Don't know really, it's hard to say.
Cave is a quiet player, rarely that showy, but he makes great decisions and is the closest thing Ireland have to Conrad Smith imo. He's my sort of player. My reasoning on the other candidates would go...
Spence - Hahahaha no.
Griffin - I really rate what I've seen of him, but he's raw and has plenty of learning to do, without jumping several levels all at once.
O'Malley - The interesting one, haven't seen enough of him, no doubt he can attack, question marks over his defence and size... it's possible if I were a Leinster fan watching Leinster regularly I'd be saying him instead of Cave. I just get the feeling he'll be a bit too lightweight, and have believed for a long time that Ireland's backline of midgets was a bad thing.
McFadden - Am now convinced he's a 12, not a 13.
Barnes - *giggles*
Then you've got the idea of moving one of the wings... in general I dislike moving wings in, it's a blight; let great wings thrive in the space they use, rather than asking them to modify their game. Nevertheless, Ireland do have a lot of wingers, and a lot of them do have centre experience. If I was to pick one, it'd be Fitzgerald, but the man then needs to play regularly at the centre and he won't do that. Earls chews up too much space and picks wrong options for me.
Unless you have a genius, the first things I want from 13 are option taking, short distribution, secure defence and line-breaking. Cave fulfils those talents most for me at the moment.
Could use a massive game from him tonight to prove me right! Him, Tuohy and Henry are the guys really putting their hands up for Ireland at Ulster outside of the usual suspects atm.
BG8 - fair enough, it's a big call leaving Bowe out - but his form hasn't been great, while everytime I've watched them recently Trimble and Fitzgerald have been very dangerous.
