was the proper global festival of Peter O’Mahony Is World Class Actually and everyone was invited. They all also had a lovely time, bought t-shirts, wore celebratory War God laser goggles and accepted that core, fundamental truth into their hearts.

Did he really say that Sam Cane was “just a shit Richie McCaw?”

I would posit that, at this stage, it doesn’t actually matter whether he did or not. He is believed to have said it and then, a week later, backed up the chat that he may or may not have actually chatted in real life. O’Mahony would have been the guy on the dressing room wall for the All Blacks just because of that belief that he’d sledged their captain and “got away with it”. It didn’t matter. O’Mahony was just as effective in the third test, Ireland won the series and finished the summer ranked #1 in the world.

I’ve been covering rugby for a long time now and this was the first time that the constant, underlying hum of “Peter O’Mahony shouldn’t even be in the squad!1!!!!1” fell completely silent. That has never happened. Peter O’Mahony has 87 caps, he’s a test lion captain, and he’s played at least five times for Ireland every single season since 2013/14 but every single year of that 12-year span there have been these weird discussions about his actual ability to be playing at test level at all, as if he was somehow fooling Joe Schmidt, the greatest Irish coach there’s ever been – so far.

All he needed to do to silence those was… dominate a winning three-game series in New Zealand against the All Blacks. When you’re Peter O’Mahony, just being good isn’t enough because he’s always been good. O’Mahony’s got to be elite to eventually be considered worthy of his place outside Munster. If that was the case for every back row that’s been seen as “a certain starter” by elements of the rugby sphere in this country over the last two years at test level it’d be par for the course but it isn’t.

I doubt Peter O’Mahony cares that much. No, caring about the perception of players is left to tragics like me but facts are facts. Right now, in August 2022, Peter O’Mahony is a core player for Ireland, the captain of Munster at the time of writing and a key man for Ireland heading into a World Cup year where we will genuinely fancy our chances of winning the entire thing. At 32 going on 33, this is (probably) Peter O’Mahony’s last shot at an Irish World Cup win and this will be the first year where we go in as real contenders, as opposed to various shades of a dark horse, as we’ve been at most World Cup’s – including 2019.

As a result, we might have already seen the peak of Peter O’Mahony’s Munster appearances as a CORE 1 starter in Category A games. Ahead of the 2019 World Cup, Peter O’Mahony played 19 times for Munster across the 2018/19 season in Europe and the then PRO14. Some of the conversations I’ve had with people behind the scenes in the time since that World Cup have all had a general feeling that maybe we got our prep wrong in the build-up to that year’s tournament.

Peter O’Mahony played 19 times for Munster in the season before the 2019 World Cup on top of his significant Irish duties. Conor Murray played 13 times on top of his significant Irish duties. Johnny Sexton played 12 times for Leinster in the season before the 2019 World Cup on top of his incredibly significant Irish duties.

Tadhg Furlong played 18 times for Leinster that season. James Ryan played 16 times for Leinster. Stander played 19 times for Munster. And it goes on. This was not an accident.

We wanted to be battle-hardened coming into the World Cup year so key players were given licence to play more games than they typically would. I was hearing from people around the test setup during Ireland’s disastrous 2019 Six Nations that the team were “knackered” and it showed. You don’t just recover from that type of workload in one off-season and then a heavy pre-World Cup preseason and warmup campaign.

When Ireland “peaked” in late 2018 I think it was because we were physically at our peak. I’ve heard it said that Ireland’s ruck-heavy, box-kick-heavy game wasn’t suited to rugby as it was in 2019 but tell that to the Springboks, who won the World Cup that year playing a more restricted, more kick-heavy game than we were. I don’t think the “style” was the problem – I think that we came into the warm-ups of 2019 mentally and physically drained. I think that then leaked over to the World Cup proper in exhausting environmental conditions and, as a result, we played well below our capacity at key times.

Ireland had a very long World Cup preseason camp in 2019. Leinster finished up playing on the 25th of May 2019. The first 44-man World Cup training group was named on the 28th of May 2019. The first World Cup preseason camp started in late June.

One month off between seasons? Players never really stop training anyway, even on holidays, but with a World Cup spot on the line, you know how guys would be working, keeping sharp, and staying on top of their prep as you’d expect. This is the World Cup we’re talking about here. But after a full season of that already with exhausting peaks at home against the All Blacks and long provincial seasons, a lot of people I’ve spoken to feel that we got the prep wrong across the year build-up.

