David Humphreys

Part of it is presence.

Part of it is who he is.

He can walk into a room and he just commands that respect.

And yet for such a big presence, as you said earlier, he's got that ability to connect with the players in a way that is very, very difficult to do.

you boys know as well as I do, that when you take a snapshot at any stage during a season, how you feel about the game is very much determined by some of the results.

So after that first weekend in Paris, where we'd lost at the senior level, our under-20s had had a tough afternoon, and the A team took an absolute hammering by England down in Thoman Park, there was a huge amount of negativity around the Irish team.

So if you were looking at, if we were talking about it then, everybody would have said,

We have to make changes.

We have to do things differently.

Irish rugby is really difficult.

You wind that forward to the day where we finished second in the Six Nations, one minute away from winning the championship.

Our under-20s finished second.

When you've again seen the evolution of the women's rugby, the senior women's team, and how the last two years have

their level of performance under Scott Beeman and Gillian McDarby, how they've become really competitive to the point, the quarterfinal in the World Cup last year, we should have beaten France.

But that's the small decisions, Donovan, that when you sit back and try and go, we know Irish rugby isn't a good place.

But we also know things do have to change.

We have to get better.

When you look at the French club rugby and the way that it's exploding, English rugby feels like it's getting its ducks in a row again now.

When you look at the number of players coming out of South Africa and the way... We have to keep evolving.

One of the things that Ireland have done so well is be innovative in how they approach player welfare, player development.