The drama around tighthead this season — retirements, signings, contract intrigue — has taken some of the oxygen out of the room when it comes to loosehead ahead of next season.

Yet, when you have a look at it, it’s either a position of stability, if not strength, until you look at it a bit deeper, and see that there’s a little more worry there than you see on the surface.

Jeremy Loughman is the clear 1A in this chart as far as I’m concerned. He’s the most consistent scrummager in the chart, with good size, decent power around the field and an excellent work rate, as you’d expect.

All of those qualities are enough to get him into the Ireland squad, especially when Porter, McCarthy and Boyle are all currently injured. He’s done well for Ireland, as he almost always does for Munster, but I don’t think it’s disrespectful to say that Farrell isn’t necessarily sold on Loughman as a consistent Irish squad regular.

The full-time switch of Tom O’Toole proves that pretty conclusively, and when you look at the data, you see why immediately, even when you allow for O’Toole’s data being primarily based on him playing tighthead for most of last season. I’ve included a media comparison between most of the other Irish looseheads and a select few from around the URC.

It’s offensive power and impact that decide who plays for Ireland almost every single time. Is Loughman a better scrummager than O’Toole? Without question. But Farrell is looking for someone who can duplicate what Porter brings to Ireland at his best. That’s why McCarthy got reps earlier in the season, even though he’s a ropier scrummager than all of the other options on the list above.

Porter is the undisputed 1A in the Irish chart and is a very good scrummager against non-super heavyweight tightheads — the one group he can’t overpower. In fact, I’d be pretty sure that we’ll see Porter switch back to tighthead primarily in the next two seasons as a result of this. Loughman falls firmly into a grouping where there’s a lot of decent looseheads — a good, but not elite, scrummager, a hard worker in defence without being destructive, an accurate ruck guy and very durable, for the most part, as much as anyone can be in the modern front row.

None of this is a massive problem as far as Munster are concerned. Loughman is a reliable, durable and hard-working loosehead prop with good scrummaging ability and decent lifting, and there aren’t a whole ton of those lying around. There are plenty of looseheads who are more impactful with the ball in hand, but Loughman has his niche at this point, and it can be incredibly useful for our purposes.

The bigger issue, so far anyway, has been the impact of Michael Milne.

Milne was disrupted by injury towards the end of the campaign and, to be fair, was affected quite heavily by how he was used in the Munster attacking system last season. Milne was primarily used off the bench, but I think that’s a great use of him at his best. In theory, he should be our “power change-up” option. Not as good a scrummager as Loughman, but he should be a good power carrier for us, but… he wasn’t.

In fact, he had the worst carrying data of the players I used for this comparison.

It’s weird. I would rate Milne’s ball carrying as the best thing he does, but the data doesn’t show that at all. Now, he does show up really well on the defensive side of the ball, but the dominant tackle stats, while better than Loughman’s, fall below that median score.

Was Milne a victim of where he carried for Munster? And how?

Possibly. Most of Milne’s minutes came off the bench, and almost all of those were in tight games where we were up against it physically. Two of his starts in the last half of the season were away to the Sharks and the Bulls before he got a season-ending calf injury against Ulster in late April, which remains the most attritional game, from an injury perspective, that we’ve played in years.

Milne was most often used as a flat carrier off #9, in a team that was the joint lowest in all the major leagues for dominant carry % and fifth-worst in tackle evasion. When Milne got the ball outside of the 22 — and in it — it was in the hardest place for him to impact. He would typically take the ball at a standing start, or with defenders hanging off his earlobes on contact.

Milne, more than anyone, would be refreshed by a new attacking system that gives him more space to do what he does best.

Scrummaging-wise, Milne was pretty average. He has a lot of similarities with Porter from a body shape and setup perspective, but without the overwhelming strength and reputation to allow him to cut corners on his entry. Solidity at hooker and tighthead should give him more scope to attack, though, where I think he’s much better. We were on the back foot for most of last season, and I don’t think he’s suited as a “firefighter” at loosehead. Give him stability at hooker and tighthead, and he can be destructive at loosehead.

Milne’s initial two-season contract expires in July 2027, right before the World Cup, so it would be somewhat naive not to imagine that his track with the Irish national team won’t affect his future renewal, if not in the decision, certainly with the price it takes to retain him. As of now, he’s an easy re-signing for me.

There’s an excellent player in there — someone capable of being the 1A here by the middle of his next contract, should he sign it — but he, and the system, will have to hit the ground running.

That brings us to Josh Wycherley, who enters the last year of his contract in a worrying spot. Just on the face of it, Munster signed Milne to replace Wycherley in the chart at the start of last season. He had a decent number of appearances for Munster last season — mainly with Milne’s injury and both Milne and Loughman getting called up to the Ireland squad due, in part, to three injuries ahead of them — but his minutes have been declining for a few years now. If he is to be the third choice loosehead, an important role in any squad, he provides decent cover, but that’s about it.

Wycherley is busy around the field, hard-working, generally makes his tackles and hits his rucks. He’s an average carrier, without being dominant, a reliable tackler, again without being dominant. He’s not developed as a power scrummager either, and I think the neck injuries he’s suffered over the last few seasons have hampered him.

All that said, I think his biggest threats to a new contract are inside the province, not outside. While it would make sense, on paper, to sign Jerry Cahir from Leinster — a Tipp man — after the season he put down at Leinster, you’d be signing him on 1B money, at least. That’s what he’s gone on to at Connacht. There wasn’t room in the budget for that chart this season — tighthead was the priority.

I think Wycherley’s biggest threat is one of Donnelly or Ryan (albeit with a lot of tighthead experience last season) in the senior/development ranks, or Calvey or Foley if they can make a run.

There isn’t a whole lot of value out there for experienced third-choice Irish-qualified looseheads who are happy — not that Wycherley is that happy with his minutes; I’d imagine he’s not — with the odd start throughout a season, A-level rugby, and then cover minutes. It would make sense to extend him for a year or so if the younger players below him on the chart don’t make a run. At the same time, Wycherley is still young for a prop, so I have to hope that there’s another big leap he can make.

Of those players, Mark Donnelly is the most intriguing in that he was given a two-year contract off the back of just 16 appearances since 2021/22, five of those coming in the last season. Munster plainly feels that there’s something to work with there. Donnelly is a good, tidy scrummager, decent around the field, but fundamentally unproven at URC level.

That doesn’t mean he can’t or won’t be capable of it. Like a lot of younger props, the best thing for him at this point is finding a level of scrummaging that is higher than AIL to see if that can spur him on a few levels. The AIL is a great league, but I’ve often wondered about the value that young props get from it once they reach a certain level of development.

Donnelly, like Kieran Ryan, might be better suited to getting a season or half-season loan to move from training rep cover to someone who could provide an option as the third-choice — or higher — loosehead once they mature fully.

Of the academy props, Calvey and Foley, I think they mainly need S&C and as many reps as they can get against Kieran Brookes this season. Calvey has been flitting between tighthead and loosehead for Shannon in the AIL, but I think the clearest path to showing his physicality and athleticism is at loosehead. I’m not sure he has the size for tighthead, and what I’ve seen of him in phase play at AIL level screams “loosehead” to me. There’s potential there, but especially after his bad run with injury, he needs consistent, settled gametime at A level at the very least.

Foley had a bad run of injuries during his 20s campaign, but he’s one to watch. Explosive in contact, aggressive, and he’s been scrummaging at a high level with Young Munster in the AIL since he was a teenager. Given how highly sought after he was in France — Vannes made a play for him, by all accounts — I wouldn’t be surprised to see him jump up the rankings fast if he can stay fit.