Essentially, too much provincial rugby in combination with the pre-existing test load. Too much fitness work in the World Cup preseason.

Overcharged batteries don’t last longer – they drain out quicker.

I have heard that this year, it’ll be different and that anyone who is expected to be a core part of Ireland’s 2023 World Cup campaign will be severely minute managed during 2022/23.

I’ve heard different numbers but they all follow the same general ballpark – 3/4 targeted URC regular season games max, 2/3 European pool games depending on the scale of the opposition and then whatever knock-out rugby is to be played in May/June 2023 with extra test camps during the season.

Tadhg Furlong played four times for Leinster in the regular URC season last time out. I’d be surprised if he breaks that record this season. Peter O’Mahony played six regular season games for Munster last season – the majority front-loaded in four of the first five rounds – and I think it’ll be less this upcoming season.

That, typically, would be a problem in what is a contract year for Peter O’Mahony. The more you play, the more you establish value. That would be to ignore the wider context, though. Yes, he’ll be 33 this season but he’s a core part of the Irish leadership group, a vital lieutenant to the captain Johnny Sexton and a core role component of our back five rotation as it currently stands coming off the best test season of his career. Another one-year central contract extension to take him up to the World Cup and the end of 2023-2024 makes a tonne of sense for everyone involved as he begins to, you’d think anyway, start to wind down his career in his current role.

You could see him sign a two-year central deal to help steady the ship immediately post-Sexton just as easily. That doesn’t change the real need – in my opinion – for Munster to start moving beyond O’Mahony, both on-field and as a core leader in the Munster environment. This is why I have Peter O’Mahony listed as a CORE 1 talent but also a PRIORITY 1 replacement for this upcoming season.

That means that, by the end of the season, O’Mahony’s path to a regular starting slot in a Category A fixture should be blocked by younger talent. They will have ample opportunities to grab that status during the season.

Is Jack O’Donoghue that guy? Well, he’s certainly younger – around five years younger than O’Mahony – and he’s a Combo Flanker with a very similar configuration to O’Mahony. He’s an excellent lineout jumper on both sides of the ball, a great defensive mauler and a better, zippier ball carrier in the wider channels but he’s not as good a passer or as effective at the defensive or offensive breakdown. O’Donoghue is also a leader within the group, having captained Munster repeatedly in the last few seasons. He’s coming into a contract year right after the best on-field season of his career to date.

He’s a no-brainer to sign on for another two years… right?

I think it’s more complicated than that. If fit, I would expect O’Donoghue to have a massive usage rate this season, as he did last season when he started 21 of his 23 games for a total of 1637 minutes.  He played in every single back row jersey at least once, which highlights O’Donoghue’s biggest strength and, arguably, something that holds him back from further test recognition – his versatility.

This is the curse of the Combo Flanker.

As I wrote last year about the role set;

The Combo Flanker is your prototypical “glue” player in the back row that can scale up or down in prominence and effectiveness based on the role you array around them. A Combo Flanker combines multiple skill sets that do not include on-ball power carrying. Siya Kolisi is a Combo Flanker because he combines massive offensive breakdown work rate with constant impact defence and tertiary lineout jumping ability.

I would add that, in the interim, I’ve added the term Heavy Combo Flanker to describe a larger, heavier Combo Flanker that has a more developed ball-carrying game than regular Combo Flankers without being a primary ball carrier while also having a broader skillset. Caelan Doris would be a good example of this role set and Jack O’Donoghue is quite similar to him.

From a contractual perspective, I think O’Donoghue and O’Mahony are linked in some ways.

If, for example, Peter O’Mahony signs a two-year veteran deal to take him up to 35, I think that might have an impact on O’Donoghue given how similar their role sets are. If O’Mahony signs a deal up to the World Cup or a one-year deal to the end of next season, signing Jack O’Donoghue on a two-year deal makes a tonne of sense. Getting both players on a two-year deal doesn’t really make a tonne of sense in the modern contract environment. You could say that O’Mahony on a two-year central deal makes space for a similar contract duration for O’Donoghue but you have to ask yourself if, coming into the peak of his career, O’Donoghue is worth the contract outlay he probably deserves.

Of course he’s worth it – he’s a really good player – but is he worth that outlay to Munster? Only if we are without O’Mahony from the end of this current season, in my opinion. Our back row is hugely competitive at the moment with four or five genuine top-class players currently under the age of 23. O’Donoghue is hugely experienced, rarely injured and a proper glue player in any back row build while being a capable captain but if you aren’t going to play him with O’Mahony – something I feel is the core of a poor back five build for Munster against most opponents – the higher tier contract you’d pay Jack O’Donoghue in line with his status becomes a Bad Contract by definition.

