TOM SAVAGE answers the question that we’ll hear asked in the run-up to the Six Nations: Yes, Jack Crowley is the best number 10 in Irish rugby right now
***
THERE’S one question that always seems to consume the halls of Irish rugby in a generational cycle. Sooner or later, it always comes back to the #10.
It’s the one position that craves certainty. Almost every other position on the pitch demands rotation of some description or active competition at the very least but not the flyhalf. There can be no active competition there. In reality, there can only be one.
Go back the chain of Irish test 10s and you’ll get back to the mid-to-late 90s.
David Humphreys owned the jersey, more or less, for five years after his debut in 1996. He racked up 76 caps – most of them as a core player – before Ronan O’Gara gradually started to ease him out properly around 2003/04. O’Gara wasn’t just an Irish #10 for the majority of the 2000s – he was THE Irish #10.
O’Gara’s fitness and availability were a national obsession for most of the mid to late 2000s in rugby circles because, in reality, there was no one else anywhere close to him. That was the reality and O’Gara was more than big enough to fill what had become a massive job. Previous Irish #10s had to contend with Ireland being, let’s be as kind as we can here, mostly rubbish. O’Gara, on the other hand, was the main man for Ireland when we started on the grand ascension from wooden spoon collectors in the 90s to being perennial Six Nations challengers and World Cup dark horses in the 2000s.
Ireland’s Jack Crowley kicks a late penalty against South Africa at the Rugby World Cup.
O’Gara’s importance was arguably above that of even Brian O’Driscoll during this era because we at least had players that could somewhat cover the outside centre position. For large swathes of the 2000s, there was Ronan O’Gara, then a hundred kilometres of nothing and then… Paddy Wallace, an inside centre, doing his best.
In 2009, all that changed with the emergence of Johnny Sexton during Leinster’s run to their first Heineken Cup. He got his Ireland debut in November of that year and the battle was on. Munster’s veteran #10 versus the young(ish) Leinster newcomer. The battle was box office. Whenever one player would start, the camera would always pan to the other on the bench for a reaction shot after every made or missed kick, every scoring pass and every fumble.
But time waits for no man and by the early 2010s, Sexton’s ascent to the Irish #10 jersey was complete. O’Gara eventually phased out of the Ireland set-up and retired. Would history repeat itself once again? Would Irish rugby be dominated by just one #10 and no other?
Yes.
Sexton became every bit as irreplaceable as O’Gara was as potential challengers fell by the wayside (Ian Madigan, Ian Keatley, Joey Carbery) and younger prospects failed to fire in the long term (JJ Hanrahan). Sexton was the alpha and omega of Irish rugby in the #10 jersey, especially with his former provincial coach taking over from Declan Kidney.
It got to the stage that, after Sexton moved to Paris for two years in the middle of the last decade, the then head coach Joe Schmidt was so perturbed by some of his late releases from Racing 92 that he was rumoured to have told Racing’s coaches that ‘if Johnny isn’t here, we [Ireland] can’t train’. That was 2014.
That importance would continue for NINE more years until Sexton’s eventual retirement this year. Humphreys, O’Gara, Sexton. Three players with monster careers who drove Ireland through the 90s, 2000s, 2010s and the early part of the 2020s.
So the question is again –who’s the next in line?
Is it Jack Crowley?
The Innishannon man’s rise to the Irish national side ahead of the 2023 World Cup was extra remarkable because it happened under Andy Farrell’s Ireland. Farrell’s selection policies since 2021/22 have been to double down on the quality and cohesion that Leinster have at club level so he can duplicate their success at test level. He was mostly successful with that plan but that cohesion requires cohesion picks. On the whole, if a decision was to be made between equivalent level players from inside and outside Leinster, the Leinster player’s inbuilt system fit with the Irish/Leinster system got them in.
So for Jack Crowley, a Munster number 10 who only really started to rack up senior minutes consistently the season before the World Cup to not only get into Ireland camp but work his way into the main squad is, straight away, something worth noting.
But that is what Jack Crowley has always done – take opportunities, no matter how small, and make himself undeniable.
The man who learned his trade locally at Bandon RFC and Bandon Grammar School came into the World Cup preseason as third in line behind Sexton and Byrne and, arguably, scrapping it out with Ciaran Frawley. But game by game, session by session, Crowley moved up the ranks until he was undeniably the man to cover for Sexton – if Sexton would ever be allowed to be covered, that is. When Crowley stayed on the bench while Sexton lumbered around the field in the Rugby World Cup quarter-final loss to New Zealand looking 48, not 38, you knew there was no way Sexton’s era would end sitting on the bench.
Sexton’s retirement, in theory, opens up the road for Jack Crowley to take the reins for Ireland going forward. He won’t get the chance to do what Johnny did to O’Gara before him and what O’Gara did to Humphreys before him – take the jersey from the incumbent – and that is what has led to the air of uncertainty currently swirling.
Munster’s Jack Crowley celebrates kicking the winning drop goal in the URC semi-final.
For me, Jack Crowley is the number one flyhalf in the country right now when you consider his consistency, athleticism, goal-kicking, suitability as a primary attacking threat in a contemporary high-possession system and credibility and confidence as a leader.
But you could equally argue that Ross Byrne would be a cohesion and stability pick for a squad still likely to be dominated by the Leinster players he’ll train and play with every week between now and January.
It’s my belief that if Andy Farrell wants to invest in Ireland’s future, as well as Ireland’s now, then Crowley is the only realistic option with Byrne as an experienced player off the bench. The talk of Ciaran Frawley, Harry Byrne, Sam Prendergast and whoever else happens to string two passes together for Leinster against lower-level URC teams is just that – talk. Hype. Crowley has shown that it doesn’t matter how much you hype him, he keeps delivering when the pressure is highest.
Remember the drop goal in the Aviva in Munster’s last realistic possession in the semi-final? Remember his conversion to make it a five-point game against the Stormers in the last five minutes in a packed Cape Town stadium to win the URC title?
This is not a player phased by the big moments in red, I just hope Andy Farrell has the sense to give that opportunity in green.
