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24th February 2024
11:42pm GMT
"That back row is formidable. When I look at Peter O'Mahony, Josh van der Flier and Caelan Doris, jeez, it's probably the best back row in rugby, at the minute."https://twitter.com/ITVRugby/status/1761384824420380694 [caption id="attachment_298306" align="aligncenter" width="640"]
Josh van der Flier (left) and former Wales centre Jamie Roberts. (Credit: Sportsfile)[/caption]
"One thing for us, in Ireland, has been that competition in the back rows, across the provinces and, obviously, internationally. You look at the last game and I think Jack Conan was brilliant - he hadn't had a huge amount of game time before the championship. Ryan Baird has been very good. There is so much depth. Then you have a brilliant player like Nick Timoney, who hasn't featured yet. That competition really drives us on. "It's also the way the team wants to play. Some teams have the perfect back row for the way they want to play the game. Some can be confrontational. Some may be lighter or more agile. There's a lot of good combinations out there. England, even for our next game, will be a really tough test."The genuine gush that descended on the van der Flier visage told you how much the Roberts praise meant. He won World Rugby Player of the Year in 2022 and is in a unit with a potential 2025 Lions captain and a guy that captained the Lions in 2017, yet he was almost taken aback. Sums up the man, in a lot of ways. Ireland bossing it against France, two years in a row, puts their back row ahead in terms of northern hemisphere offerings. The big competition for 'best in the world' would be New Zealand - Shannon Frizzell, Sam Cane and Ardie Savea - and world champions, South Africa - Siya Kolisi and Pieter Steph du Toit are still going but Duane Vermeulen has hung up his boots [Kwagga Smith, anyone?] As for the English back row, they have the settled offering of Ethan Roots, Sam Underhill and Ben Earl. Ireland have the edge, but it will be a mighty contest within a contest.
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