A Bad Contract is when a club overpays on a given contract for a player whose practical value on-field does not reflect the monetary value going out to them every month. The typical markers of a bad contract in 2022 are;

• Paying top-tier money for an Irish player north of 28 who isn’t in the Irish test bubble
• Paying a lot of money per contract year for a player in a position where you have a tonne of high-potential prospects in the same role chart who are ready to break out as regular starters less than halfway through the contract term of the player in question.

If over the course of any two-year deal you’d give Jack O’Donoghue at whatever price he’ll agree to in line with his current deal, a guy like Daniel Okeke starts breaking into Category A teamsheets ahead of O’Donoghue, whatever time there is between Okeke’s emergence and O’Donoghue’s contract expiry is dead money. That is to say, a contract value that stresses you as you contract the emergent player on better terms while the player they’ve essentially replaced is still being paid more than them.

It doesn’t matter that they are different role sets because, in the back row, whatever build works is what will be gone with. You don’t need a Combo Flanker. They are often valuable to balance out a selection but if, for example, Munster start running with a 3-3-1 shape that gets Hodnett and Alex Kendellen as strong edge runners and they’re going really well with a Power Forward like Gavin Coombes rounding out the back row, the value of a Combo Flanker like O’Donoghue goes way down – in theory, at least.

As Munster finds out what build works in the system devised by Prendergast, O’Donoghue will be in an ASSESS 1 year in my opinion. Further building on that Heavy Combo Flanker skill set as an edge running forward in a 3-3-1 system should make him valuable enough to warrant early contract discussions exclusive of O’Mahony’s IRFU process, especially with Van Graan’s Bath side lurking in the shadows with a back five in need of someone with O’Donoghue’s skill set.

Because I can’t separate O’Mahony’s deal from O’Donoghue’s I can’t make a definitive prediction on the outcome. I’ve boiled it down to two general concepts. If O’Mahony signs a one-year deal, I think O’Donoghue will get two years on more or less the same terms. If O’Mahony signs a two-year central deal, we might see O’Donoghue leave the club. With a free hand, I’d re-sign O’Donoghue every day of the week but in a straightened contract environment, the decision-making might not be so straightforward.

Jack O’Sullivan is the third player in that Combo Flanker role chart as far as I’ve been able to work out. O’Sullivan is unique in that he’s a former Ireland u20 standout of the same generation as Caelan Doris, Ronan Kelleher and Dan Sheehan but has been unable to duplicate the same provincial and test success. That has been mostly down to injury and bad luck.

O’Sullivan started the season well last year after a frustrating few seasons prior when it came to injury and falling behind the curve of selection. By that, I mean that he had worked himself into a position where he was featuring in lower-level URC/PRO14 games in low cohesion units or on the bench in mid-level URC games where he would come off the bench to basically end up defending for 20 minutes in rotten weather conditions. That was a knock-on effect of Munster’s style and general levels of depth over the last few years. If you’re playing Edinburgh away in February, you want to be starting to get the best chance to showcase your abilities. Coming off the bench usually meant you were coming on the field with other young guys and that often meant a surge in opposition possession which meant you spent all of your time on the field defending multi-phase possession.

Good defence is the mark of a good player but everyone understands that Jack O’Sullivan is a good player. That isn’t the problem. Getting noticed is. Attack gets you noticed. Tries get you noticed. Big carries get you noticed. That starts a groundswell of chat about you in the media, it makes you more likely to get selected as a starter for bigger games and it furnishes your ability to move up the contract tiers.

Whenever Jack O’Sullivan has had a chance to build up that momentum, he gets injured. Last season he picked up a knee injury in the Champions Cup away to Exeter and he missed the rest of the season right when there was a gap for him to push on with Beirne, John Hodnett and Gavin Coombes injured in the latter half of the season. He was outstanding against the Scarlets back in October 2021 but then he got trapped with the Omicron Incident in South Africa and missed the next two months.

He played six times total in 2021/22 with two starts and four appearances off the bench for 240 minutes. Alex Kendellen made 10 starts with 10 bench appearances for 885 minutes largely in part because he was fit and available. When Hodnett and Coombes were injured, Kendellen was in place to take advantage.

