Farrell breathes a Chris of life into Ireland as he revels in the plaudits
THE absence of Robbie Henshaw was cause for plenty of concern in the build-up to yesterday’s clash with Wales, but his replacement, Chris Farrell, couldn’t have done a whole lot more to ease those fears going forward.
Suddenly, his man of the match display means that Garry Ringrose — who lined out for Leinster on Friday — is facing a real battle to force his way back into Joe Schmidt’s plans for the remaining Tests against Scotland and England.
It was a remarkably calm and composed display on the occasion of just his third cap, but Farrell admitted he was well aware of the pressure.
‘I don’t think it needs to be said what is expected when you wear a 13 jersey with Ireland because of who has been there before and what they’ve done, between Garry, Robbie and Brian O’Driscoll before that,’ he said.
‘They’ve all been unbelievable and so there’s a certain expectation and I know it.’
It been a long journey to this stage for the 24-year-old, who left his native Ulster to spend three years with French side Grenoble before returning to Munster last summer.
‘I would have been talking to Joe a good bit the three years in France, I would have had a few phone calls from home and a few messages with clips from matches, he’d be saying “you could do this better, you could do that better, defensively you could have done this”.
‘He was just giving me advice on a few things that he had seen. The very small details are we he prides himself on and he prides his team on, and those kind of things are what has benefited me,’ he added.
And, while Farrell acknowledges there is always room for improvement in a Joe Schmidt squad, for now, he is happy to sit back and enjoy his Six Nations debut.
‘Certainly we got stretched and there is a lot of things to look at, but I was very happy.’