FRAWL ABOARD
Ciaran ready to fill Hugo boots at No.15
REWIND 18 months and Ronan O’gara is talking about the “difficult conundrum” facing Ciaran Frawley.
Ireland had just returned from their triumphant tour of New Zealand and Frawley, who played twice against the Maoris, was third in the pecking order for the No.10 Test shirt behind Johnny Sexton and Joey Carbery.
His dilemma, as O’gara saw it, was getting the necessary game time at out-half for Leinster to push into the Sexton understudy role.
“It’s too difficult at the top level to be a hybrid in that fact that if he’s playing all his club rugby at 12 for Leinster and hoping to play Test games for Ireland at 10,” said the Ireland great. How times change.
Sexton has retired and Carbery is out of the international picture for now at least.
Yet, if Frawley makes his first Six Nations start on Saturday, he will do so as Hugo Keenan’s replacement at full-back as Jack Crowley and the Byrne
brothers crowd the out-half ranks. Ireland have not ruled Keenan out to face Wales and he was named in the extended squad to train at Abbotstown this week.
If he does recover from his knee injury in time then Andy Farrell may be tempted to go with 27-year-old Keenan as Mack Hansen and Jimmy O’brien, who were next in line, are out for the whole championship.
In Frawley, however, Farrell has a talented, versatile back who is hungry to show what he can do, even if he only played in the full-back role for the first time last season.
The Skerries man performed well against Munster in October 2022 and was selected at No.15 again the following March against Edinburgh.
This season he has made six starts at full-back in the URC – more than he has done at 10 or 12 – and was clearly growing into the role around Christmas when he scored a try in three consecutive games. The question is if Farrell is willing to take a risk on Frawley in a high-stakes game such as this one. Having done so with other players – such as Joe Mccarthy ahead of James Ryan against France in the championship opener – it is likely that he will do so again if the situation arises.
Ireland are looking to increase their unbeaten run at the Lansdowne Road ground to 18 games, stretching back to the two-point loss to France in the 2021 Six Nations.
Warren Gatland is expected to stick with the side that narrowly lost to England at Twickenham nine days ago, their second loss of the championship after the opening weekend defeat to Scotland.
Uncapped Scarlets tighthead prop Harri O’connor, 23, comes in for Bath’s Archie Griffin who was injured against England.
Gatland needed to bring in cover as Leon Brown has also been struggling and O’connor had previously toured with Wales in South Africa in 2022 and also came off the bench against the Barbarians in November.
Brown or Dillon Lewis are expected to provide tighthead cover on the bench for Keiron Assiratti, the Cardiff prop, who is favourite to retain the No.3 jersey.