Ireland name starting 15 for Wales test

By Alastair McDermott | January 31st, 2007

[tag]Eddie O’Sullivan[/tag] has made five changes to the [tag]Ireland[/tag] team that beat [tag]Australia[/tag] in November. This [tag]Irish[/tag] starting 15 is similar to the “traditional” 15 that I guessed at last week but I got a fair few wrong:

  1. Horan
  2. Flannery R Best
  3. Hayes
  4. O’Connell
  5. O’Kelly O’Callaghan
  6. N Best S Easterby
  7. Wallace
  8. Leamy
  9. Stringer
  10. O’Gara
  11. Hickie
  12. D’Arcy
  13. O’Driscoll
  14. Trimble
  15. Murphy Dempsey

O’Kelly was forced out due to a knee injury, but I’m confused over the selection of Simon Easterby before Neil Best (ok, so it’s a tight call), and I really thought that Murphy had done enough during Leicester’s destruction of Munster’s home record last week to warrant a start – EOS’s play-at-home prejudice again perhaps?

Finally to hooker – hand on heart, Rory Best is just not as strong as Flannery, sorry Ulster boys! I wonder if it’s fitness related? If things are tight going into the last 20 expect that substitution for sure.

Here’s the team list in full:


IRELAND v [tag]Wales[/tag]: G Dempsey (Leinster), A Trimble (Ulster), B O’Driscoll (Leinster, capt), G D’Arcy (Leinster), D Hickie (Leinster), R O’Gara (Munster), P Stringer (Munster), M Horan (Munster), R Best (Ulster), J Hayes (Munster), D O’Callaghan (Munster), P O’Connell (Munster), S Easterby (Llanelli Scarlets), D Wallace (Munster), D Leamy (Munster).

Replacements: J Flannery (Munster), S Best (Ulster), N Best (Ulster), M O’Driscoll (Munster), I Boss (Ulster), P Wallace (Ulster), G Murphy (Leicester).

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Topics: rugby | 4 Comments »

Comments

By Fence on January 31st, 2007 at 10:28 am

I think that the Easterby/Best call was the toughest one to make, and Best’ll probably come on at some stage. Talk about impact subs :)

As for the Flannery/Best decision, probably down to fitness, I’d favour Flannery, but he is short game time.
I’d agree with you about the Murphy/Dempsey decision though, but I’ll trust that O’Sullivan knows what he is doing.

By sportcrazy on February 1st, 2007 at 11:58 pm

Haha, there’s some interesting talk on boards about Best, I’m going to post about that in a minute :)

Agreed on Flannery, but we’ll see how it goes. I’d rather see him do 50-60 minutes but there you go.

I think the Murphy thing is back to the old don’t play away EOS.

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