Deals for ageing Irish stars expose flaws
Earls still an important player, but new contract sends wrong message
IN late January 2016, Saracens made Keith Earls an offer he almost couldn’t refuse. In the end, Joe Schmidt and David Nucifora got the Moyross man in a room and convinced him that his future was better served by remaining at Munster and he signed a two-year central contract until the end of the 2019 World Cup.
At 28, Earls was rightly in demand. A key figure for province and country and allowing him leave the Irish system would have damaged both.
He went on to star in Ireland’s epic 2018 campaign and was rewarded with another two-year central deal as a result.
Yesterday, Earls signed his third central contract with the IRFU, becoming the fourth player over 30 to do so in the last seven days.
Now 33, the winger is an experienced performer and consummate professional, still capable of exciting moments as he demonstrated in Ireland’s win over Italy when he took Johnny Sexton’s pass to score the final try.
Yet, it is doubtful that he’d have commanded anything like the same sort of interest he did five years ago if he’d gone to the market this time around.
Thus, the logic in handing him one of Irish rugby’s most valuable contracts must be queried.
Unlike Sexton, his pre-eminence in his position is no longer clear-cut and it is doubtful that he will be first choice at the 2023 World Cup.
Earls is super-fit and looks after himself very well, so there’s no doubt he has a chance of proving the doubters wrong and making it a fourth tournament in a row. However, there won’t be many Tier One countries with 36-year-old wingers in France.
Speaking last week, head coach Andy Farrell said a player must demonstrate consistency at the top level to become one of Irish rugby’s made men.
Top-class
“To get a central contract, if you look at the history, you show continuity at this level to be a top-class international player,” he said. “That’s the remit that everyone understands.
“Just because somebody pops up and plays four or five games that are really good . . . as far as international rugby is concerned it’s about consistency at this level to prove your worth.
“I suppose that’s how we’ve always worked and how we’ll continue to.”
The central deal, therefore, is a reward for past performances and, as anyone who has listened to the fast bit at the end of a radio advertisement knows, that is no guarantee of future results. Since that glorious 2018 campaign, Ireland’s stars have failed to deliver and yet they continue to be rewarded.
For three successive years, the team have failed to achieve their goals at major tournaments but those main players remain the key figures in the team who are paid the most money.
More than half of Ireland’s centrally-contracted players are over 30 and there is no expectation that any new players will join that crew in these straitened times.
Of the seven players whose IRFU deals expired this season, five have signed on but of those only Iain Henderson looks like being a guaranteed starter in France. New deals for the two men other than Henderson likely to attract interest on the open market, CJ Stander and Tadhg Furlong, have yet to be announced. Both are expected to sign two-year deals.
By and large, those players on central deals have been picked to play when they are fit.
Farrell has talked about creating competition throughout his squad and, in fairness, he put Caelan Doris in ahead of Peter O’Mahony for his first match in charge and benched Conor Murray for the Autumn Nations Cup trip to Twickenham last year.
Bundee Aki is currently out of favour, but with three centrally-contracted centres fit and available for once the head coach has to leave one out of his squad and the Connacht man came into the Six Nations on the back of a knee injury.
Last weekend’s interprovincial derbies were a showcase of the potential within Irish rugby and many of the top performers were players who are not in the Irish squad.
On Saturday night at the Kingspan Stadium, the uncapped Robert Baloucoune reminded everyone in Irish rugby why he is considered a future Ireland international, while his fellow 23-year-old Jordan Larmour is capable of stepping up to another level after winning 27 caps already.
At the 2019 World Cup, Larmour and Andrew Conway were the form wings, Rhys Ruddock was the form back-row, Seán Cronin was the form hooker and Luke McGrath was the form scrumhalf, yet when the quarter-final came around Schmidt went back to his struggling, cosy cabal of out-of-form leaders on central contracts.
Given that tournament ended with the same failure of all of the previous editions of the World Cup for Ireland, the entire model should have come up for review.
None of which is to write Earls off. If he is the best player to play for Munster and also Ireland, then it doesn’t matter what age he is – he should be picked.
However, there’s no reason why he, Cian Healy and O’Mahony could have stepped back on to provincial deals where they can still fight for their spots.
Central contracts are excellent tools for retaining big names, but are they optimum in terms of getting the best out of the top players who can become comfortable once they’ve signed?
Successive World Cup failures would suggest otherwise.