John Fogarty has a job to do on this Emerging Ireland tour.
If Ireland are to break through their World Cup barrier in the next four or eight years, the last 12 months have shown that they will need a scrum to compete with the best, and specifically South Africa.
While Ireland have won two of their three games against the back-to-back champion Springboks over the last year, those three meetings highlighted just how superior the South African scrum is compared to the rest in the world.
The World Cup quarter-final defeat to New Zealand also saw Ireland's set-piece whistled off the park by Wayne Barnes, and although the Irish set-up are still unhappy with the referee’s interpretations that evening, a cuter set of forwards would have read the wind and adapted.
Aside from Rob Herring and Dave Heffernan, the age profile of Ireland’s first-choice hookers Dan Sheehan and Rónan Kelleher is reassuring, while Munster’s Diarmuid Barron and Ulster’s Tom Stewart appear to be next cabs off the rank and have been exposed to senior Irish camps.
At prop, the future is less clear. At tighthead, Tadhg Furlong and Finlay Bealham hold the matchday jerseys, but with the pair turning 32 and 33 respectively in the next two months, further options are needed.
Oli Jager should be hitting the prime of his career at 29, and is likely to remain involved in the Irish squad this autumn, but there still appears to be a reluctance to trust Ulster’s Tom O’Toole in big Test matches.
The reliance on Andrew Porter to play upwards of 70 minutes each game at loosehead shows where Ireland are at that position, as does the fact that Cian Healy is still fending off the challengers to the 17 shirt, ahead of his 37th birthday in a fortnight.
It was notable that in the days between Ireland’s first and second Tests against South Africa this summer, newly minted IRFU performance director David Humphreys sat down with journalists and explained how the union were set to block the provinces from signing any non-Irish qualified front row players until they were satisfied with the national depth.
The Irish coaching team – minus head coach Andy Farrell – are now back in South Africa this week, ahead of the Emerging Ireland games against the Pumas, Western Force and Cheetahs in Bloemfontein. What better place to put some young front rowers to work?
"I know we’re not playing solely South African teams but going to South Africa, there’s such a priority on getting your set piece right," Fogarty said this week, ahead of Wednesday’s first tour game against the Pumas (3pm Irish time).
"It’s such a brilliant opportunity to bring this group of front rowers to test them somewhere like that."
The embargo on front-row signings puts pressure on the provinces to start beefing up their front rows. More minutes, more exposure, and – Fogarty hopes – more people knocking on the door for Test selection.
"It’s not my initiative," the national scrum coach adds, referring to the ban on front-row imports.
"Look, we need to develop our own indigenous props, it’s really important, it’s exciting to be able to get around the provinces now and have pointed conversations with these players, to be able to bring these players away, widen our group, strengthen our group.
"I think it’s clear now in the minds of players around the country that they need to step up.
"It is what it is, we’re four teams, one nation, we need to make sure we’re developing our own."
When Humphreys gave that briefing to the media in Durban, the former Ireland out-half also spoke about how they wouldn’t look kindly on players who appeared happy to sit in a queue on the depth chart.
The comments were directed more broadly than just the front -ow positions, but the sentiment is one that Fogarty strongly agrees with, and cites his own playing career, in which he played for Munster, Connacht and Leinster across just over a decade.
The former hooker made his Ireland debut at the age of 32, before having to retire a few months later due to complications around concussion.
He said: "I spent 11 years [playing], and for some of those years, I kind of sat down a little bit.
"You know, looking back on it, and hindsight is 20/20, but looking back on it, it’s something I regret.
"I was lucky enough to be able to kick on and achieve something, but you can spend a little bit of time where you’re quite happy and you kind of wait and see: 'Will I get my opportunity?’ You need to make things happen.
"We’ve got four provinces, we’ve got excellent players, sometimes the mentality of ‘I need to make this happen for myself’, ‘I need to continue to make this happen and not wait for an opportunity’...again this is the beauty of this tour, to get some of those guys, that we’re going to see them in green… give them an opportunity and hopefully they’ll take something back from it."
From the previous Emerging Ireland tour in 2022, only Tom Stewart has gone on to earn a Test cap from the nine front rowers involved, although his fellow hooker Diarmuid Barron has also been involved in Irish squads.
Of the props, Roman Salanoa saw huge progression during that 2022/23 season and was in the wider Ireland Six Nations squad that won a Grand Slam, but a serious knee injury has kept him out for more than 12 months, and he’s likely to be sidelined until the new year.
The make-up of this current Emerging Ireland group is – for the most part – younger and more inexperienced than it was two years ago, with players like Alex Usanov, Scott Wilson, Gus McCarthy, Danny Sheahan, Ronan Foxe and Stephen Smyth all either one or two years removed from U20 rugby.
One of the more interesting selections is Connacht tighthead Jack Aungier (above), with the 25-year-old a regular for Connacht, and a veteran compared to his team-mates on this tour.
And Fogarty is looking forward to seeing how the former Leinster prop adapts.
"Jack Aungier has been unbelievably consistent last season, himself and Finlay had a proper ding-dong battle in Connacht and I'm excited to see Jack.
"The guys that are coming, we want to give them a nudge. We want them to understand where they sit. Sometimes it takes a little bit of that.
"We saw from the last Emerging Ireland tour. You get lads who come in, they pick things up quickly and they learn from it and grow an appetite to get back in green.
"I'm happy with the lads that were there, loosehead and tighthead side, and we need to make sure we're doing right by them, expose them properly, get them tooled up, coached up properly and most of all growing the appetite and belief in green to come back and do something.
"I don't want any tighthead, loosehead, hooker in the country sitting in the province, kind of happy that they're with the province and playing a bit part.
"I want to make sure there's an appetite throughout the country that this is something that's attainable and they need to be striving for that.
"The majority are, but we want to make sure that we're seeing everyone at the right level."
