Annus Horribilis for Hookers and the Ireland squad to take on New Zealand, Argentina, Fiji, and Australia takes shape.

Hookers have become something of an endangered species in Ireland with all four of Leinster’s hookers, Dan Sheehan, Rónan Kelleher, John McKee, and Lee Barron currently injured and Ulster’s Rob Herring, Tom Stewart yet to male their debut this season. Diarmuid Barron has also been in the wars at Munster leaving only Niall Scannell and Dave Heffernan (Connacht) still standing amongst our front-line hooking fraternity.

Leinster will probably have to start last year’s U.20 Captain and academy player, Gus McCarthy, at hooker with sub-academy hooker (and Emerging Ireland tourist) Stephen Smyth on the bench against Connacht. Ulster suffered grievously on their South African tour without their front line hookers and Munster may face a similar problem on their travels in South Africa over the next two weeks.

It all leaves Ireland in something of a crisis situation in November where we play New Zealand, Argentina, Fiji, and Australia on successive weekends.  If any more senior hookers get injured, we may be forced to give an academy player like Gus McCarthy their debut against world class opposition! Cian Healy can play hooker in an emergency, but at 37 years of age, can he last a full 80 minutes?

The situation isn’t an awful lot better at prop with Marty Moore retired and Dave Kilcoyne still out with a long term injury. Oli Jager is injured, and Tom Clarkson looked better at flanker than prop against Munster… Loughman’s form was encouraging against Leinster, but Furlong’s scrummaging remains a problem and Porter keeps getting penalised (however unfairly). Fortunately, Bealham and O’Toole are still fit, but where do we go if there is another injury at loose head?

Jack Boyle is fit again for Leinster but is fresh out of the academy and the Emerging Ireland loose head bolter, Alex Usanov, is only 19 years of age. For my money Milne, Warwick, O’Sullivan, Buckley & co. are strictly URC standard, but it was interesting to see Easterby try out Ulster tight head, Scott Wilson at loose head in South Africa.  Bealham has also played loose head for Ireland, but it wasn’t a success.

World Rugby are going to have to look at the prevalence of injuries in the sport, particularly for front rows. It is hardly good for the players or the game if half the professionals are injured at any one time. But in the meantime, playing four punishing tests against top teams is going to be quite a challenge if we can’t put out a competitive front row.

Fortunately, elsewhere the news is better. Henshaw is reportedly back training and fit, Hansen played well for Connacht, and Osborne has continued his meteoric rise since last season. Frawley and Prendergast are in good form and should provide good competition for Crowley at 10. Gibson Park is playing well at 9 and Matthew Devine and Ben Murphy are putting pressure on Caolin Blade, Conor Murray and Craig Casey for a place in the squad.

The two provincial derby games and the Emerging Ireland tour showed Irish rugby to be in generally good health. Players like Mack Hansen, Cathal Forde, Jack Conan, Max Deegan, James Culhane, Hugo Keenan, Thomas Ahern, Alex Kendellen, Tom Farrell, Mike Haley, David McCann, and Iain Henderson are putting pressure on the players who toured South Africa last July for their place in the squad.

Farrell will probably pick an enlarged squad of about 40 players for the four match series to cover all eventualities, but not everyone on the above list will make it into the squad this time around.  Given current medium/long term injuries, I would expect his squad to look something like this:

Compared to the 37 players who toured South Africa, Loughman, Barron, Scannell, Henderson, Ahern, Kendellen, Conan, Gibson Park, Forde, Hansen, and Keenan come in, while Sheehan, Kelleher, Herring, Jager, O’Mahony, Blade, Doak, and Larmour miss out. Most of the changes are due to players who were injured or not selected for the tour coming back for players who are injured now.

The only non-capped players are Sam Prendergast, Izuchukwu, Diarmuid Barron, Kendellen, and Forde. This may seem a minimal amount of change for a 40 man squad, but Farrell does evolution rather than revolution. Only a few new caps are introduced at any one time and are surrounded by experienced players to maximise their chances of a successful debut. Players are rarely thrown in at the deep end, but needs must when you have an injury crisis as we have at hooker.

Only Sam Prendergast, Cormac Izuchukwu, and Alex Kendellen are included from the Emerging Ireland tour, but the time for others will come, especially if Farrell decides to include some development players in the squad. But most of the Emerging Ireland squad are still in the process of establishing themselves at provincial level and their progression to full international level will have to wait. You don’t mess about when the All Blacks are on the horizon.

The game against the All Blacks is on the 8^th. of November, and the squad will probably be announced shortly after round 6 of the URC the weekend after next. Further injuries or unexpectedly rapid recoveries could yet have a substantial impact on the final squad selected, and we could really do with someone like Kelleher recovering sooner than expected. But otherwise, the squad looks at least as strong as the squad which shared the series with the World Champion Springboks in South Africa.

We have a World No. 1 ranking to defend!

Frank Schnittger is the author of Sovereignty 2040, a future history of how Irish re-unification might work out. He has worked in business in Dublin and London and, on a voluntary basis, for charities in community development, education, restorative justice and addiction services.