It won’t have escaped your notice that Munster don’t have many players in the Ireland squad right now. If you didn’t spot it on the teamsheet, you’ve probably seen it in the comments.

Have a look at the forwards Farrell brought Down Under and count the jerseys. Nine Leinster. Five Connacht. Five Ulster (with Ward’s late call-up). Two of ours — Beirne and Loughman. Fourteen of the twenty-one forwards on this tour come from two provinces, and when you dig into the ruck data, you start to see why those two provinces in particular. At least, initially.

Leinster and Connacht are now, statistically speaking, the same team at the offensive breakdown.

Take the forwards from both squads and look at their attacking ruck involvements; Leinster’s pack averages 22.5 ruck arrivals per 80 minutes. Connacht’s? 22.4. Efficiency once they get there: 87.7% against 88.4%. So similar that it might as well be identical.

And the team-level numbers tell you what all that arriving is for. Both sides produce the slowest ruck ball in the country — 55.9% and 55.6% of rucks under three seconds, against our 60% — and both end more possessions with the boot than anyone else, Connacht kicking away 43.9% of theirs. This is the Irish national template in miniature: commit numbers, secure the ball, accumulate phases, kick for territory, squeeze. Under Lancaster, Connacht have morphed into the closest map to Leinster and, thus, the national team over the last 12 months.

Farrell is a system coach, and a coach who likes his players to arrive into the squad playing a style as close to what has worked for him in the past as possible.

Now look at who got picked. James Ryan, 28.1 arrivals per 80. Clarkson, 26.4. Van der Flier, 25.6. Darragh Murray, 26.9. Sam Illo, 24.5. The three uncapped forwards on the plane — Bohan, Illo, Jansen — are all Connacht, all reared on that system. Farrell isn’t selecting ruck quality, mind. Joe McCarthy went to Australia with the worst attacking ruck efficiency of any forward in the four provinces — 78%, losing the ruck battle more than one time in five — while Gavin Coombes is currently on the beach somewhere with 94.2%, the second-best figure in the country. What’s being selected is a profile: forwards conditioned to arrive at twenty-plus rucks a game, week after week, because that’s the engine the international side runs on.

But this, on its own, doesn't show us the full story. Let's look at the defensive side of the ball, again with a focus on the ruck.

But is this the whole story? The ruck numbers on their own show a certain profile and floor for involvements, but is that it?

I don't buy the idea that Andy Farrell has a set against Munster players, even allowing for guys like Edogbo, who was specifically namechecked as being unavailable due to injury when the squad was announced.

Start with the club data, because it's where the whole question comes from. Pull the attacking ruck numbers for every forward in the four provinces this season, and two packs immediately separate themselves from the other two — just not in the way I'd assumed.

I'll repeat the stat from earlier for clarity. Leinster and Connacht are now statistical twins at the attacking breakdown. Leinster's forwards average 22.5 ruck arrivals per 80 minutes; Connacht's average 22.4. Efficiency once they arrive: 87.7% and 88.4%. Brian Deeny leads the country at a frankly absurd 34.6 arrivals per 80, but it's the depth that tells you it's systemic — twelve of Connacht's sixteen listed forwards clear twenty arrivals a game. This is a very similar game plan (or, at the very least, underlying data) running in two postcodes: commit numbers, secure everything, go again.

Munster and Ulster live at the other end of the volume table — 17.6 and 18.1 forward arrivals respectively — but for opposite reasons. Munster's is a deliberate leanness: the fewest bodies committed, and the best security in the country when we do commit, at 89.6%. Gavin Coombes (94.2%) and John Hodnett (93.8%) are the two most efficient attacking ruck forwards on the island. Ulster, meanwhile, are... loose: the worst efficiency of the four provinces at 86.1%, with a cluster of regulars losing the ruck battle one time in five.

The team-level tempo numbers explain what everyone's ruck work is for. Munster's lean, efficient model produces the fastest ball in Ireland — 60% of rucks recycled inside three seconds — and the quick-strike attack that goes with it: the fewest possessions reaching five-plus phases, without kicking much away. Leinster and Connacht's heavy-commitment approach buys them the opposite: the slowest ball in the country (both under 56% quick) and the most possessions ended by the boot. Slow ball, reset defence, exit kick, squeeze. If that formula sounds familiar, it should — it's Test rugby as Andy Farrell plays it.

Which is where the selection theory came from. The forwards named for this tour skew overwhelmingly toward the two provinces running the national template — and when Caelan Doris withdrew and Bryn Ward got the call, the count settled at eight Leinster, five Connacht, five Ulster and two Munster forwards. The lazy conclusion writes itself: Farrell picks ruck workers, Leinster and Connacht breed ruck workers, case closed.

Except that the individual numbers refuse to cooperate. Flip to the defensive ruck tables and the squad does show a workrate lean — 4.6 counter-ruck arrivals per 80 against 4.0 for the unselected, driven by back rows like Timoney and Prendergast, who are their clubs' busiest men at the opposition breakdown. But efficiency?

The squad's defensive disruption rate is lower than the unselected group's, 10.1% against 11.3%. Cormac Izuchukwu toured with a 0.0% disruption figure; Ward arrived carrying 2.9%. Meanwhile, the genuine breakdown menaces all stayed home: Jack O'Donoghue at 22.9% — the second-best disruption rate among forwards anywhere — Joe Hopes at 23.5%. Same story with the ball: Joe McCarthy made the plane with the worst attacking ruck efficiency of any forward in the country at 78%, while Coombes and Hodnett, the two best, watched from the beach.

