Rugby Six Nations Championship:Such is the embarrassment of attacking riches at their disposal one can only deduce that Ireland must have one hell of a team if Geordan Murphy cannot even make the replacements bench for Saturday's eagerly awaited RBS Six Nations encounter with England at Croke Park. Well, that's one way of looking at it anyway.

As is the way of these things, omissions raised eyebrows more readily than inclusions, and Murphy's failure to make the 22-man cut against England will invariably be the most talked about selection by Eddie O'Sullivan when yesterday recalling Brian O'Driscoll and reverting Gordon D'Arcy and Shane Horgan to their more familiar positions at inside centre and right wing. The Irish coach also admitted that the ensuing demotion of Murphy from the right wing to outside the 22 behind Andrew Trimble was the most vexed source of debate amongst the management as well.

"I don't think Geordan is firing on all cylinders and Andrew has come back into a stronger vein of form. But it was a tight call and could have gone either way," commented O'Sullivan.

"They're different types of players to be sure, and they bring different bags of tricks to the party. I just think at the moment, with what I saw from Andrew when he came on and made a big impact, you've got to reward that."

It is assuredly a gamble by O'Sullivan, for Murphy is easily Ireland's most versatile back. Gordon D'Arcy will now cover fullback. Murphy's omission will hurt him bad, all the more so for a game against Leicester team-mates and regular foes on the English club circuit.

Yet to play one minute in this championship at his preferred fullback, on the strength of his game turning nine-minute first-half cameo as a temporary replacement for Denis Hickie in Cardiff, Murphy supplanted Trimble for the French game but has now dropped back down the pecking order after a defensively fragile display, most notably when missing the try-saving tackle on Raphael Ibanez.

It would have been tough on the ultra-consistent Girvan Dempsey (though unusually he, too, missed five tackles against France), or the dynamic Trimble, had either of them missed out on the starting line-up or the 22. But, nonetheless, it seems remarkable that a player who has so much to offer in terms of game-breaking, play-making vision, passing and kicking skills, intuitive support runs and eye for the tryline, cannot even make the replacements' bench.

Disconcertingly, a vacancy was left at scrumhalf pending further analysis of Peter Stringer's fractured bone in his hand. Stringer came through a rigorous training session on Monday but didn't do any contact work.

"The progress has slowed down this week but he had a pretty tough work-out yesterday and he hasn't had any adverse reaction so that's quite encouraging," said O'Sullivan.

"But we'll probably wait until Thursday and give it another 48 hours and call it then, though it's a lot more encouraging than it was this time last week."

There would have been arguments for promoting the more dynamic Jerry Flannery or Neil Best at hooker or blindside flanker but Munster's selection of Frankie Sheahan ahead of Flannery last Friday probably did the latter no favours and it comes as no great surprise that the pack is unchanged for the third game running.

More pertinent than any selection issues will be the performance and O'Sullivan admitted that the repeated penchant for slow starts is too deep-rooted to attribute the latest one to the Croke Park effect, as he himself had partially done.

"I think that's the bigger problem to address, not having a bad start on Saturday and giving a team an edge that you've got to turn around.

"I think it would be foolish to buy into the fact that that (Croke Park) was the reason we started the game badly. I think there's more evidence there than that."

Notoriously slow starters, the Irish coach also said they have analysed "training schedules, the content and the intensity of our training, the lead in to the game, the day before the game, the morning of the game" while seeking to "have more clarity of thought about what we're doing in the first quarter of the game."

Something of a percentage restart team, O'Sullivan said Ireland would try to "manufacture situations where we have the ball in our hands and (are) running at the opposition rather than defending. Having said that, if we don't find ourselves in that situation we react to it. You may have to start the game without the football but that's no reason to go into your shell."

An unwelcome sideshow has been the furore surrounding the playing of the English national anthem at Croke Park on Saturday, a topic which has agitated a huge debate on radio talk shows.

Here O'Sullivan gave a balanced and considered view. "It's understandable that people would have issues in principle with what's happening, and I think they've every right to have issues and it's understandable that they want to express them," which he said was a "healthy" form of "freedom of speech". However, he added that some sections of the media have been "gleefully fanning the flames".

"My hope is that the national anthems have always been respected in Lansdowne Road and they'll be respected again in Croke Park. Our anthem of choice has been respected everywhere we've gone and you would hope that it would be reciprocated," he said, reminding us that God Save The Queen was played at the Special Olympics in Croke Park three and a half years ago without any issue made of it.

He expressed the hope that, true to all Irish sports supporters, the event and the occasion will be embraced on Saturday, not least because feeding off that surge of positive energy is what is important to the team.

The bottom line: "It's a pivotal game in our championship. If we win on Saturday we're back in the championship and if we lose our championship is dead in the water pretty much, and we'd be fighting for a spot down the table."