{"id":419443,"date":"2026-02-11T06:42:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T06:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/419443\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T06:42:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T06:42:10","slug":"ex-players-sound-alarm-over-looming-irish-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/419443\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-players sound alarm over looming Irish crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Former internationals Bernard Jackman and Donal Lenihan<\/a> have raised grave concerns over the production line in Ireland.<\/p>\n

The 36-14 loss to France<\/a> in the opening round of the Guinness Six Nations<\/a> on Thursday was the first of a triumvirate of disasters for Irish rugby over the weekend, with an Ireland<\/a> XV losing 52-14 to England<\/a> A on Friday at Thomond Park and Ireland U20<\/a> losing 50-21 to France U20<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Speaking after the weekend\u2019s results on RT\u00c9 Sport<\/a>, former hooker Jackman and former captain Lenihan raised their worries about the lack of high-quality players coming through the Irish system compared to their rivals.<\/p>\n

Jackman highlighted how Andy Farrell\u2019s side has been \u201ccornerstoned\u201d by players that came through the academy system a while ago, as well as five players from outside the system \u2013 Bundee Aki<\/a>, James Lowe<\/a>, Mack Hansen<\/a>, Jamison Gibson-Park<\/a> and Finlay Bealham. However, the high-class players coming through have dried up.<\/p>\n

Lenihan pointed the finger at his former side Munster, and the next generation of players coming through at the province, saying he is \u201cseverely worried\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ireland <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Italy <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The pair highlighted how both England and France have taken over Ireland in terms of their development programmes, with Lenihan lamenting that \u201ca few years ago we had competitive advantages, everyone was coming to Ireland to see what the IRFU are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe production line has slowed to nearly a drizzle at the moment,\u201d Jackman said. \u201cLast year\u2019s [U20] team, unfortunately, won the wooden spoon. This year\u2019s team doesn\u2019t look to be a vintage side \u2014 maybe a little bit better \u2014 so what has happened, and what\u2019s been done to try to improve and increase our player pool? Nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s been done to create an AIL 1A, 1B, or a combination that\u2019s going to give players better exposure? I just haven\u2019t seen anything. I\u2019ve seen no change.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually see now that private schools in Dublin, in Leinster, are disenfranchised with the Leinster<\/a> system. Disenfranchised \u2014 the most productive pool we have. I think we have to grow that, but don\u2019t crap on that it. Have trust and respect for what\u2019s there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s creaking, and I think David Humphreys<\/a> has a huge job on his hands to try and fix this. We need to review our pathway because we\u2019re not producing enough players for Andy Farrell at the moment. We saw the A game the other night \u2014 there aren\u2019t a million players out there. There aren\u2019t even 10 players who can play international rugby.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you picked the best 20 under 25s in Ireland, eight of them are four brothers \u2013 so the Prendergasts, the McCarthys, the Edogbos and the Wards. So I would say there\u2019s genetics or parental influence on that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are the rough diamonds in our system? Are we finding them, are we polishing them? We have to. We have to do better than France and England \u2013 they have got their act together. There are a lot of loose ends in our system, and I\u2019d love to see someone address them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lenihan added: \u201cLeinster produced, I think, 14 of the forwards that were involved with Ireland last Thursday. Finlay Bealham<\/a> was the only one that didn\u2019t come through the Leinster system. The schools are so well organised here that it\u2019s almost where Leinster are able to cherry-pick the best of them coming out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI flip it down to Munster<\/a> then, and I\u2019m severely worried about where the next generation of Munster players are coming from. You go back to when Ireland won the Grand Slam in 2009, six of the starting pack were from Munster, but they\u2019re just not coming through.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think there are a lot of fellows in the system, even who were on academy contracts or development contracts, that I can see now won\u2019t be good enough for the professional game.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre we producing fellows to backfill squads who will play in the URC, or are we focusing on bringing players through who are good enough to play for Ireland?<\/p>\n

\u201cI sat down and watched the A team and said, \u2018Right, let\u2019s see now.\u2019 There wasn\u2019t one player, if you\u2019re Andy Farrell sitting in the stand last Friday night at Thomond Park, that you\u2019d have to say made a case for themselves to be picked for Italy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former internationals Bernard Jackman and Donal Lenihan have raised grave concerns over the production line in Ireland. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-419443","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\/419443","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=419443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}