George Skivington: 'Lewis Ludlow has wanted to take my head off'

“Historically the current 6Nations campaign in a lions tour year does tend to be impactful. It’s not a stretch to assume the squad is largely selected with the back-end of the domestic season left to confirm certain players, injuries aside.”

Farrell will select more players from the better teams. He won’t select on the basis of individual win rates, which is the claim you made that you are now walking back.

“For example, Marcus Smith had a very decent 2023 at #10”

Did he? He might have had some good club games but he made absolutely zero impact in test rugby, hence why he ended the year firmly third choice behind Ford and Farrell.

My argument around 8 and positional play was actually in reference to another player (and the subject of this article). I made the point that, comparatively, any men’s test player shy of 6’4” and 17.5st will struggle as a modern 8.

Historically the current 6Nations campaign in a lions tour year does tend to be impactful. It’s not a stretch to assume the squad is largely selected with the back-end of the domestic season left to confirm certain players, injuries aside.

For example, Marcus Smith had a very decent 2023 at #10. I doubt that two years later that will be a marker for him going on this tour, in that position? It’s not being selective with the time period.

I guess my general feeling in rugby is that most coaches seem to decline quite a bit when they hit 60, and to be coaching at the top level when you’re 65 or older is extremely rare. Maybe in american sports people have another 5 years, but that doesn’t seem like a massive difference.

Either way, I’m going to stick with my verdict that appointing Les Kiss at age 60 would be ok as a short term deal - but appointing him at 63 and expecting him to last 4 years would be foolish.

ok - so you agree. Experience is strongly correlated with age among the managers I named.

“Test rugby has no clear pattern of that.”

I agree. Different sports are different and patterns evident in one won’t necessarily be reproduced in others.

“Why would you dismiss a paradox? Contradictions are often revealing. Or is that too incoherent?”

If they can be revealing then explain what they reveal. You’re not close to making a point atm.

What are you arguing? You dismissed Earl as an 8 on the basis of the low win rate last year. So it makes no sense to suggest that on the basis of win rates IRE and ENG are equal. You can’t just randomly narrow the time period you’re interested in to only this year when it suits your argument.

Anyway, you can’t just select players on the basis of their individual win rates. If Farrell did that he would select 23 Irish players, because no English or Scottish players (apart from those on just 1 or 2 caps) will come close to having equal win rates.

Ok - if Beirne plays 6 then Earl won’t play 7.

The teams will need to be more competitive at some stage as I’m sure it won’t be cost effective before long. It’s a lot of money and resources they have to pump into it just to field teams, let alone compete.

Even with the Boks only focus being on RWC’s, the euro comps would be a great way to develop test players in the first 1-3 years of a RWC cycle.

Jake White has effectively decided that he would rather have a chance of success in one competition, at the expense of the other competition, than a near certainty of heroic failure in both. And he has implied that over time he plans to build enough depth to give the Bulls a chance in both the URC and Champions Cup simultaneously.

Not sure what is being proposed here that is supposedly a better plan.

He likely will select on the basis of win ratios. IRE and ENG won 4, SCOT won 2 and WAL won none. 6 Irish, 6 English, 3 Scottish seems about right for the starting 15.

Yeah, I think he’ll definitely bring Beirne to have as a utility lock/flanker. Doris’ discipline and leadership has maybe rocked a little this year but he’s still the best 8 in the game.

“Experience is strongly correlated with age, at least among the managers that I named”…

Slot and Arteta are among the youngest you named. They have the least experience as a manager (6 years each). Espírito Santo and Pep are the oldest and have the most (12 years + each). Pep is pushing 17 years experience, all at elite level. There are plenty around his age that won’t have the same level of experience. Plenty.

The younger breed you mentioned (Arteta in particular) may not coach at elite level beyond the next few years if they continue to not win trophies. Age and experience is not always a nice, steady gradient.

The only trend in English soccer is that managers don’t stay on as long with the same club. Due to the nature of the game and the assumed, immediate performance bounce of replacing them at the first sign of trouble. Knee-jerk style. Test rugby has no clear pattern of that.

Why would you dismiss a paradox? Contradictions are often revealing. Or is that too incoherent?

Kinghorn and Jack Willis have become world class at Toulouse. Players get better in France. REC nations have heaps of players in the ProD2, it shows.