That quality – luck and availability – has eluded Jack O’Sullivan at the worst possible times in the last three years. It hasn’t stopped him from getting a new two-year deal in January 2022 which takes the pressure off him, in one regard, but it does put a focus on his ability to impact games early and often this upcoming season. I’d heard a few times over the summer that O’Sullivan was absolutely flying it in preseason so imagine my stomach hitting the floor like a dropped rhubarb tart on Friday night when he went off due to a suspected brain injury* literally one minute into the first game of the preseason.

*Quick note – I’ll be referring to concussions as brain injuries on here going forward because that’s what they actually are. 

That won’t keep him out for too long, we’d hope, but it was a fly in the ointment for sure. The tantalising thing is that Jack O’Sullivan is an incredibly interesting player – a Combo Flanker/Small Forward hybrid. At 6’2″ and 100≅KG, O’Sullivan is a little smaller than the typical Combo Flanker but his rounded skill set – especially at the lineout, where he’s a good secondary jumper – marks him out as being someone who gives you the balancing effect you associate with Combo Flankers while also giving you the edge carrying fireworks, defensive breakdown menace, handling and defensive/offensive usage specification of a Small Forward build player, a Heavy Wing Forward in particular.

That’s what marks him out as being really interesting. A hypothetical back row build of O’Mahony, O’Sullivan and Coombes isn’t as unbalanced as O’Mahony, O’Donoghue and Coombes traditionally have been, in my opinion, because O’Sullivan gives you that little bit of something different.

Unfortunately, all of that is moot until O’Sullivan can stay on the field consistently, week to week and block to block.

***

On the Small Forward depth chart, there are two standout young options in Alex Kendellen and John Hodnett. Jack Daly is a good cover option, in theory, but has a long-term knee injury to recover from and we might not get to see him until well later in the season.

Alex Kendellen’s 2021/22 was as good a season as you’ll ever see from an academy player anywhere in this sport. He started the season with the kind of small minutes here and there that you’d expect for a year two player but finished the season starting (and scoring) in massive knockout games.

He’s a very complete player for his age and has got that “future captain” air about him. His usage this season should broadly be a step up on last season. He’s got the seeds of being a very special player. I have him tagged as a Heavy Wing Forward in the Small Forward family and he’s a Foundational player who, with a bit of luck on the injury front, should play a lot of Champions Cup rugby for Munster this season and for many seasons to come.

At this point in his development, he just needs to keep building on his physicality and small forward skill set to increase his chances of early test representation. That means adding to his lineout game so he isn’t tagged as a non-jumper, improving on his short and midrange passing, getting his heavy one-man cleans and continuing to build on the powerful tight contact work he showed last season on both sides of the ball.

Kendellen got the frame to be a dangerous presence in either of the two pods of three in a 3-3-1 style system.

The explosive John Hodnett, another Foundational talent, in my opinion, has the potential to be a core part of what I think we might be seeing from Munster this season when it comes to edge-forward output. Hodnett was unlucky with injuries last season, despite playing 748 minutes – not a bad return at all given he made his proper return from injury in December 2021.

When he came back from an ankle injury he suffered in October against Ospreys – a follow-on from the Achilles – his naming on that teamsheet for the Wasps game was something you’d see when a wrestler returns to save another wrestler from a beat down.

GOOD GOD, THAT’S JOHN HODNETT’S MUSIC!

He’d played six games for Munster before that. Six. And he played like a guy who had 60 in a 5-star performance in Coventry. He backed that up a fiver against Ulster at home and then some really strong four-star performances across the rest of the season and a good few of those were off the bench which is harder to do.

His season was ended by a knee injury in April away to Ulster and man, we missed him for the run-in. Hodnett is a perfect Strike Wing Forward. He’s explosive, quick, has good hands, and beats defenders with agility but he’s deceptively strong too. He’s not a lineout jumper – tertiary at best – but he’s got the defensive work rate and poaching threat to be a key offensive addition to any back five build. I mean, we gave him an early extension for a reason – he’s a key player for us, and adds a unique skill set that’s different from other Small Forwards in the country. Other Small Forwards are more well-rounded than him, but none of them are as explosive as he is in the wider channels.

Put him at the edge of the 3-3-1 I saw us running on Friday night against Gloucester and you’ve got a guy who can and will beat defenders. He just needs to stay fit and I think he can have a 1000+ minute season that changes perceptions about him.

