It's been just over a year since David Nucifora hinted that the plans were being laid for his departure from the role of IRFU performance director.
The Australian will leave his role next summer after a decade in the position as the head of the professional game in this country, with former Ireland out-half David Humphreys tasked with overseeing the national sides' long-term strategies, as well as the four provinces.
The 52-year-old will return to rugby in 2024 after a brief spell in cricket with the ECB, and will work alongside Nucifora initially to smooth the transition from one regime to the next.
And the former Ulster and Gloucester director of rugby (below) will have a packed in-tray when he takes up his office in March.
PLAYER PATHWAYS
While Johnny Sexton and Keith Earls have retired, and others like Cian Healy, Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray and Bundee Aki head towards the twilight of their careers, Ireland’s recent successes at Under-20 level indicate that there is a golden generation of players ready to backbone Irish rugby for the next decade.
But currently Irish rugby is struggling to work through the backlog of talent in certain positions.
The United Rugby Championship has been a successful venture for the provinces, but the trade-off is that a shorter league campaign, and the end of the British and Irish Cup, has resulted in smaller squads and fewer first team opportunities for younger players to get senior rugby experience.
This isn’t a new issue; Nucifora addressed the topic in his State of the Union briefing in October 2022, and it was part of the reasoning for the Emerging Ireland tour of South Africa just over a year ago.
There have been calls for the IRFU to establish a fifth pro team to spread the wealth out, and in the summer it was reported that the Irish rugby top brass were keeping tabs on the situation at London Irish, who were looking for new owners.
And while it seems unlikely that Irish rugby would take ownership of a team in England, establishing a strategic partnership with teams outside of the Irish system could be an ideal way of farming out some of the younger talent who would otherwise be holding tackle bags at the provinces.
Under Nucifora, the IRFU’s selection policy tightened, with only Irish-based players being considered for selection following Sexton's return from France, and it will be fascinating to see if that policy shows any flexibility from Humphreys, who spent two years at London Irish as a player.
The second piece of the pathways puzzle is prioritising depth in key areas of the pitch. There’s a queue ten-deep to get into the Irish back row, but the depth chart at both tighthead and loosehead prop remains unclear.
South Africa’s second successive World Cup win has underlined the need to have world class scrummagers at both tight and loose, and with the likes of Healy and Dave Kilcoyne both hitting their mid-30s, it’s imperative that the next Andrew Porter or Tadhg Furlong is identified and allowed to develop.
RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ALL-IRELAND LEAGUE
Strictly speaking, Nucifora’s – and now Humphreys’ - role is around the professional game, but improving the relationship between the club scene and the pro system will be an important element of his job.
Nucifora’s relationship with the club game could be best described as strained after his failed attempts at revamping the All-Ireland League in 2018, but in the recent seasons the AIL has enjoyed a bit of a renaissance, with more access and clarity around the availability of academy and contracted players to the clubs in Divisions 1 and 2.
Just last weekend, Leinster called upon Clontarf hooker Dylan Donnellan in a time of need, while Ulster have also looked to the AIL to build squad depth, signing another Clontarf player - tighthead prop Ben Griffin - to a contract this season, while Shea O’Brien was also drafted in last year after impressing for City of Armagh.
The wealth and resources of the top Dublin private schools have provided a conveyor belt of players to Irish rugby and the four provinces in the last 10 years and, while that production line shows no signs of ending any time soon, the IRFU can’t sit back and be satisfied to simply draw their playing population from that base.
If the IRFU has plans to break out and become more present in the non-traditional rugby areas of the country, that starts with the club game and while the standard of the AIL has grown in the last five years there will also be a concern that there is a developing Dublin dominance.
However, as a former AIL winner with Dungannon, the club scene may have an ally in Humphreys.
BEING UNPOPULAR
In his time working as director of rugby for Ulster and Gloucester, Humphreys will have gained plenty of experience making tough decisions around contract negotiations and recruitment, but as the head of the national professional programme every decision will be scrutinised.
As the man who has final say over the hirings, firings and signings, Nucifora has had to make a lot of unpopular decisions around the four provinces, and that’s something that the former Ireland out-half will have to accept. For every central contract he agrees, there will likely be three provincial fanbases wondering why their player hasn’t been afforded the same deal.
In his time, Nucifora has had to be the unpopular face of high-profile foreign signings being blocked, convincing players to swap their home province for another, or managing the gametime of Ireland’s frontline internationals.
It remains to be seen whether it will be Humphreys or Nucifora who will handle the next high-profile case coming round the corner at Munster where both Jean Kleyn and RG Snyman will be out of contract in the summer.
The province’s fans will be licking their lips at the prospect of a World Cup-winning second row partnership at Thomond Park, but it’s fascinating to see how the IRFU will deal with the province having two non-Irish qualified locks potentially getting gametime ahead of their younger prospects like Tom Ahern or Edwin Edogbo.
It could be the first unpopular decision Humphreys has to make, or at least be involved in.
WOMEN’S RUGBY
Nucifora can point to a lot of success in his time in Ireland across the men’s and Sevens game, but the decline of the Women’s XV programme in the last eight years is impossible to ignore.
In his comments upon being unveiled as the new performance director, Humphreys declared his excitement at being able to develop the pathways in both the "men's and women's game", and it’s simply not an option for that to just be lip-service.
With the professional women’s XV programme entering its second year, new head coach Scott Bemand has come into an environment that are currently playing catch-up to the middle tier of the game - never mind the top tier – and while some strides have been made in the last 12 months with better investment in contracts and resources, older issues remain.
In just over 18 months the IRFU have witnessed back-to-back captains quit the game, while the continued absence of hooker Cliodhna Moloney hangs over the programme like a dark cloud following her exile in the wake of criticism of former women’s and Sevens director Anthony Eddy.
Humphreys has a lot of work to do to repair both the relationships and reputation of the women’s game in Ireland. From the top, where the XVs team have arguably become an extension of the Sevens programme, right down to the bottom where the club system no longer appears to be fit for purpose, with two sides dominating an uncompetitive AIL.
COACHING SUCCESSION
If Humphreys can lead Ireland to unprecedented success at the World Cup, it’ll be a job well done.
When he starts his role in March 2024, we’ll be in the early stages of the 2027 World Cup cycle ahead of Australia, and there are likely to be some bumps in the road that need navigating.
In the last month it’s been reported that attack coach Mike Catt could be moving on, and if that does come to pass Humphreys will have to work alongside Nucifora and Andy Farrell in his early months to bring in the right candidate to work on the Irish attack and backline.
In 2025, Humphreys will also more than likely have to plan around the British and Lions tour. Farrell appears to have been crowned head coach already by Lions kingmaker Warren Gatland, and in the likelihood that he does get called for the role, it will see him vacating his Ireland job for the season leading up to the 2025 tour.
Paul O’Connell would be the obvious candidate to slot in and take up that position, but Humphreys may have to disrupt one of the provinces to fill the coaching gaps during the Six Nations that year.
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