If I have to hear “Munster should have signed a prop before signing a bunch of NIQ midfielders” I’ll… I’ll probably do nothing and quietly seethe.

There seems to be a constant idea floating around in the Irish Rugby Bubble that Munster are not aware, on a structural level, of where they need to improve certain game units or sub-units. This comes from a mixture of media chuckling about floundering Munster and a fundamental misunderstanding of the mysterious and byzantine world of David Nucifora’s role as Performance Director at the IRFU. The chuckling is typical media stuff post-2009 but, to be fair, not knowing what David Nucifora actually does or how deep his role goes in the IRFU system is actually pretty standard because of how little transparency there is out there about what he does and, more importantly, why he does what he does.

Whenever I speak to people in Munster about signings and players coming in over the last few years, there’s been an acceptance of where we need NIQ players directly and where we can get permission for NIQ players, realistically. Permission in this instance is the key because every single inward signing of a player has to be approved by David Nucifora. If he says no, then the signing doesn’t happen and, well, that’s that.

This is the exact opposite of the idea that some have out there that the IRFU “pay” for guys like Snyman and De Allende or whoever to play for Munster. That is only true in that the IRFU give all the provinces funding and what they choose to do with that funding could, in theory, be used towards a signing like that but, even then, the approval is the key.

Over the last few years, there has been a few different ideas that have been out there about the number of NIQ players you’re allowed to have in your squad. In the late 2000s, for example, there were no real limits on who you could sign on a systemic basis. The Leinster team that won their first European Cup in 2009, for example, had seven NIQ players in their squad. That season Munster had six NIQ players. There were also no limits on where you had to be playing your rugby to play for Ireland. Simon Easterby, Tommy Bowe, Leo Cullen and Geordan Murphy regularly featured for Ireland in and around the mid-2000s while playing their rugby in the UK.

In the following years, there were consistent rumours of a limit on NIQ players – four per province was the most consistent of those rumours – but even then it didn’t seem like there were hard and fast rules. In 2013/14, Leinster had five NIQ players (Leo Auva’a, Jimmy Gopperth, Lote Tuquiri, Zane Kirchner and Andrew Goodman) with Richardt Strauss and Quinn Roux signed as designated project players. Munster had two – BJ Botha and Casey Laulala – with CJ Stander and Gerhard Van Der Heever signed as project players.

Ulster had four NIQ players – John Afoa, Johan Muller, Nick Williams Ruan Pienaar –  with Jared Payne and Sean Doyle as project players.

At this stage, a year before the European Champions Cup would blow up the old order but right at the time that English and French budgets were bumping the price for quality Southern Hemisphere players and increasing the cost of retaining the best Irish talent – as evidenced by losing Sexton to Racing 92 the year prior – David Nucifora was hired as the performance director.

Almost immediately, the policy on NIQ players changed as well as the never officially codified but ruthlessly implemented post-Sexton Play In Ireland To Play For Ireland directive.

The overheating of the Southern Hemisphere market and the push from the English clubs, in particular, to recruit Irish players pushed the price of retaining even squad-level players up so the provinces’ NIQ acquisitions dropped to ridiculously low levels, in all but a few outlier cases.

Leinster’s usage dropped to one or two players for a few years. Ulster tended to have around 2/3 post-John Afoa and Charles Piutau for a few seasons, while Munster had four NIQ players in 2016/17 with three project players, which shrunk to two distinct NIQ players over the last few seasons with guys like Cloete, Marshall, Knox, Kleyn and Salanoa all considered project players or project adjacent players during their time at the club. That is to say, they weren’t tied to another country and, in theory, could be selected by Ireland in their third year of residency without being a specific project target like, say, a CJ Stander, a Bundee Aki, or a James Lowe.

The tapering off of NIQ players for the first few years and then the re-emergence of a few bigger dispensation acquisitions in the last few seasons reflects the changing needs of Irish rugby, and the change in finances – internally and externally, in England, in particular – as well as cultural changes, like the JIFF rules, that have changed French clubs behaviour in the market.

What David Nucifora has to do is balance the needs of the Irish national side with the onfield and developmental benefits of signing an NIQ player into your squad.

Essentially, Nucifora has to ensure that no player who can be of immediate benefit to Ireland – immediate in this case being inside two seasons – isn’t “blocked” from game time that might scale him up where he might become of use to Andy Farrell. For example, Munster have been chasing after tighthead and loosehead props to improve our top-end performance in that unit but because Dave Kilcoyne and John Ryan were floating around third in the depth chart which doesn’t help Munster, but is of vital importance to Team Ireland. Anything that might limit the game time as a starter for Kilcoyne, Ryan and Scannell, actually, pre-2019 World Cup would have acted against Ireland’s interests so would be very unlikely to be approved by Nucifora, even if the players in question were second/third or even fourth in a national depth chart.

Nucifora also has to ensure that he doesn’t overheat the wages of his own national depth charts when it comes to allowing big-name signings in an active chart.

For example, if you go back and look at the three-year central contracts of James Ryan – negotiated and signed in late 2019, announced in February 2020 – that opened up the contractual “space” for Munster to sign RG Snyman. Once Ryan was signed on, whatever Munster were paying for Snyman wouldn’t be a factor in inflating Ryan’s deal for another three years, in which time Snyman would already be either gone (as was the plan pre-injury) or on a reduced deal, as is the case. With Ryan on a long-term deal, along with Henderson and latterly Beirne (albeit a very difficult deal to get done), it became much easier to get dispensation for guys like Snyman, and then Jenkins.

This season and next, with deals in the pipeline for Kelleher and Sheehan, I think it’ll be quite difficult to get a big-name NIQ signing into the Irish system before both are signed on the dotted line to nail down the position at Ireland level for the foreseeable future – Sheehan, in particular. If you bring in, say, Malcolm Marx on €500k per annum, that sets a baseline for Sheehan’s agent to point to when he’s talking to the IRFU before the World Cup.

The IRFU are not in the business of costing themselves money, so they try to avoid it where possible and this is just such an area where they can reduce the costs of retaining key assets for Ireland.

Munster are aware that a signing in the front row would immediately upscale our performance on the field – and even have a developmental benefit at this stage – but Loughman and Kilcoyne’s spot as third and fourth in the national depth chart for the next season at least means getting dispensation at loosehead for 2023/24 would be very difficult. If you think like David Nucifora, it makes sense.

Andrew Porter is the #1 loosehead in the country by a mile and on massive money. Cian Healy is the usual cover for Porter at Leinster and Ireland level but he’ll likely be retiring after the 2023 World Cup. Loughman and Kilcoyne are the next most experienced guys after Healy with the options behind them being guys like Ed Byrne with Josh Wycherley and Michael Milne next in line.

One injury to Andrew Porter makes all of this incredibly relevant in Six Nations 2024.

Unless something dramatic changes – or has changed – in the last few weeks, it might make more sense for Munster to wait until post-World Cup 2023 to (a) make moves for NIQ front rows and (b) actually get dispensation for them.