I’d heard it a few days before but I didn’t believe it.

“Joey out, Ross Byrne in.”  

I mean, it’s a shock, right? But, the more I thought about it, the more it made a grim kind of sense. I try to separate media hype from the reality of games as they play out on the pitch as much as I can but, even then, elements of the noise around Ross Byrne’s recent “form” began to grate since his 9-minute cameo against Australia in November. For me, those nine minutes were the ultimate in Big Score Cloaking Device where Byrne’s excellent penalty masked what was a pretty ordinary performance.

Nobody remembers the intercepted pass that could have led to an Australian score, most people remember the penalty.

But you know what? That’s reality.

Joey Carbery missed out on that Australia game after suffering a game-ending injury after a red-card tackle he took against Fiji and that gave Ross Byrne – and Jack Crowley – the window they needed. Since that point, Joey Carbery has had six starts against Edinburgh, Toulouse, Northampton (x2) and Leinster to turn around the advantage that both Crowley and Byrne might have gained on him and in Farrell’s eyes, he didn’t manage it.

For me, Carbery played well away to Edinburgh, at home against Toulouse and then pulled a five-star performance away to Northampton. The problem, as ever, was that Leinster game on St. Stephen’s Day where they successfully rattled him early on – once again – and he dipped out of the contest thereafter. Leinster, more than anyone, know that once you convince Joey Carbery that this isn’t just a game, he has a tendency to go into his shell.

So, when I saw the same thing happen again against Northampton last week, I got a bit of a sinking feeling when I read “Joey out, Ross Byrne in” because… I could easily believe it. I don’t think Ross Byrne has been remarkably good since November. He hasn’t been bad. He’s been part of a winning Leinster side. I genuinely think his best quality is the ability to run the Leinster machine like a version of autopilot. He knows the scheme, he makes his tackles and he’s one of the best goal-kickers in the game at the moment. From an Irish perspective, if you’re Andy Farrell, that is pretty valuable and, as corny as it sounds, I don’t think Ross Byrne’s “attitude change” in the last few months – where he’s upped his animation with referees and played with more aggression in general – has gone unnoticed either.

Andy Farrell wants big personalities in that Ireland squad. He wants leaders. He wants players who can play big and fight for the team. Joey Carbery is a dramatically quieter on-field presence. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to play well for Ireland or that he doesn’t want Ireland to win but it’s not his on-field personality to play “bigger”. That has to change, for me, and this dropping is the perfect opportunity for him to make that change.

In the two years since Joey made his comeback after a nightmare two seasons after his injury before the 2019 World Cup, Carbery has been slowly discovering what player he’s capable of being after two hugely distorting injuries for a flyhalf of his build. When Carbery broke through at Leinster he was an electric runner and transition threat who could kill you in the gaps and lanes you left in your defensive framework from first receiver or as an untethered threat in the wider channels. He was elusive, agile and had a deceptive change of pace that made him look like the archetypal modern flyhalf and a complete threat.

His injuries changed that. The ankle injury he suffered was kryptonite to a guy who traded on his elusiveness and ability to shift directions quickly and he seems to have lost a little bit of that top-end agility that made him such a prospect in his first two seasons.

That wouldn’t be a problem if other areas of his game pushed on to compensate. From a passing perspective, Carbery still looks a little laboured off his left hand and he often looks quite “constricted” when he’s passing a lot in a sequence. When he’s breaking less and threatening gaps without the same level of malice, stuff like his pass action has come under pressure in my opinion and stuff like that can hurt how he is perceived, especially with Jack Crowley playing more or less like a second #10 and backing his athleticism, making late passes and attacking games with regularity.

Carbery hasn’t been playing poorly, really, but has he been dominating games? Has he been a game-winner for Munster on the biggest days? Has he been imposing his personality on the opposition at 27 years of age?

I think we know the answer to those questions.

For Carbery, this is probably the biggest knockback he’s had in his career outside of injury so how he reacts will dictate the future for him. Make no mistake, this is a hinge point for him as a senior player. This isn’t a young player suffering a selection setback. This is a seasoned international being told, as of now, he’s not cutting the mustard. He’s certainly played worse and got selected for Ireland in the last two years but that makes no bones to a fundamental truth right now – that Carbery is a decent, not great, player who isn’t playing like a guy who’s got 37 caps for the #1 team in the world. He is no closer to challenging Sexton for the #10 jersey than he was in 2017 and, sure, injury played a part but this is where he is.

Is he going to sit back and accept it? Wait for injury and get back in? Or is he going to play with the kind of venom and spite that will force Farrell’s hand? Carbery should be a pit viper – lethal, hair-trigger quick, a black-eyed, cold-blooded killer. Toulouse this Sunday is the time for him to show that he can be the type of predator that takes down prey much bigger than himself and, if he can, he won’t be done with the green jersey for very long.