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Munster line up Tom Farrell to replace Antoine Frisch
By Neil Fissler
Munster are understood to have lined up Connacht’s long-serving former Ireland under-20 international outside centre Tom Farrell to replace Toulon-bound Antoine Frisch.
Frisch is in advanced discussions with Toulon over a four-year deal, and Munster have been trying to land a replacement before allowing the Irish-qualified Frenchman to leave for the Cote d’Azur.
They had been chasing Leicester Tigers England international Dan Kelly, who becomes Irish-qualified in July, but a deal was problematic because he is under contract to the Tigers next season.
They had also looked at Piers O’Conor, but Bristol Bears announced that the former Ealing Trailfinders centre, who has made 138 appearances for Pat Lam’s side, would be moving to Galway.
Dublin-born Farrell, 31, started his career with Lansdowne, Leinster A, London Irish and Bedford Blues before moving to the injury-hit reigning Pro12 Champions in January 2017.
He has made over 100 appearances for Connacht but is under pressure from younger players in David Hawkshaw and Cathal Forde, who are pushing him down the pecking order.
There were even rumours that Farrell, who was touted to win a full Ireland cap in 2019 when he was called up for the opening rounds of Six Nations, could even retire after not being offered a contract by Connacht.
It has been suggested that Munster have put a two-year contract on the table to tempt Farrell into continuing his career, with discussions now believed to be at an advanced stage.
Farrell has made 12 appearances for Connacht this season, eight in the United Rugby Championship, scoring two tries against Ulster in November and Zebra on April 20th.
He also came off the bench in their European Challenge Cup quarter-final defeat in Benetton last month after making two appearances in the Champions Cup earlier this season.
Munster are set to host Farrell's Connacht this weekend in the URC in Thomond Park.
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Latest Comments
They would improve a lot of such a scheme were allowed though JD, win win :p
Go to commentsI rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.
He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.
The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).
The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.
The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).
It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.
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