LONG READ Brendan Fanning: 'The clock is already ticking for the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia'

This weekend it feels like the starting gun is about to sound on a couple of races within a race. Not at the same pace. So while the name over the door from the opener in Cape Town for the Stormers against Leinster might bear the letters URC, for some of us the clock is already ticking on RWC Australia 2027. In Ireland what we see in this opening round of URC games will shine a light on the road Down Under.

In this jurisdiction we give free travel passes to those of pensionable age. Already those tickets are being popped in their envelopes and put away for the chunk of Andy Farrell’s squad who are hurtling towards that status. If for example you picked a likely matchday squad for Ireland 23 to open the November series – imagining that Hugo Keenan is fit – then the full back would be among a group of 13 who will be on the wrong side of 30 when we come around the corner for Australia 2027.

It’s worth pointing out that the date on the birth cert does not always carry the same weight from player to player, that to pass that landmark in the Irish system may not mean as much as in France, where you’d have played more games for different paymasters with different agendas. Even so, it’s no one’s idea of optimum balance to have so many sitting in the section reserved for the elderly. Which is why everything this season will have that World Cup window in the background.

The first look through that frame comes in the four squads selected to open URC duty for Ireland. If for example we are going to get a challenger for Josh van der Flier, currently virtually untouchable as Ireland’s starting open side, then now would be a good time to know who he is and what he’s about.

Leinster are opening their defence of the title in Cape Town with Scott Penny at seven. Ulster are kicking off against the Dragons with Nick Timoney at open side. For Munster away to Scarlets, and Connacht home to Benetton, the men on a mission are Alex Kendellen and Shamus Hurley-Langton respectively. Of that quartet Timoney is physically your prototype for that position, but he’s already 30. If he was going to change the game it would have happened by now. The former Rock boy was a perfect example of how there is life after Leinster, shifting north, from one Academy to the other, 10 years ago. Good for Ulster, the hope was that it might become good for Ireland. Four caps in low key games proves it wasn’t a win-win.

It was interesting that Penny never budged from Leinster despite the road blocks presented by Van der Flier and Will Connors. He is still only 26, and will hit the 100 mark for Leinster this season, but Ireland is not part of the conversation. Connors looks more like the right fit for higher up the food chain but, having been a firm favourite of Farrell in the post Joe Schmidt era, he had to hand the jersey to Van der Flier when knee and bicep injuries intervened. He hasn’t changed that pecking order since.

Meantime Connacht are going into battle against Benetton with Hurley-Langton, who sounds like he shouldn’t have to wait to qualify for Ireland but sadly he does. It will be 2027 before he ticks that box, by which time he will the perfect age profile but late on paperwork. Hurley-Langton is not a monster, but definitely has a reliable power source he can summon up in every contact.

So if there is no like-for-like replacement for Van der Flier, how does Andy Farrell plug the gap? When Ireland were winning back-to-back Grand Slams at under 20 level in 2022 and 2023 they were not stuck for bulk up front. Their back rowers over those two seasons were lumps: Reuben Crothers, Ruadhan Quinn and Liam Molony all featured at open side.

Of that trio Crothers had to retire early, Molony currently is battling to get on the field via the Leinster Academy, and Quinn – a serious physical presence at 1.91m and 113kg – has yet to break into the Munster starting side, despite his athleticism.

So if you’re Andy Farrell you not only have to keep Van der Flier happy after a Lions tour where he was passed over on the big days, but you need to scour the land for his successor. The head coach might ask IRFU High Performance Director, David Humphreys, to conduct an enquiry into how we have ended up with the cupboard so bare across a handful of positions, but that won’t solve his problem in the short term.

You’d wonder will he set aside some time to track the progress of a young man yet to land in this country. By all accounts Leinster’s signing of Saffer Josh Neill to their Academy – he’ll start in the New Year when his schooling in South Africa is completed – is genuinely viewed in that country as one that got away. He’s 18. That he might be part of the Ireland conversation for the next World Cup seems a long shot, but then so is Ireland’s predicament in a position once considered well-stocked.

Let’s say Neill – who is Ireland qualified – is as good an athlete as his reputation suggests: where is he going to get the games in a province where Van der Flier, Connors and Penny are all on the roster?

Surely that was taken into account when the deal was done by Leinster to get him over here? The optimum is to go to a World Cup with as few players as possible in single digits on the caps front. In France 2023 Ireland had 28 of their 33 with at least a dozen Tests under their belts. That won’t be happening for Australia.The next two seasons will be an exercise in accelerated learning.