While Henderson is a notable omission, he is not the only big name missing from last year’s Six Nations squad. <\/p>\n
The injuries to key players like Porter, Henshaw and Baird are a blow, while Peter O’Mahony, Cian Healy and Conor Murray have all retired. <\/p>\n
The average caps of last year’s squad under interim head coach Simon Easterby was 44.1. <\/p>\n
This year, that has fallen to 28.4 as Farrell returns following his stint with the British and Irish Lions.<\/p>\n
In terms of Henderson, Ferris added that there was “young blood snapping at the heels” of the Ulster second row, but he believes the 33-year-old could have a role to play in the wider squad with his experience.<\/p>\n
Munster’s Edogbo will add an exciting presence for the forward pack, while Tom Ahern and Cian Prendergast are also exciting options.<\/p>\n
“Is this the changing of the guard? Is this Andy Farrell wanting to bring in some of the younger guys?” Ferris said.<\/p>\n
“They might be some of the guys he wants to call upon at the next World Cup.”<\/p>\n
Farrell said Ireland know they have “to hit the ground running” in Paris on 5 February.<\/p>\n
“The squad has evolved over the last 18 months, with 12 players making their international debuts over the last year alone, and I know how keen this group is to make its mark for Ireland,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Henderson is a notable omission, he is not the only big name missing from last year’s Six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-387665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}