Props need loan experience – Flannery

Up-and-coming Irish props need to be sent out on loan in order to gain the necessary experience to fulfil their potential, says Ireland front row star Jerry Flannery.

Flannery travelled to the southern hemisphere for the summer tour matches against New Zealand and Australia but failed to see any action due to a calf injury which also disrupted the end of his season with Munster.

Flannery’s fellow hooker Rory Best sat out the tour through injury while John Hayes played no part in either test match, missing the landslide defeat to New Zealand with a virus before he was omitted from the 22-man squad for Saturday’s game against Australia.

In their absence, younger players such as Cian Healy, Sean Cronin and Tony Buckley earned valuable game-time but the Irish scrum struggled to make an impact against an Australian set-piece which had buckled against England in the previous two weeks.

If the situation is to improve in the future, Flannery believes younger players, and props in particular, must spend time on loan abroad rather than kicking their heels as an under-employed fourth- or fifth-choice with an Irish province.

In his latest exclusive column for JOE, Flannery wrote, “The front row situation is something that I’m right in the middle of and the general feeling is that there is a problem there. You look back at the season with Munster and Leinster, and it’s clear that it’s very hard for a team to do well if you don’t have a good scrum.

“There are a lot of foreign players playing in England and France but they also have a lot of teams so it doesn’t affect the national side so much. We only have four teams so if there are a lot of foreign props there, it is going to mean that Irish players are going to miss out.

“What could happen [for things to improve] is to farm out young props, who aren’t getting much game-time, into the first division in England. So much of scrummaging is about experience . It’s a position where you need to go through the mill to learn. The more players we have like that, the more they go up against top-class props, the more options we’ll have. Timmy Ryan has done it – he moved to Toulon and has got a move to Newcastle recently, and that has to happen a bit more.”

To read Jerry Flannery’s full column, in which he picks over the bones of another test defeat and looks forward to a four-week holiday, click here.