Ireland greats Tommy Bowe and Donncha O’Callaghan have questioned the level of assistance the experienced Garry Ringrose is providing to Sam Prendergast as he continues to find his feet at Test level.
Andy Farrell’s Irish side were depressingly neutralised last Thursday night in Paris, falling 29-0 behind early in the second half and going on to lose their 2026 Six Nations opener 36-14.
It was a devastating crash for the double 2023 and 2024 champions, getting hammered for the second time in succession by the current 2025 title winners. Coming into the Stade de France match, there had been a huge debate over which out-half Farrell would start with.
Prendergast and Jack Crowley both had two starts each in the Autumn Nations Series, with the former on deck in the series-closing loss to South Africa in Dublin and the latter the chosen 10 for the opener that was lost away to New Zealand in Chicago. When push came to shove, following a preparation week in Portugal, Farrell decided to start against France with Prendergast as his first choice.
Urgent importance
The decision wasn’t a success as he was defensively exposed, but Bowe and O’Callaghan have instead dwelt on Ireland’s limited attack and put forward one curious theory as to why the 22-year-old Prendergast struggled to get his game going.
Discussing their post-mortem of the loss on The Offload, the show co-hosted by the two former British and Irish Lions, the midfield consisting of the 33-year-old McCloskey and recent Lions tourist Ringrose, 31, was called out for not helping Prendergast enough.
“One of the biggest areas for me that has gone, and it’s of urgent importance to us, is our phase attack,” suggested O’Callaghan, who was a Radio 5 Live pundit in Paris for the Ireland match.
“Our ability before to go to 34 phases, now we go to one side of the pitch, and on the return, we get wiped out in midfield. It was good to be here and to be able to see it. Players bouncing up off the ground to get it organised, it’s so slow.
“And then you know generally we used to chat about 10s running the week and then getting barked at to get into position so that you are useful in attack, that was one of our greatest things, our multi-phase game was incredible. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t see it, and I haven’t seen it for the last three games (New Zealand, South Africa and France).”
Bowe replied: “Listen, you’ve got an out-half who is under pressure who you’d expect to be doing the barking. Sam Prendergast has been given that armband to lead that team, I thought he mixed some really good with some disappointing. He had a pretty strong game in certain areas, but again, the question marks will remain over him, which means that it is very hard for him to really try and be so forceful with the team around him.”
O’Callaghen agreed. “Yeah, but what does Andy do there? Genuinely, what can he do? He has backed him. He has kind of got to continue to back him.”
“He has to,” replied Bowe. “And listen, I don’t think he played badly enough that he was to be dropped, and certainly with Crowley coming on, but not to replace Prendergast was… I don’t know.”
It was at this point in the discussion that the Irish midfield got called out, starting with O’Callaghan. “Just on that, if you know he is that way, do you have to go to McCloskey and Ringrose and say listen… I remember listening to Rog [Ronan O’Gara] and playing with Drico [Brian O’Driscoll] and Darce [Gordon D’Arcy] was an armchair ride just because they were so vocal. Even good and early, they would be telling you, ‘Space left corner’.
“We’d the same with Rua Tipoki (at Munster). Rog was saying, it just made life so easy for him. With a young 10 like Sam Prendergast, do we need to have our outside backs being way more vocal and spotting things for him and keeping him to kind of nearly a discipline of this is what we are doing this play?”
“This is it,” reckoned Bowe. “Like, I know Stu McCloskey is a very quiet player, and so is Garry Ringrose. Garry, phenomenal defender, brilliant on the blitz defence but really, is he getting involved enough in attack, is he offering it as a second ball player, is he being the eyes and the communicator out wide as well? Yeah, lots of question marks.”
Away from the midfield and its rapport with Prendergast, there was a conversation about Ireland’s all-round vulnerability. “Andy Farrell has got a problem on his hands now, this confirms between the loss to New Zealand at the start of autumn, obviously that hugely sobering loss to South Africa at the end, and France again, this was a real big one and at 29-0 it was not looking good,” said Bowe.
“The two tries have made it look a bit more respectable, but England away from home is going to be a tough challenge. Obviously, Scotland, Wales and Italy at home, you would hope they would be able to get over the line in those, but real question marks over what Andy Farrell does to try and get that bit of want back again.”
O’Callaghan reckoned: “There’s certainly blood in the water. There’s blood in the water; everyone is coming for us. You went all the way to England (on February 21), I wouldn’t even go that far ahead.
“I don’t mean to be alarmist, but if we perform like we are performing, Italy (next Saturday in Dublin) is going to be a big game. It really is. We have to stop the rot. That was what we did in Marseille two years ago.
“Everyone was saying, ‘Johnny Sexton is gone’, ‘this Irish team is now all ageing’ and they just came out and gave the bully a bloody nose, whereas we have been clipped around the place for too long now.
“You’re right, there are questions to be asked about certain areas. Personally, for me, the kicking game, I’m curious about that. I don’t know it well enough, but how were we so poor at that when it’s a skill Irish players are good at? Fielding the ball.”
Suggesting that Ireland’s back-three of Jacob Stockdale, Tommy O’Brien and Jamie Osborne left much to be desired in the aerial stakes, Bowe said: “With the way the kicking game is going, it’s all about transition play. Ireland’s transition play was all over the shop.
“There was no attack, no structure, no idea and Ireland were missing the out-and-out pace to really light it up whenever there is a turnover and you just pass, go, go, go, get to the outside.
“France, on the other hand, it’s breaking ball, quick recycle, shift, shift the ball out, and of course, you have just got these rocket men out wide who can cause so much damage.
“It’s a big one for Andy Farrell… how to cause other teams trouble when it comes to that bit of open play? Chaos. Being comfortable in chaos, as Stuart Lancaster always said.”
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