Best Irish Team

All right, first of all I think Ireland are going to win the Six Nations with a Grand Slam. We just are! But the thing is I'm not worried about England, I'm more worried about Scotland and France, the reason is that England are very structured and Joe Schmidt can analyse that and come up with a solution but Scotland and France they are more frenzied and wild and you can't really plan for that.

Now on to the real subject of this blog, the Best Irish Team in my opinion. I will admit some of my selections are a tad controversial, for example Jamie Heaslip will not feature in my starting 23. Now don't get me wrong he is an extremely good player but I just think there is a better number 8 in Ireland right now.

First of all, the Front Row!! In my opinion the prime example of a fine specimen of a man!! Now this selection is probably one of the least controversial selections in my team, and also all three are primed to start for the Lions. It has a mix of pure work rate and tackling skills in Jack McGrath, leadership in Rory Best and the pure essence of a tank in Tadhg Furlong.

Now second rows, this is tricky. Do you use the two of the classiest line out operators in world rugby  right now in Donnacha Ryan and Devin Toner, or do you use two of the best ball carriers in Ireland right now, Ultan Dillane and Iain Henderson? I think I would use Henderson and Dillane, my reasoning behind it is, I think you can teach line out skills but you can't teach Henderson's rugby brain or the brute force of Dillane.

Now on to the back row, now I know a lot of people might not agree with this but hear me out. Now don't get me wrong Jamie Heaslip is a phenomenal player and he is a great servant to Irish Rugby but I just don't think he is a big enough ball carrying threat as many modern number 8's are. I think there is only one solution to that problem, and that is CJ Stander. The amount of yards he makes per match and the amount of work he gets through is insane. Now another player like that is Jack Conan, a phenomenal player who is much like Stander, and because I think that Ireland haven't had a really strong ball carrying back row in a few years, Conan would be playing as my 6. Josh van der Flier, how he has such a good awareness of the game is beyond me at such a young age, his breakdown work is phenomenal and his power is insane, and that is why he rounds of my ball carrying back row at 7.

We'll talk about the backs next blog .

Feel free to comment.

Till Next Time

Ben, 14 year old rugby fan