Very good question. I believer that you need time under tension as a halfback to improve. Scrumhalves and outhalves don't have to be physical phenoms, they have to be footballing phenoms. They need a sharp skillset and a sharp mindset.mildlyinterested wrote:for a total of 95 total senior minutes.ronk wrote:O'Sullivan just made his HC debut and has 7 caps this season (& isn't finished).
There could be a start soon to accommodate Lowe and Fardy
he needs game time and he is missing out on getting a lot of it at AIL level, due to the injury situation in the senior team.
Does that 95 minutes for Leinster outweigh whatever minutes he would have gotten with Clontarf in his long term development?
Most people say that a scrum-half's primary strength should be his pass. I think it should be his decision-making. It wouldn't be unusual for a scrum-half to touch the ball 80-100 times in a game. Each time he's got a decision to pass/run/kick, and a decision to go open/blind. A run down the blindside might be a poor option in the same circumstance where a pass to a blindside winger might be a good option.
The coaching team should outline a strategy that helps the player narrow these decisions based on where the team is on the pitch, but you've still got to make decisions based on what is in front of you - for example, Wasps scrumhalf Robson seeing Fardy pulled out of the back of the ruck at the weekend and Porter being a little bit wide at pillar. If he had just passed to his first receiver, I doubt anybody would have said that he should have thrown a dummy and had a dart through the middle ... the option doesn't sound particularly promising. But he's got 170+ first class games under his belt, he saw it as an option and the result was a five-pointer and a big lesson for Porter.
Obviously the pro game is at a higher pace than the amateur game [i.e. you have to make quicker decisions], but it's a real argument as to whether playing 4 or 6 minutes of a game at scrumhalf and touching the ball four or five times at pro level is as useful to your long term development as playing a full game and making loads of decisions at the slower pace of amateur level.