Girvan Dempsey (36)
Andrew Trimble (27)
Brian O'Driscoll (32)
Gordon D'Arcy (31)
Geordan Murphy (33)
Ronan O'Gara (34)
Eoin Reddan (31)
Marcus Horan (34)
Rory Best (29)
John Hayes (37)
Donncha O'Callaghan (32)
Malcolm O'Kelly (37)
Simon Easterby (36)
David Wallace (35)
Denis Leamy (29)

Replacements:

Bernard Jackman (35)
Tony Buckley (31)
Mick O'Driscoll (33)
Jamie Heaslip (28)
Peter Stringer (33)
Paddy Wallace (32)
Rob Kearney (25)

Not considered:

Jerry Flannery (33)
Paul O'Connell (32)

Above is the team selected for Ireland's Six Nations opener against Italy on Saturday. What, you may ask, is the significance of the number in brackets beside each name? That is the age each member of the squad will be in October 2011, when the next World Cup is being staged.

Six of that 24 will be 35 or over, and so will have little hope of representing Ireland in New Zealand in 2011. Another ten will be 32 or over, and will be coming to the end of their careers by then.

International rugby tends to go in four year cycles these days, starting and finishing with the World Cup. Once one World Cup is over, a new cycle begins, culminating in the next World Cup. Or so the theory goes. Except of course if it is Ireland you are talking about and the coach is Eddie O'Sullivan.

By all accounts, Ireland's World Cup campaign in 2007 was a disaster. We finished third in our Pool, and failed to qualify or the knock-out stages. That in itself wasn't the problem, as ourselves, France and Argentina were all in the top six ranked teams in the world going into the tournament. One of us had to blink, and unfortunately it was the team wearing green that did. No, the problem was the nature of how we went out. Unconvincing wins over minnows Namibia and Georgia were followed by emphatic losses to France and Argentina. There was no cohesion, no consistency and above all no flair.

But, we were told by an Eddie O'Sullivan who prior to the tournament had just signed a new four year deal as national coach, this was just "a blip." I can accept this excuse if it involved just one poor performance. But this was four poor matches on the trot. (Six if you count the pre-tournament near-miss against Italy at Ravenhill and the loss to Scotland in Murrayfield.) No, "blip" is not the word I would use. "Utter fucking shambles" would be closer to the mark.

Let's look at the team selection in detail.

Normally, I would immediately put Geordan Murphy at full back, but as we're shy on wingers at the moment, he's ok on the wing, with Girv at the back. That said, this could have been an opportunity to bring Tommy Bowe back into the fold, as he has been one of the few bright points for Ulster this season. Maybe his omission from the international set-up is a factor in his signing for the Ospreys. Luke Fitzgerald should also have a shout here.

I think it's time to shake up the centre of midfield. Individually, O'Driscoll and D'Arcy are indisputably two of the finest centres in the world, but they have played too many games together. Everyone knows how they play and they can be read like a book by now. The shimmies and breaks they got away with a few seasons ago don't work any more. I would put Trimble in with O'Driscoll for a match or two to see how they play off each other.

In the half-backs, ROG is in dazzling form at Munster, and it will be interesting to see if he can bring that form with him to the national camp, given his torrid time at the World Cup. But there is no effective short-term cover, and even more worryingly no understudy coming through. I agree with Eoin Reddan's selection at scrum-half, as he is clearly international standard and needs to get games under his belt. Hopefully we have seen the last of Isaac Boss in an Ireland shirt.

Up front, we need to start bedding in a successor to John Hayes. The Bull will be 35 this year, and is the oldest member of the squad. Tony Buckley should be starting this match, with John on the bench. The best way to see if someone is international standard or not is to throw them in at the deep end. Buckley is 27, so we need to know now if he can take over from The Bull. Five minute cameos at the end of won games won't tell us anything.

I reckon Eddie O'Sullivan was delighted when Jerry Flannery was ruled out of the Six Nations due to suspension. It would have meant a three way tussle for the No. 2 jersey, and it would have been very difficult to justify picking Rory Best. But with Flannery out of the way, it meant that he had a choice between Best and Jackman, and his blind faith in the Ulsterman was always going to trump Jackman's form.

Donncha has been on fire for Munster so far this season, and he seems to have left his indifferent World Cup form behind him in France. No argument here at No 4. But who should keep Paul O'Connell's seat warm? Sure, Malcolm O'Kelly has been playing great rugby, but he's not exactly a hot prospect for the future, is he, being 34 years old and Ireland's most-capped player? Leo Cullen deserved to be brought in from the cold here.

Back row. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie… Why, oh fucking why, is Simon Easterby at 6? He's 33, and captain of Llanelli, the team that just finished bottom of Pool 5 in the Heineken Cup with zero points. Who has been playing the rugby of his life at 6 this season for Munster? Does this well-known Irish landmark give you a hint?



Here's another hint - you have him at 8. For the love of God, put Leamy at 6, and bring Heaslip in at 8. Wallace at 7 is fine, just in case you thought I was picking on you.

It's the innate, stultifying conservatism of Eddie O'Sullivan that bugs me so much. The unwillingness to try out new players. Look at Saturday's match. We have never lost to Italy in the Six Nations. We're playing them at home, in Croke Park. They have a new coach, and are missing one or two key players. It's a good bet that Ireland will win this match, and we have as good a chance of winning with a few new caps as we have with the old stagers. If Eddie isn't prepared to experiment for this game, then we can expect to see the same old faces throughout the tournament.

