Four Ireland team talking points, including Sam Prendergast at No10

The sabbatical-taking Andy Farrell won’t be selecting an Ireland match day 23 again until November 2025 but his last team announcement of 2024 before he heads off to head coach the British and Irish Lions raised eyebrows.

Just five of the seven changes made for last week versus Fiji from the November 15 win over Argentina were reversed for this Saturday’s series-ending fixture with Joe Schmidt’s Wallabies.

Farrell’s decision to only bring Garry Ringrose back onto the bench can be explained in how well Bundee Aki performed against the Fijians with Robbie Henshaw thriving in the outside centre channel that had been Ringrose’s role against the Pumas.

However, the coach's choice in only recalling Jack Crowley for a bench role and keeping the rookie Sam Prendergast as the starting Ireland 10 was seismic. Here are the RugbyPass Ireland team announcement talking points:

Why Prendergast now?

Farrell’s selection discussion could have been so very different this week had Prendergast found himself in disciplinary hearing trouble following last Saturday’s unnecessary shoulder-to-head contact with Fiji’s Kitione Salawa.

Retired referee Nigel Owens, in the latest episode of his Whistle Watch series, explained why the eighth-minute yellow card wasn’t upgraded to a straight red card following review in the foul play bunker. However, he understood the debate about the contact potentially being a 20-minute red card, the in-between sanction.

“It all comes down to do you think that the high degree of danger was enough to warrant a 20-minute red card? Hmmm, well a lot of you think it is and you are not wrong although others of you think it’s a low degree of danger and therefore, like the officials on the day, it remained at the yellow card.”

It sounds like Prendergast was a touch fortunate to be able to return to the field of play after the yellow and produce the efficient performance that now sees him retained in the No10 shirt with Crowley only good enough for a recall to the bench.

It’s a massive call. So much time had been invested in nurturing Crowley, both while Johnny Sexton was still playing and in the nine matches he consecutively started at No10 in 2024.

The 24-year-old’s hard-earned first-choice status, though, is now ended with the 21-year-old Prendergast arriving in from the blue this November to gazump him. There was an understandable nervousness about Prendergast’s play when debuting as a 62nd-minute sub for Crowley against Argentina.

It was an anxiousness which mirrored his team’s scrambled end to a match where they were left clinging onto a 22-19 win having not scored since the first half. However, he took things to a promising level last weekend against the Fijians once he had flushed his dumb sin-binning and two botched touch finders from his system.

He commendably didn’t fold after that troubled early situation and there was soon a fluency to the Irish attack that hadn’t been visible in their stuttering opening two efforts versus the All Blacks and the Pumas with Crowley at 10.

Farrell had been accused post the defeat to the All Blacks of maintaining a same old, same old approach to selection that wasn’t the exciting fans despite the winning of another Six Nations title and the drawing of a Test series in South Africa this year.

Prendergast’s upgrade, however, has blown up that assertion and if the rookie goes well this Saturday and capably lays the foundation for an Irish win, Farrell will head off into the winter sunset chuffed that his major selection call will give Ireland some serious momentum with Simon Easterby assuming control for the Six Nations opener in nine weeks at home to England.

Keeping Aki sweet

Ringrose not making it back into the starting line-up at outside centre was the other Farrell call to get Irish tongues wagging. The 29-year-old would have felt primed to slot back into the No13 shirt having sat out last weekend’s rout of the Pacific Islanders, but the Irish head coach is now in the habit of changing up his centre partnerships on the premise that you are only as good as your last game.

The combinations of late have been like a revolving door based on form. It was Henshaw/Aki in Pretoria at the start of the July tour, Ringrose/Henshaw a week later in Durban, and the November sequence has been Ringrose/Aki, Ringrose/Henshaw and Henshaw/Aki... and only now Henshaw/Aki again rather than another game-to-game change.

Aki was well below par at the start of the autumn versus the All Blacks and was rightly excluded for the Pumas. However, he was back to the form that earned him a 2023 World Rugby player of the year nomination with his all-action effort against the Fijians while Henshaw also very much looked the part in the wider 13 channel in reigniting an attack that hadn’t been firing.

There has been speculation that Aki could cash in and head to France where he has been linked with a switch from Connacht to Toulon.

However, this week’s vote of confidence from Farrell will be a tonic in convincing the 34-year-old that his international days definitely aren’t numbered and that it would be worth his while staying on in Ireland rather than sacrifice his Test career with a move abroad.

The Munster 'one'

It can’t go unmentioned that Munster have just a single representative – Tadhg Beirne – in Saturday’s starting XV compared to 11 Leinster players and three from Connacht.

Beirne, of course, is a class act, his stellar form throughout 2024 being recognised at last Sunday’s World Rugby awards in Monaco when he was one of four Irish players named in the calendar year's dream team XV along with seven Springboks, three All Blacks and one Puma.

However, the reduced lack of Munster influence in Farrell’s XV must focus minds at a province whose troubled start to the URC season culminated in Graham Rowntree getting his P45 last month.

When Ireland ran onto the pitch 21 weeks ago in Pretoria, they had five starters in Farrell's team to take on South Africa – Beirne, Peter O’Mahony as the skipper, Craig Casey, Jack Crowley and Calvin Nash.

That representation was down to four the following week in Durban and dropped to two for the first three Autumn Nations Series matches. Now it will be a meagre one versus the Wallabies.

Yes, they have three players on the bench in O’Mahony, Casey and Crowley (Leinster also have three and Ulster two), but the starting XV is evidence of how far they currently appear to be behind Leinster.

McCarthy's different audition

As Test debuts come, Gus McCarthy’s baptism last weekend was the sort of stuff of dreams. The 21-year-old scored a try, was involved in a number of other scores and ran a decent lineout once his initial not-straight throw was consigned to the past.

If anything, though, this Saturday’s appearance will be more important than what the rookie did last weekend. Ronan Kelleher understandably is in pole position for the No2 Test shirt with Dan Sheehan off limits through injury.

However, there is every chance that a good display off the Irish bench versus the Wallabies could lead to a pecking order revision that would leave McCarthy the more likely Six Nations hooker replacement.

The long-serving Rob Herring, who played off the bench against New Zealand and Argentina, didn’t shine. Ireland have generally had issues this month adding oomph with their replacements, so an eye-catching McCarthy cameo would be a timely boon looking ahead of next spring's title hat-trick bid.