Rory O'Connor

One of his mother's parents, Irish?

anyway this room is a thought experiment it did cross my mind there where I'm not 100% convinced he is Irish qualified that one's a little bit fanciful but Raj to England is less fanciful yeah I think so I think it's are you in the blower to Raj about this every day he's I think he'd be open to it I think is that an official I'm keen I'm keen he was down to the last three the last time the job was he applied the last time it was him Scott Robertson or Steve Borthwick they went with Steve Borthwick

They just had Eddie Jones.

It's that classic thing where you lurch from one to... They wanted a young English coach who'd just won the premiership, who is, by all accounts, an excellent coach, who probably made a great presentation.

I think that was what they were looking for.

I don't have that information, no.

I'd love to have seen it.

But if Borthwick, you know, he's been given a temporary stay by the ORFU, a very... Lukewarm.

Lukewarm statement, and they go out and win on Saturday, he's safe until the World Cup, I think.

He's already in negotiations with La Rochelle.

That's been reported in the French media about staying beyond 2027.

As far as I'm aware, he has a clause in his contract that if an international job comes up, he's allowed to go for it.

So him extending beyond 2027 just gives him security in a place that he loves and he's had great success and he's in the process of a

a very sticky and slow rebuild, but he's digging in for that rebuild.

But I do think his next job, he said on the record, I've done interviews with him where he said, I want to coach Ireland and I want to coach internationally.

And if the Ireland job isn't going to be available in 2027 and there's no sign, well, we don't know yet because Farrell's been very opaque about it.

The RFU seem to be quite confident that they'll keep him on.

But even if...

Farrell does move on.

While I think O'Gara should be the number one choice, there's no guarantee he gets it either because they could opt for continuity.