Experience counts for late-bloomer Jamison Gibson-Park

Looking back on the last time Ireland played a Test match without Caelan Doris, a number of things jump out.

A knee injury keeps the Ireland captain out of Saturday's meeting with Wales in Cardiff, breaking his run of 42 consecutive internationals, 41 of which were starts.

The last time Ireland were without Doris was the final day of the 2021 Guinness Six Nations championship, the game most followers of Irish rugby believe was the day everything clicked for this team under Andy Farrell. Ireland stuffed England 32-18, finishing on a high after what had been an underwhelming campaign to that point.

To review that game is to look into a time capsule. CJ Stander started on the flank that evening to win his final Irish cap, having made a shock retirement announcement a few days earlier, at the age of 31.

Andrew Porter was still a tighthead prop back then. Understudy to Tadhg Furlong at the time, he would make the switch to loosehead that summer, and in the four years since he has arguably become Ireland’s most important player.

It was also the last time Ireland had a red card; Bundee Aki shown the line for a high tackle on Billy Vunipola, Ireland’s second of that championship. Since then, they have the best disciplinary record - in terms of cards - in tier one rugby.

The other curious thing about that that game was the Irish bench. Jamison Gibson-Park was an unused substitute, the only one, in a game that Ireland had been comfortably ahead in by the hour mark.

Four years on, the notion that Gibson-Park (above) would be left idle on the bench seems preposterous. The Leinster scrum-half turns 33-years-old on Sunday, the very definition of a late bloomer, having arrived in Ireland from New Zealand as a relative unknown in the summer of