LONG READ ‘Farrell has to show his love of big being beautiful with Six Nations around the corner'

It was Leinster’s crash test dummy experience with Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle that illustrated the beauty of big. For three straight years from 2021-23, Ireland’s long-time leading province got knocked about by a team who brought a baseball bat to a boxing match.

The reaction was slow enough. While Stuart Lancaster was presenting to World Rugby on the perils of a game going ‘super size’, his Leinster players were continuing to suffer by comparison.

The intriguing part was why they were so reluctant to get into the game themselves. After three years of being dosed by La Rochelle, along came Toulouse – a cut above – and dealt a few cards from the same deck. Yet Leinster were still recruiting medium-sized forwards instead of going for cruiser class.

It wasn’t as if Lancaster was banging on Leo Cullen’s door demanding more grunt to work with. Evidently both men were happy enough to maintain the same recruitment policy. Leinster could have gone large, but didn’t. If you were serious about this then it would have meant buying non-Ireland qualified players, which involves negotiation with the IRFU as well as the players concerned, so perhaps Cullen didn’t want to shake that tree too often. Whatever, in retrospect Lancaster would accept there was a lack of ruthlessness on his part at the time – a trait he says he has parked in the long-term car park.

The reality is that genetically we don’t breed brutes in this country. And because Ireland’s system is so reliant on the private schools, where the product is largely homogenous and Irish, there is a shortage of truly destructive and athletic options.

Farrell could open the Six Nations campaign in Paris with a back five that would register as the heaviest in Irish history: Joe McCarthy, Edwin Edogbo, Tadhg Beirne, Caelan Doris and Jack Conan.

The implications for the national side, and Andy Farrell, have long been obvious. They were driven home in unique circumstances by South Africa’s slavish use of size. It was one of those meetings where everyone knew in advance how the world champions would approach it, but no-one budgeted for the crazy circumstances that helped it unfold. But while the house of cards went off script, the plot line was simple and straightforward.

This makes Farrell’s next move an item of great interest. Long term he has just 17 Tests to get his squad into a truly competitive position before their warm-up programme ahead of the World Cup in Australia in 2027. So with the Six Nations around the corner, this is where he has to show his love of big being beautiful.

If we’ve made the point that Ireland is not spoilt for giants then neither are we the land of the little people, despite what the fables tell you. So Farrell could open the Six Nations campaign in Paris with a back five that would register as the heaviest in Irish history: Joe McCarthy, Edwin Edogbo, Tadhg Beirne, Caelan Doris and Jack Conan.

The least known is Munster’s Edogbo, whose progress has been dogged by injury but whose credentials as a top-quality grunt are widely accepted. There isn’t a tighthead prop around who doesn’t want to hear these honeyed words from the man immediately behind him: ‘Just keep your back straight and I’ll do the rest.’

Edogbo will never be applying for a pilot’s licence out of touch but he complements his presence at scrum and maul with a high nuisance value at the breakdown. If this back-five selection eliminates Ireland’s best openside, Josh van der Flier, then the modest compensation for the former World Player of the Year is that he has done nothing wrong. Nor will he be surprised by the move for Farrell evidently no longer rates him as indispensable.

The coach is reaching beyond the usual suspects and finding only players he already knows about, like Munster back-rowers Ruadhan Quinn and Brian Gleeson.

So if Edogbo’s arrival is something new, what has Farrell seen from Ireland’s provinces in this first half of the season to add extra size? Up front – nothing. Paddy McCarthy is still in the callow class for Test rugby and while he has done really well to make it almost a 50-50 call with Andrew Porter, that still doesn’t make him a nightmare to play against.

Instead Farrell’s notebook from the opening two rounds of European rugby, and round seven of the URC, was filled with more of the same: Munster are capable of playing good, tempo rugby, especially when faced with opposition as weak as the Ospreys; Ulster have no depth; Connacht are still haunted by following one step forward with two steps back; Leinster have a doctor’s note to see a consultant about their listlessness. In that lot you’d probably think Lancaster was the most traumatised coach after Connacht’s shellacking at Rodney Parade – greeted in that downbeat part of the circuit like a glorious new dawn – but Cullen is top of the Irish podium for coaches getting least enjoyment from their jobs.

Of course this has a knock-on effect for Farrell. If he has no front-row beasts to unleash on the world then what does it look like behind the scrum? The coach is reaching beyond the usual suspects and finding only players he already knows about, like Munster back-rowers Ruadhan Quinn and Brian Gleeson. And he’s familiar enough by now with Ulster’s Jude Postlethwaite – enough to know he’s worth including in the Six Nations squad.

Postlethwaite looks like the best of the new crop, a serious ball-carrier and powerful tackler. Ulster used him at 13, outside Stu McCloskey, in their defeat by Leinster before Christmas, and he looked a good deal less comfortable than at inside centre.

That discomfort is common across the game here just now. Which is not the backdrop Farrell wanted as he goes looking for big men to do a big man’s job.