Nines and eights were almost par for the course but only two men did enough to merit the rarely-spotted ten. Stuart McCloskey has been nicknamed ‘The Irish Fridge’ after his rampage in London, but Gibson-Park was the heartbeat of everything that was good. “I guess he's tough, and a lot of nines are tough, but he's tough,” said Ireland defence coach Simon Easterby. He's got an appetite to attack the game [and] you saw some of his defensive efforts on the weekend. That was the year Andy Farrell took over and bumped the Kiwi-born option a handful of rungs up the ladder.

Source: Irish Examiner February 27, 2026 17:50 UTC