Given that we recently brought you Shane Williams' Lions selection, which included just three Irish players, we feel duty bound to bring you Neil Francis' selection in today's Sunday Independent as a matter of balance. Franno, despite his stated aim of avoiding an article about the Lions this year, couldn't help himself diving into the topic in today's paper.
We are happy to report that Franno has pretty much picked the Irish team, and allowed space for a couple of token inclusions from other nations. Stressing that he has chosen the team on current form, Franno has included eight Irishmen, with England the next-best represented nation, with three. Stuart Hogg is the lone Scot, while George North and Sam Warburton make up the rest of the line-up.
The entire front-row is Irish, as is the half-back partnership. Here is his full selection:
Conor Murray, Johnny Sexton; Robbie Henshaw, Jonathan Joseph; Stuart Hogg, George North, Rob Kearney; Jack McGrath, Rory Best, Tadhg Furlong; Maro Itoje, Iain Henderson; Sean O'Brien, Sam Warburton, Billy Vunipola
Rob Kearney perhaps the most surprising inclusion from an Irish point of view: in reality he will find it very hard to dislodge the brilliant Hogg from the 15 shirt.
In the piece itself, Franno believes that Ireland's win over New Zealand in Chicago will be of huge benefit, but worries about Gatland's ability to get the best out of the squad:
Gatland will have a higher number of quality players than were available to him for the Australian series in 2013. The problem here is that Ireland's ascent and England's recovery and subsequent domination have all been fired and fuelled by their superior coaches....
Gatland has done well in his career, but he is a good distance away from extracting a performance the way Irish and English coaches do. Are we to think that Wazza will get as much out of the Ireland and England players? Unlikely.
Given how many Irish players are in that tea, we assume that a Welsh media outlet will pick it up to complain of how few Welshmen are in it. This is how this works, right?
[Sunday Independent]
