After a summer squad filled with uncapped players while the frontline players were on British and Irish Lions duty, Andy Farrell’s panel for next month’s autumn internationals has a much more settled and familiar look to it. <\/p>\n
In fact, Paddy McCarthy is the only uncapped player in the 34-man squad for Tests against New Zealand, Japan, Australia and South Africa with Farrell – who is back from his Lions sabbatical – opting against a radical shake-up of his formula.<\/p>\n
The Leinster loose-head prop was part of interim boss Paul O’Connell’s squad for the summer Tests against Georgia and Portugal, but did not earn a cap with Jack Boyle and Michael Milne preferred.<\/p>\n
McCarthy, 22, had a stellar Under-20 career. He was the starting tight-head in Ireland’s 2023 U20 Six Nations Grand Slam triumph and was a standout performer in the U20 World Championship in South Africa later that year. <\/p>\n
The younger brother of injured Ireland lock Joe McCarthy, he made appearances off the bench for Leinster across the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons before making his first start against the Bulls earlier this month.<\/p>\n
McCarthy is one of eight Leinster front rowers in the squad alongside Jack Boyle, Thomas Clarkson, Tadhg Furlong, Andrew Porter, Gus McCarthy, Dan Sheehan and Ronan Kelleher. <\/p>\n
While not officially in the squad, three more players – Edwin Edogbo, Brian Gleeson and Shayne Bolton – will travel to Chicago for the All Blacks game as “cover”. <\/p>\n
Edogbo is certainly an interesting selection. The 22-year-old Munster lock only recently returned from a near two-year injury nightmare and will have his first chance to impress the Ireland coaches. <\/p>\n
While not uncapped, Thomas Ahern is a relatively new name in the squad. The 6ft 9ins lock played against Georgia and Portugal, but the 25-year-old could be set for the biggest month of his career.<\/p>\n
Tommy O’Brien is the least experienced back at this level. His two caps came in the summer – yielding four tries – but he will be determined to battle Mack Hansen for the number 14 jersey. Of course, if Farrell opts to try out Hansen at full-back, O’Brien’s Test career could be about to take off. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a summer squad filled with uncapped players while the frontline players were on British and Irish Lions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-215724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}