{"id":299576,"date":"2026-02-15T16:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T16:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/299576\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T16:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T16:18:08","slug":"jackman-suggests-radical-change-for-ireland-star-in-bid-to-tackle-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/299576\/","title":{"rendered":"Jackman Suggests Radical Change For Ireland Star In Bid To Tackle Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

While a win over Italy got Ireland’s Six Nations campaign back on track this weekend, the display at the Aviva Stadium left plenty of doubts about the team ahead of Saturday’s game against England at Twickenham.<\/p>\n

England produced a poor display of their own on Saturday, suffering a shock defeat at the hands of Scotland in Murrayfield. In saying that, you would expect a reaction from that defeat in the next game.<\/p>\n

Andy Farrell will have some big selection decisions to make ahead of that fixture, including potential position changes for some players.<\/p>\n

READ ALSO:\u00a0Kearney Feels Bizarre Townsend Comments After England Win Sum Up Huge Scotland Issue<\/a><\/p>\n

READ ALSO:\u00a0The Back To Basics Ireland 23 We Want To See Play England In Twickenham<\/a><\/p>\n

Jackman Suggests Radical Change For Ireland Star In Bid To Tackle Issue<\/p>\n

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Ireland’s lack of depth in certain positions has been badly exposed in this year’s Six Nations, with plenty of work to be done if Andy Farrell is to rejuvenate the squad ahead of next year’s Rugby World Cup.<\/p>\n

One potential solution would to this issue would see some players switch positions, with one potential suggestion coming from Bernard Jackman.<\/p>\n

Speaking<\/a> on RT\u00c9, Jackman suggested that a positional change for Tom O’Toole should be something that Ireland consider moving forward.<\/p>\n

The thing you can do for next week is start [Tadhg] Furlong who will have game time under his belt, and maybe start [Ron\u00e1n] Kelleher as a scrummaging hooker. Then you’d have Dan Sheehan coming off the bench for impact. I don’t think Dan is at his best yet and you need to try and reinforce that.<\/p>\n

At loosehead, the fact that Tom O’Toole ended up being across at the end makes me believe that they have an interest in that.<\/p>\n

It’s a big ask for him to go there, but you’re not risking too much when you’re down Jack Boyle, Paddy McCarthy, and Andrew Porter.<\/p>\n

If you think Tom O’Toole is going to be a prop at the World Cup and is going to be available as a potential option at loosehead, then expose him to that.<\/p>\n

I think this Six Nations, we need now to find out what we have and who can be a little bit of a hybrid. Can we get more hybrid players?<\/p>\n

France have [Oscar] Jegou in the backrow who can play centre, other teams are trying to find hybrid players. For us, a hybrid player might be a tighthead playing loosehead.<\/p>\n

If that can make us stronger there we need to look at that.<\/p>\n

An interesting suggestion.<\/p>\n

It seems highly unlikely that Ireland will be in contention to win this year’s Six Nations, meaning the championship could be used to build depth within the squad moving forward.<\/p>\n

Options such as this will no doubt be considered by Andy Farrell and his coaching staff as they look to address what seems like a clear decline over the last 18 months or so.<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO:\u00a0Peter O’Mahony Reveals Prendergast Training Exploits That Have Given Him Ireland Edge<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While a win over Italy got Ireland’s Six Nations campaign back on track this weekend, the display at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-299576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}