Even the volume theory collapses when you total it up, honestly. Combined attacking and defensive involvements: squad forwards average 24.7 per 80, everyone else 24.2. That doesn't really show much of anything.

The only thing the ruck columns will tell you is a floor — nobody in the squad sits below Ward's 19.1 combined involvements — and a floor tells you what disqualifies a player, not what gets them selected.

So what does?

Here's the turn, and it took cross-referencing every column in these tables to find it.

It's the carry and tackle numbers.

It was always the carry and tackle numbers.

Two metrics separate the squad from the rest by a distance nothing else approaches.

Evasion into contact: squad forwards beat or slip the first tackler on 13.1% of carries against 9.7% for everyone else — a 35% gap that holds inside Leinster, Connacht and Ulster individually, so it isn't a team-style mirage. Ward (22.3%), Stewart, Joe McCarthy, Doris, Izuchukwu — top bracket, all of them.

And dominant tackles: 5.3% of squad tackles are dominant against 4.0%, a 33% gap, with Connacht's picks nearly doubling their unselected clubmates.

Add a third pattern — only two squad forwards tackle below 90%, against fifteen of the thirty-seven left behind — and the profile becomes clear.

Farrell isn't selecting ruck workers. Well, he is, but not just ruck workers. He's selecting collision winners with footwork, on both sides of the ball, who don't leak tackles — and treating the breakdown as something the system handles collectively. The men with pristine ruck work are strong in precisely the columns the national model doesn't price in, and marginal in the ones it does: Munster's unselected forwards average 10.5% evasion, and Hodnett and Kendellen both sit a fraction under that 90% tackle line.

The usual caveats apply — these tables know nothing of lineouts or scrums, and seventeen-versus-thirty-seven group averages are suggestive rather than gospel. But the finding stands the data on its head. I started this exercise at the ruck because that's where the eye goes. The selection meeting, it turns out, was watching the tackle and the carry all along.

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So what does that mean?

That Munster players can't carry or tackle as well as the other provinces?

No. I don't think so. Sure, there are probably a few players who are better individuals at one metric or another, but I think the main issue comes back to the system.

Munster run a flat 1-3-3-1 system: forward pods stationed hard up on the gainline, taking the ball at, or into, the defensive line. Leinster and Connacht run a deeper 3-2-2-1, receiving further back, building momentum into contact and arriving at rucks with numbers already flowing.

That single difference recontextualises almost every column in these tables. Munster's league-best ruck speed — 60% of attacking rucks recycled inside three seconds, against sub-56% for Leinster and Connacht — isn't evidence of elite cleanout work. It's largely a by-product of the opposition's choice. When the ball is carried flat into a set defence, the smart play isn't to contest the ruck; it's to stand off it, keep thirteen in the line, and win the collision instead. Uncontested rucks are fast rucks. They're also cheap ones.

The same logic explains our 89.6% ruck efficiency — the best in Ireland, at rucks the opposition isn't attacking at the same volume — and it shows up exactly where you'd expect: in the contact numbers. Here's how the four packs compare on getting over the gainline and beating the first man.

Province	Gainline % (mean / median)	Evasion % (mean / median)
Leinster	55.3 / 56.4	9.8 / 9.4
Ulster	53.2 / 59.8	12.2 / 11.6
Munster	52.2 / 54.4	9.9 / 8.2
Connacht	51.4 / 51.3	11.0 / 11.3

The gainline row is the good news, sort of: the whole selection pool lives inside a four-point band, and Munster's forwards cross it about as often as anyone's. Taking the ball flat means you're already at the gain line, so falling over it is the system working as designed.

The evasion row is where the bill arrives. At first glance, Munster (9.9%) look level with Leinster (9.8%) — but that average is being carried almost single-handedly by John Hodnett's 36.4%, the biggest outlier in the entire dataset. Strip him out, and the rest of the pack evades at 7.7%, comfortably the lowest in the country; the median (8.2%) tells the same story. The typical Munster forward takes the ball with defenders already in his chest, and the numbers show it: minimal footwork, contact on the defence's terms, and possessions that struggle to impact.

And before Leinster's low average offers any comfort, look at how it's built. Their mean is dragged down by tight-five volume carriers doing donkey work — Ryan at 1.5%, Deeny 2.7%, Cahir 2.6% — while their ball-playing forwards sit in the elite band: Joe McCarthy 20.0%, Doris 19.8%, Conan 16.7%, van der Flier 14.1%. The depth of their 3-2-2-1 gives those men momentum and space to step into; our flat pods give ours a defender's shoulder. Leinster's system produces evasive individuals in bulk. Ours produces one, and international selection — which, as we've seen, prices evasion and dominant collisions above everything else in these tables — informs Farrell accordingly.

Leinster and Connacht's "slow" ball is the price of a depth system that generates momentum, occupies tacklers and wins contact — the very qualities Farrell is picking for. Munster's fastball is the kind of thing that could distort your thinking when looking at the national team. It was mostly handed to us by defences who've decided the tackle is where they'll beat us.

Last season, they were right.

Next season, we have to change. We have to earn the workload of more ruck entries and slower ball. That's where the path to green jerseys runs through. Farrell selects what he knows will work in his system. For the last three seasons, we've been playing a different game. Not radically different, but enough to matter when it comes to convincing Farrell that our players can help him win, and win now.