Does anyone else find our use of non-Irish players in the national team really regrettable?
I'd like to start this off by saying that this isn't in any stretch of the imagination an attack at the players we have playing for us from other countries. Bundee Aki, for example, gives his all on the pitch for us every game and is rightfully treated like a national treasure because of it; but I wonder if we really should be having these players on the team. My point is mostly that there's so much quality coming through the Irish system that I don't know that we really need to look elsewhere, and it could even be hurting us developmentally because really exciting players can't get game time. JGP is arguably the best 9 in the world (for the scrum half role, I think Dupont is the best player in the world full stop) but his place on the squad means we have a young, world class 9 on the bench (in Casey) and I wonder if having him on the bench is stopping us from blooding more talent, Doak and Murphy have looked incredible to me lately. The same goes for both of our first choice wingers, they're critical to our game (especially Lowe with his massive left boot), but we have Nash as a brilliant back up and I think Larmour's been in great form for a while now and he hasn't got a look in (not to mention Shane Daly, who I think is a joy to watch for Munster), and Bundi's quality at center is on another level compared to most, but I think so is Ringrose and Big Stu's. I just think it's a bit tragic to import players when we could have a really high quality team of lads who grew up dreaming of playing for Ireland. I know there's a lot of romanticism to a homegrown Irish team, but in other sports like football a team of grandparent-qualified lads would be the outlier, and I think we're at a point now where Irish rugby is producing enough exciting talent in every position that we can afford to be a little bit romantic.
Note: I don't necessarily mean players have to be brought up through our system, for example I think it'd be unfair to be biased against calling up a player if one or both of their parents are Irish and they identify as such and want to play here even if they didn't come up in our system.
Apologies if that was a bit drawn out and I know I'm not the first to say this, I just think there's a lot to talk about in terms of Irish lads playing great rugby at the moment and I wanted to highlight that even if they haven't been getting to put on a green jersey (and I don't mean Connacht).