It is 16 months since Farrell was appointed as head coach, on secondment from his job in charge of Ireland, and logic and good reason suggest he will have carefully formulated his picks, of 37 players or maybe more, and unlikely to be swayed by potentially fickle and misleading recency bias.
Leinster have racked up defeats in three finals and now a fourth in a semi-final in the European and URC competitions in the last three years, and added to a hitherto confident Ireland’s 2023 World Cup quarter-final exit, these are not good markers, although of course they had to get there in the first place before losing.
Meanwhile, the immense belief and skills brought by the Saints’ England players Fin Smith, Tommy Freeman, Alex Mitchell, Henry Pollock and Fraser Dingwall – plus much less heralded characters in a stunning 23-man effort – inevitably lifted the hearts of anyone interested in an English resurgence.
Among Leinster’s Lions hopefuls, the scrum-half Jamison Gibson-Park still looked a class act, James Lowe on the wing showed his great kicking skills, and forwards Joe McCarthy and Ryan Baird did good things at close quarters.
And Northampton prompted all kinds of wild thoughts from “is it too late to get their attack coach Sam Vesty on the tour?” to “has anyone seen Pollock’s birth certificate to check the flanker really is just 20?”
The No 10 shirt for the tour has caused much conjecture – though how much actually in Farrell’s mind, we have no idea – and faced with Leinster’s top talent and heavyweight international experience, Smith showed he is a contender to start in the first Test in July, if the pedigree Scot, Finn Russell, does not find favour or even make the trip in the first place.
Prendergast is a fine player in the making but after this alarming display of losing his cool under fire, he should be left to get on with the Irish tour of Georgia and Romania.
There is enough to choose from in Smith, Russell, George Ford, Jack Crowley and Marcus Smith, plus Farrell’s son Owen, whose leadership and Lions experience are set against his injury-afflicted first season out of international rugby playing for Racing 92 in France.
Prendergast is a gangly type who walks like Les from the old comedy show Vic Reeves Big Night Out, for those with long memories.
When he breaks into a trot, he shuffles across the turf like Johnny Sexton, his illustrious Leinster and Ireland predecessor. But Prendergast’s double-pump passes and snazzy one-handed delivery in Northampton’s 22 dissipated into hesitancy that stopped his own players on the gainline and conservative and wobbly short kicking, as he was swarmed over by Saints’ Pollock, Josh Kemeny, Juarno Augustus and the rest.
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