Joey needs to start a big one

Damian Stack looks at some of the stories making backpage news over the past seven days

JUST before half-time he went down. His leg gone from under him. A giant felled and though we didn’t quite know it at the time, a World Cup campaign left in tatters for an entire nation.

We didn’t quite get the full significance of it at the time because it came in the midst of one of the most impressive victories an Irish team has ever had on the ultimate stage – a 29-8 victory over the French in Cardiff.

Carried along in the afterglow of that defining victory the loss felt manageable. It wasn’t until the Irish pitched up against Argentina that the Paul O’Connell-shaped hole in the Irish team and, probably more significantly, in the Irish psyche became quite so glaring.

Even coming to the end of his career as he was then – and that was the last game he played despite a later move Toulon – O’Connell’s centrality to the Irish cause was near absolute. Without him Ireland weren’t the same at that World Cup in England.

It taught us the lesson that it’s wise to have depth or rather that it’s unwise to become too dependant upon any one player. With less than a year to go to the World Cup in Japan it’s a lesson which should probably see Joey Carbery start at least one of the big two Six Nations matches.

Probably even Joe Schmidt should start the Munster star this weekend against England in Lansdowne Road. The temptation for Schmidt surely will be to start his representative on Earth, Jonny Sexton.

That would give Ireland the best chance to win the game, but the need to develop Carbery to the level whereby he can stand in for Sexton in the event – heaven forbid – that the Leinster man gets injured before or during the World Cup in the land of the rising sun is pressing.

Carbery’s move to Munster has been a huge shot in the arm for him. To move to the next level, however, he needs to play big international matches and do so from the start. He’s impressed off the bench – against New Zealand on a couple of occasions – starting though is a different thing.

Sexton now is even more central to Ireland than he was or O’Connell was three and-a-half years ago. All of Ireland’s eggs can’t be in the Sexton basket. It’s time to give Carbery his head – even at the expense of a Grand Slam or Championship. The stakes are that high.