A fortnight ago Leo Cullen was asked for his thoughts on the current outhalf options at Leinster’s disposal. One ventures that the province’s conundrum will be a line of questioning which Cullen will grow weary of long before the season’s end.
Not since the Felipe Contepomi/Isa Nacewa/Johnny Sexton debate circa 2008/09 has the Leinster outhalf pecking order looked so open and fluid. Sexton has been the de facto first choice ever since, save for his two-year sabbatical to Racing 92, and for the last five seasons Ross Byrne was next in line.
Last season, Byrne was the heir to the throne and remained Leinster’s go-to number 10 before they came up short for a third season running in a Champions Cup final and BKT URC semi-final. It would be grossly unfair for Byrne to have to carry the can for that, or for how Leinster’s multiphase attacking game regressed last season.
After all, he has been Stuart Lancaster’s go-to man for a reason, namely in delivering game plans, and one can only imagine Byrne’s day-to-day influence in Leinster, all the more so since Sexton and latterly Ross Molony and Rhys Ruddock left the building.
Still only 29, Byrne has delivered in a host of big games among his 109 starts at outhalf, such as last season’s quarter-final against La Rochelle, which was Leinster’s best performance of the season.
But, after another two near misses, Leinster would be entitled to at least explore alternatives, especially one with more of a running threat.
Then the landscape changed further when Andy Farrell brought Ciarán Frawley and Sam Prendergast on the Irish tour to South Africa ahead of Ross and Harry Byrne. Next came Frawley’s heroics in the second Test in Durban with those two match-winning drop goals and the manner in which he piloted Ireland to a famous win.
He had similarly taken command of the situation in the Champions Cup final when coming within a whisker of landing a last-minute winning drop goal. In both the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Kings Park cauldrons Frawley demonstrated the temperament to suggest that at 26 he is ready for his chance.
Word is that Frawley didn’t always want to play at 10 and his versatility has been a blessing as well as a curse. As an aside, given Leinster’s logjam at outhalf, Charlie Tector’s performance last Friday suggests his switch to 12 will be entirely vindicated.
Perhaps too, coming from a less renowned rugby upbringing in Skerries, it’s taken a little longer for Frawley’s self-belief to grow. A very well-rounded player with a big boot, he’s also physical and is the best defender of the quartet. Now should be his time and if not now, then you wonder when?
Yet of his 89 games for Leinster, only a dozen have been at outhalf, with 26 in midfield, 13 at full-back and 38 on the bench. Only when the normally durable Ross Byrne was ruled out of the pool stages, and Harry Byrne then pulled up in the game away to La Rochelle, was Frawley given his first starts at 10 in the Champions Cup, in the pool stages against Sale and Stade Francais. Harry Byrne returned for the pool finale against Leicester before his elder brother returned for the knock-out stages.
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Had Frawley landed that drop goal against Toulouse to complete a famous win, then he would have had an even more compelling case to make to Cullen.
Hence, maybe Cullen wasn’t entirely joking when he said two weeks ago: “We would probably be having a different conversation if Frawls had kicked the drop goal when he came off the bench against Toulouse, pretty much from the exact same spot where he kicked it from in Durban.”
In any event, Cullen added: “We are in a good position with the four guys that we have and let’s see how they get on. I will need to be open-minded in the selection calls there because it’s over to them a little bit. They need to prove what they can do.”
Naturally Cullen has to be seen to be fair to his players and it’s conceivable that Ross Byrne remains the first-choice 10 in his eyes. But it’s hard to see how Leinster can keep all four outhalfs happy over the season. At least one of them is going to play very little rugby.
It’s clear that, in the wake of JJ Hanrahan’s ACL injury, Connacht explored the possibility of signing Sam Prendergast, even for one season, and that the younger Prendergast was open-minded about the idea of heading west and playing alongside his brother.
But Leinster, who were quick to first bring him into the system and then to promote him, apparently blocked any such move, perhaps fearful of him not coming back. They have invested in the younger Prendergast significantly, and he started his seventh game in 19 appearances in Edinburgh last Friday when looking typically cool and assured.
Harry Byrne was more of a mind to remain at Leinster, as his brother did in 2018, with two more years on his contract, prompting Connacht to make their move for Josh Ioane. The once-capped All Blacks looks an intriguing acquisition, but the Leinster logjam is probably not what David Humphreys would like to have inherited.
For Prendergast to start a couple of games on the Emerging Ireland tour will continue the investment in him and give Cullen scope to afford his other three outhalfs game time.
In advance of their marquee game against Munster at Croke Park (ticket sales reached 60,000 over the weekend) the announcement of the Leinster team the day beforehand at noon on Friday, October 11th, will tell a tale regarding Ross Byrne and Frawley, as a strong showing in that game will put one of them in pole position. But given the Emerging Ireland tourists will only return late that week, most likely this storyline will rumble on, and on.
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