IRELAND’S PROSPECTIVE OUT-HALVES for the World Cup have started a combined 107 tests, a figure which remains the same whether or not you consider Ciarán Frawley a viable option in the saddle.

Ross Byrne is the second most seasoned of the group: he has started three of his 19 total caps.

The drop-off in experience from Johnny Sexton, 103 of whose 113 Ireland caps have been starts, is even more dizzying than it was in 2015 or 2019.

One might frame that as a rare miscalculation by Andy Farrell but to do so would be to do a disservice to Byrne, who last autumn came in from the cold with such assuredness that Ireland’s head coach ostensibly tore up three years’ worth of plans.

And there were plans — they just plainly didn’t include Ross Byrne: Joey Carbery has started twice as many games for Ireland in the last three seasons alone as Byrne has since the latter’s Ireland debut in 2018. Harry Byrne was more central to Farrell’s thinking than his older brother for the majority of this World Cup cycle. Were it not for wickedly timed, back-to-back injuries, Ciarán Frawley would have landed an Ireland audition before Ross, either in the midweek games during last summer’s New Zealand tour or on the Emerging Ireland tour to South Africa, or both. And it was Jack Crowley who started last November’s test against Australia in which Byrne truly blasted his way back into the coach’s consciousness in the championship minutes.

Gavin Coombes would probably point towards Cian Prendergast and tell you that it takes a lot to budge Farrell and his coaches from their joint line of thinking, and in 12 months Byrne has managed to crawl his way from the cliff notes to second in Ireland’s depth chart at 10, as is evidenced by his joining Prendergast in an almost-full-strength side to face England at the Aviva this Saturday.

Fitting that it should be England, too — the opposition against whom Byrne’s international career had until recently taken on a kind of second-hand stink for his proximity to an Irish pack that got obliterated on his first test start at a warm-up game in Twickenham in 2019.

Byrne, the ’10′ on his back a natural target, became the fall guy in Ireland’s 57-15 defeat. He was omitted from Joe Schmidt’s World Cup squad in Japan, where his replacement Jack Carty eventually suffered a vaguely similar fate against the host nation.

Pushed further into the bowels of our collective memory for different reasons is Byrne’s second test start — this under Andy Farrell, 15 months after his first — as Ireland slumped to an 18-7 defeat at an empty Twickenham in the Autumn Nations Cup, the makeshift tournament which replaced the November internationals while Covid was at its most dangerous and depressing.

It was England’s defence which enforced the strictest lockdown that evening, making 246 tackles to Ireland’s 73. Farrell’s men dominated territory and possession but their attack under Mike Catt was yet to bear fruit, and Byrne scarcely laid seeds for his own test future.

Indeed, it was two and a half years before he earned his third test start and, even in February of this year, there was something of a caveat in the shape of Ireland’s patched-together midfield as Farrell’s men stuttered past Italy in the least convincing of their Grand Slam performances.

Byrne, though, had already acquitted himself nicely in a brief cameo off the bench during Ireland’s Six Nations opener in Cardiff, orchestrating their bonus-point score. He was better still in a 25-minute contribution against France, taking an opportunity against truly elite opposition to provide evidence that, if Ireland have go-forward ball, he has both the requisite skills and minerals to complement the game-breakers around him.

Of course, Leinster’s subsequent Champions Cup final defeat to French opposition will still be used by Byrne’s detractors as a stick with which to beat him. The 28-year-old was hardly faultless as La Rochelle went back-to-back in Dublin but, similarly to his first Ireland start at Twickenham four years ago, he found himself backfoot boxing in a blender.

Saturday will be no cakewalk, either. England showed enough in Ireland’s Grand Slam decider five months ago to suggest that they can achieve spells of at least parity with Paul O’Connell’s pack this time around but, relieved of the angst of ‘the occasion’, the big men in green should clear enough trees for Byrne to blossom in his fourth test start — and his first in ideal circumstances.

As such, this weekend’s warm-up is bigger for Ross Byrne than it is for any Irish player other than Cian Prendergast at eight.

All going well for the Leinster 10 and he will effectively become the answer to the multiple-choice question under which his name wasn’t even an option for several years: he will likely become Ireland’s starting out-half in the event that Johnny Sexton is unfit for a must-win game. (This wouldn’t necessarily make Jack Crowley ‘third choice’ either, mind; the Munster man’s versatility as a 10-15 option could still dictate that he makes the bench when Sexton starts).

An off day in such auspicious infrastructure, though, and all plans could be shredded again ahead of Ireland’s departure for France.