A prediction for Ireland in the Six Nations? This is a tough one as nearly every other team is going through a process of renewal and upheaval. The best I can come up with is that we will either finish second or second last. We won't win because Eddie has decided that we can't beat France. Even if the French team were to stay in their dressing room at Stade de France on Saturday week, we would still lose to them. We'll beat Italy, so that means we'll stay off the bottom.

As an Irishman and a passionate supporter of the national team, naturally I hope we do well. But if we do badly, it might bring the O'Sullivan regime to a quick end, which would be better for Irish rugby in the long run.

MacBook Paper:

One of my favourite Monty Python sketches of all time:

Conor notes Ryanair's announcement that it is to increase the cost of putting a bag into the hold of its aircraft from €6 to €9 per bag. Quoting a Ryanair spokesman, he says that the company are doing this to "encourage" its customers to avoid bringing checked baggage when they fly, and wonders if Aer Lingus will follow suit.

Fewer bags means that airlines have less to pay for baggage handling services. In theory it should also mean a quicker turnaround, but as I learned last Monday morning, this might not actually be the case.

I was on the 06.40 Aer Lingus red-eye from Dublin to Heathrow. As the first London-bound flight of the week, it's also one of the busiest. I was going over for just one night, so I brought one bag with me, which held my overnight stuff in one compartment and everything I needed for my two days' work in another. No need to check anything in. But of course, about 90% of my fellow flyers had the same idea. The overhead lockers were stuffed before even half the passengers had boarded. Luckily, I was able to fit my bag under the seat in front of me, but others were attempting to board with what could only be described as suitcases. It was a bloody mess, and of course, we were delayed taking off because of it. We should have landed in Heathrow at 08.05, but it was nearly 08.30 before we touched down.

How long before airlines start to charge for cabin baggage too, I wonder?

These days, sport isn't just about what happens on the field of play, but what goes on in the background. Clubs get taken over, and millionaire owners get to pursue their vanity projects by buying in the best players in the hope that they can put together an invincible side.

It's been going on for years in football, and in the last few years in rugby too. The recent World Cup saw several wealthy club owners compile their shopping lists, and many of the stars of Southern Hemisphere now ply their club trade in Europe.

You can buy skill, and talent and flair, but what you can't buy is what is under the shirts of the Munster team.

Pride. Passion. Doggedness. Belief. Faith. Courage…

…and the rest.

Back in June, when the draw for the Heineken Cup was made, I predicted that Munster would make it out of the Pool of Death. And so they did. They knew what they had to do. Win their home games, win at least one away game, pick up bonus points if they lost, and crucially, prevent their opponents picking up losing bonus points at Thomond. And that's what they did.

This season's knockout phase is interesting not for who's there, but for who's not. No Wasps, Leicester, Stade, or Biarritz. The only two teams left with any proven Heineken Cup pedigree are Munster and Toulouse. They could end up meeting in the quarters. I hope not, as that would rob the tournament of its ideal final.

(Before anyone points out Doug Howlett's presence in the Munster set up as evidence of Munster's succumbing to the lure of recruiting Tri Nations stars - by all accounts Howlett himself wanted to move to Munster.)

Spotted in the long term car park at Dublin Airport last Tuesday afternoon:



There were dozens of them. Big fuckers too, so they were.

If only…

Spotted this in today's Turbine:



Hit by "lightening"? Did they spontaneously become lighter?

And as for "aircrafts"? Dearie me.

We went for our weekly constitutional at Emo this morning, and the overnight cold meant that the lake was still partly frozen over. The ducks were having great fun, and luckily I had the camera with me to catch a bit of footage.



(Yes, I know the music I used was Swan Lake, but unfortunately Tchaikovsky never wrote a ballet called "Duck Lake".)

And while on the topic of birds, our birdie restaurant on the tree out the back is packed out these days…




…but danger looms…

A fair few bloggers have compiled their lists of the best releases of the past 12 months, many no doubt agonising over what to include and what to leave out. A bit easier for me, I have to say, as my Top 5 goes like this:

1. Sky Blue Sky - Wilco
2. Easy Tiger - Ryan Adams and the Cardinals
3. Trinity Revisited - Cowboy Junkies
4. Because of the Times - Kings of Leon
5. Errr…That's it!

Yes, I only bought four new albums last year. Everything else I bought was old stuff. And the Kings of Leon probably wouldn't have been on the list if I had bought two more albums. It was well received by the critics, but I thought it lacked the raw, strutting energy of their first two albums. They seem to be in a groove now, and probably will pump out several albums of a similar ilk over the next number of years and go on to be one of the biggest bands in the world.

A big milestone in my working life today - I finished up in my current job, ending an association going back 11 years. I had been working for the same employer since November 1996, except for a 22-month hiatus from June 1999 to March 2001. When I started with them originally, I was only taken on as a temporary staff member in the run-up to Christmas.

I start a new job on Monday, with new challenges to get the blood pumping again. My focus will be outside of Dublin, which suits me perfectly.

Someone else who has been ringing in the changes is my good friend Willie Joe, who has moved his Mayo GAA blog onto its own Wordpress-powered platform, just in time for the start of the inter-county action. If you are anyway interested in Gaelic football matters, particularly those related to the fair county of Mayo, you should keep his site in your RSS reader or bookmarks folder.

And speaking of sport, I was supposed to be going to Belfast this evening to see Doug Howlett make his debut for Munster versus Ulster, but the weather conspired against this plan. Which is probably better in the long run, as the inclement conditiions might have made the record try-scoring All-Black legend rethink his move to the Northern Hemisphere.

It's strange how your eyes and mind can play tricks on you. The following two headlines popped up in my RSS reader this evening:



Whatever way I looked at it, I initially registered the top one as "Apple targeted by Firefox wielding protesters"!