Who would you add to the Ireland team?

rugby

As an Irish rugby fan I’m doing my best to remain quietly confident through the massive hype with the Six Nations starting in a only few short hours. We’ve never worn the favourites tag very well and like a lot of my peers I’m concerned by talk about Grand Slams and Championships – look where that got us two years ago…

But yes, despite that I am still confident! Is it unwarranted? You decided. I was just looking over the BBC Sport bloggers interestingly named Six Nations all-star XV. Fair enough – every time someone publishes a select XV punters appear from everywhere to pull it to shreds. But much of the criticism seems justified. Here’s their team:

  1. Gethin Jenkins (Wal)
  2. Raphael Ibanez (Fra)
  3. Carlos Nieto (Ita)
  4. Paul O’Connell (Ire)
  5. Marco Bortolami (Ita)
  6. Joe Worsley (Eng)
  7. David Wallace (Ire)
  8. Ryan Jones (Wal)
  9. Dwayne Peel (Wal)
  10. Ronan O’Gara (Ire)
  11. Christophe Dominici (Fra)
  12. Yannick Jauzion (Fra)
  13. Brian O’Driscoll (Ire)
  14. Sean Lamont (Sco)
  15. Josh Lewsey (Eng)

Let’s compare that to Ireland’s starting team for Cardiff on Sunday:

  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

Ok, so what’s my point? Well I was just thinking that if I had the choice of picking any of the other Six Nations players for the Irish team it would be difficult (putting aside our well documented problem at props).

Would you pick Worsley, or Sean Lamont (who?) or Ibanez? I certainly wouldn’t. Who would you add to the Ireland team if you had the choice of any 6N player?ÂÂ