Crowley and Frawley give Farrell pause for thought
TAKE THAT: Munster’s Tadhg Beirne is tackled by Ciarán Frawley of Leinster
Six weeks since Johnny Sexton officially retired so it’s to be expected that his influence continues to filter through the bloodstream of the Irish game. All the more so on a night when these two rivals got the heart pumping.
The former Ireland captain was a busy man at the Aviva on Saturday as he took part in a Q&A with Brian O’Driscoll and Bernard Jackman and accepted presentations from Leinster CEO Shane Nolan and the province’s fan club.
The second of those took place on the pitch shortly before kick-off but the great man’s shadow lingered as Jack Crowley and Ross Byrne both went about their business in front of a near-50,000 crowd that included Andy Farrell.
These are the two front-runners for the role of Ireland’s first-choice ten as the team enters a new World Cup cycle, and a new era with it, but Byrne’s evening lasted just six minutes before he injured an arm in the failed act of preventing Craig Casey’s opening try.
His frustration as he walked down the tunnel was clear, Crowley kicking a superb touchline conversion as he trudged past, and the fear is that the problem could be serious enough to sideline him for a good chunk of time to come.
His mood won’t have been helped watching the rest of this URC cracker unfold.
Crowley has only played eight European games for Munster and 39 in total. His Test CV stretches only as far as nine caps, six of them coming off the bench, and yet he is now at a stage where a superb performance in a game like this can go almost unremarked upon.
He was excellent here. His kicking was mostly spot on, he has an air of authority and a game understanding that belies his years and inexperience, and he is well able to roll the sleeves up and get physical, as evidenced by one turnover.
This is who he is, already. Crowley was solid as a rock the week before against the Stormers too, in a very different contest, but he wasn’t the only out-half to catch the eye at Lansdowne Road despite Byrne’s ill-time spot of misfortune.
Ciaran Frawley came on shortly before Crowley stretched the lead to ten with a penalty and he was exceptional, especially in a second quarter where Leinster finally found their feet on the back of a try gifted to Jamison Gibson-Park.
His game management and handling were superb and Frawley is physical and can spot a gap and pop an offload as well. He was integral to Leinster turning this around, which they did courtesy of two more tries for Dan Sheehan and Jordan Larmour.
“He was really composed, calm, he was authoritative, which is exactly what you need from a ten. I thought he was brilliant when he got out there,” said Jack Conan.
“So, fair play to him because it’s not easy coming on that early. Frawls is a bit of a Swiss army knife, he can do it all. He can play nearly every position, and with great quality as well.”
Here lies the rub. Frawley’s versatility got him onto the bench ahead of Harry Byrne but he has had precious few opportunities to play ten at Leinster, where they use him more at full-back and midfield, despite the fact that Farrell has always used seen him as an out-half when fitness has allowed.
He has started at ten for the province just twice in the last three-and-a-half seasons, most recently over a year ago, and he expressed a desire not to fall between too many stools in between impressing against the Maoris two summers ago.
Leo Cullen agrees that this versatility gives him a skillset that is slightly different to most other Irish out-halves on the go, but he has played down the need for Frawley, who has one senior cap, to nail down a position when quizzed on this in the past.
“We’re open-minded about a lot of guys all the way through the season, but rugby is a team game as well and you need guys who are willing to step in and do what’s best for the team as well, and that’s the beauty of it,” he said on Saturday.”
With Byrne likely out for the foreseeable, that may well be a rare run at ten.
H Keenan; J Larmour, G Ringrose, R Henshaw, J O’Brien; R Byrne, J Gibson-Park; A Porter, D Sheehan, T Furlong; J McCarthy, J Ryan; J Conan, J van der Flier, C Doris.
C Frawley for Byrne (8); S Penny for van der Flier, M Ala’alatoa for Furlong and R Kelleher for Sheehan (all 60); R Molony for Ryan (68); J Boyle for Porter and B Murphy for Gibson-Park (73); J Culhane for Doris (81).
S Zebo; C Nash, A Frisch, R Scannell, S Daly; J Crowley, C Casey; J Loughman, D Barron, S Archer; J Kleyn, T Beirne; T Ahern, J Hodnett, G Coombes.
S McCarthy for Nash (22-31) and for Zebo (68); C Murray for Casey (51); D Kilcoyne for Loughman (53); J Ryan for Archer (58); A Kendellen for Hodnett (62); B Gleeson for Kleyn (69); T Butler for Scannell (74).
C Busby (IRFU)