***

I won’t waste your time by telling you anything else other than Gavin Coombes is, arguably, our most important back-five forward. Snyman? He hasn’t been fit. Beirne? He’ll hardly play for Munster this year. Coombes? He’s a genuine ball-carrying game changer for Munster and when we lost him mid-way through the Leinster game, a lot of our hopes for the season went with him. If he was on the field against Toulouse instead of skulling pints in the stands, I think we win that game.

Coombes came back for the quarter-final against Ulster but he was coming in cold after two months out and didn’t really impact as he’d like, even if he was unlucky not to score a charge-down try. If Coombes can stay fit for every important game Munster have this season, we’ll win most of them because he’s that good and that vital.

He’s one of the best passers in Ireland, forward or back, and when he’s used as a Power Forward – not as a Heavy Combo Flanker like was on the New Zealand tour – he’s as good a ball carrier as there is in Europe. We contracted him again a year early because he’s that important to what we’re trying to do here going forward.

He was Foundational, now he’s a CORE 1 talent.

Easiest entry on this list.

Beneath Gavin Coombes lies some incredibly interesting players.

The first, Daniel Okeke, is just a massive human being with power to burn. He needs more and more rugby but there’s a serious player here I think, just as Coombes was at the same age except I think Okeke is further along.

Against Wasps back in December, Okeke stood out carrying the ball, yes, but his overall game from a Work Rate perspective bumped him up to a Five Star Performance.

He’s incredibly strong, he’s only getting stronger and he already looks like a guy capable of winning collisions at an elevated level. Not only that, I constantly hear about how good he is on detail, on ripping at the lineout maul, his strength binding the scrum at #8 and just how hard this kid works.

He is ready for more higher-level rugby this season. Getting that seasoning will be hugely important to bring his game on because he’s still very young, relatively speaking, and needs experience around him to get the best out of him in everything from pod play, to straight-up ball carrying. If he gives himself permission to be the absolute monster he threatens to be, he will be a superstar in this game at home and abroad inside three years.

As for Ruadán Quinn? That’s Mr Ruadhan Quinn to you. He’s 18. Eighteen. He played 78 minutes against a physical Premiership side on Friday night and he didn’t look one bit out of place. He won collisions against other highly experienced professional forwards. At 18 human years of age.

Not every 18-year-old rugby player is capable of this but not every 18-year-old rugby player is 6’4″+, 110KG there or thereabouts and built like Brock Lesnar.

This is a freak athlete and, with all freak athletes, the key is not to burn him out or break him before he’s got a chance to become who he threatens to be which is a serious player. Yes, he’s raw – of course, he is, he only did his Leaving Cert this summer – but he’s got all the raw materials to be a player that you get in young, get professional S&C into young, get rid of any bad habits before they settle in and literally build yourself a ball-carrying machine that will only get better if he can avoid injuries.

If he can avoid injury, I’d expect to see him a few more times this season because he’s got everything I’d want in a Power Forward if I was building one from scratch.

And he’s 18.

Priority 1: Important player to be replaced by the end of the season. 
Priority 2: Important player to be replaced within two seasons
Priority 3: Important player to be replaced within three seasons
Core 1: Important first-choice player with at least four seasons of peak performance remaining.
Squad 2: Squad player in peak age that likely has four+ seasons of high performance in a down-the-chart position.
Foundation Player: Young talent (20-24) expected to play for five + seasons and transition to Core 1.
Potential Foundation: Talent ID’d young player (18-23) that has the potential to ascend to regular first-team exposure as a Core 1 or Squad 2 type player.
Assess 1: A player that will need to be assessed for role suitability and depth chart position across the upcoming season with a view to their future usage or contract.

	Player Role	Age Jan 1 2023	Grade	Contract Year?
Peter O'Mahony	COMBO FLANKER	33	CORE 1/PRIORITY 1	YES
Jack O'Donoghue	COMBO FLANKER	28	ASSESS 1	YES
Jack O'Sullivan	COMBO FLANKER / HEAVY WING FORWARD	24	SQUAD 2	NO
Alex Kendellen	HEAVY WING FORWARD	21	FOUNDATION	NO
John Hodnett	STRIKE WING FORWARD	23	FOUNDATION	NO
Jack Daly	HEAVY WING FORWARD	24	SQUAD 2	NO
Gavin Coombes	POWER FORWARD	25	CORE 1	NO
Daniel Okeke (A)	POWER FORWARD	21	POTENTIAL FOUNDATION	YES
Ruadhán Quinn (A)	POWER FORWARD	19	POTENTIAL FOUNDATION	YES