RUGBY/Ireland v Pacific Islands: Nine changes and three new caps, including Ireland's youngest debutant in almost three decades, and what amounts to a mini-revolution in the number 10 jersey with Paddy Wallace starting there after a two-minute run-on against South Africa last Saturday week. Even Eddie O'Sullivan appears to have become a little giddy this week.
The debutants have been well flagged, with three of the outstanding new wave of young talent - Luke Fitzgerald, Stephen Ferris and Jamie Heaslip - starting Lansdowne Road's farewell party against the Pacific Islands on Sunday (kick-off 2.45) before its scheduled redevelopment.
Some of the older guard return too, namely Girvan Dempsey, Peter Stringer, Frankie Sheahan, Malcolm O'Kelly and Simon Easterby, while Shane Horgan reverts to inside centre to accommodate Fitzgerald's selection on the wing.
Arguably, O'Sullivan could have done some of this last autumn against Romania or maybe in the final match of the summer tour in Australia, and he admitted he won't get another chance to "push the squad out a little further" with the World Cup in mind until the two-Test tour to Argentina next June.
Maintaining again that it was "a form selection" the Irish coach stressed that this was being in no way disrespectful to Sunday's opponents, "pretty classical Pacific Islanders, they're very physical, like playing with the ball in their hands and these guys can create tries out of nothing and they're great finishers."
Reading out the list of eight players with a half-century of caps or more between them, plus the 38-times capped Paul O'Connell, O'Sullivan underlined "the thread of huge experience running through the team". Furthermore, six of the team that started in last Sunday's win over Australia are also on the bench.
"If you're good enough you're old enough," reasoned O'Sullivan of Fitzgerald's selection. "The World Cup is only 10 months away and if he's going to make a pitch to get in the World Cup squad, this is as good a time as any to give him that opportunity. The same for Stephen, Jamie and Paddy."
Hopefully this will be the first of many caps for the gifted Fitzgerald, the dynamic Heaslip and the big, bruising and quick Ferris, something of a prototype for the modern-day backrower. Longer-term, it will be a surprise if Fitzgerald carves out a career for himself on the wing. Not a flying finisher like Denis Hickie, his defensive sureness, big left boot, brilliant footwork, hands and gamebreaking ability in open play will probably see him become a centre or more likely a fullback.
Utterly unfazed by all of this, both on and off the pitch Fitzgerald conveys a very self-assured temperament and he could hardly be in a better learning environment than under Michael Cheika and David Knox at Leinster.
If the rise of Fitzgerald has been meteoric, Wallace's has been more measured. A team-mate of both O'Driscoll and Donncha O'Callaghan in Ireland's Under-19 World Cup triumph of 1998, he has been moved around from pillar to post in an injury-plagued career spent largely in the shadow of David Humphreys at Ulster. Even this season he has cemented a starting position with the reigning Magners Celtic League champions at inside centre.
"In an ideal world he'd be playing outhalf for his province but I think it's not as difficult as it might seem," maintained O'Sullivan. "The centre position is a little bit different than flyhalf. The inside centre position is not the key decision-maker but his lines of running, his handling, the pressure that's going to come to bear on him, is pretty similar, so I think it's not a major reach for him to go to back to flyhalf now."
The last time an outhalf other than Ronan O'Gara or Humphreys started a Test match for Ireland was Eric Elwood in the 44-14 win over Romania in the 1999 World Cup, seven years, one month and 78 Test matches ago.
O'Sullivan admitted that he had hoped to play Simon Best at tighthead but "starting a Test match this weekend might be a big ask for him" after recently recovering from his broken leg.
Ferris becomes the seventh Ulster player in the last 13 months to make his Irish debut - evidence of the work Mark McCall and Allen Clarke have done in developing indigenous talent in the province.
The presence of three newcomers in Sunday's team will take to 32 the number of new caps O'Sullivan will have blooded in the 60 matches under his stewardship, which, at a rate of almost six per year, the coach cited as grounds for undermining the prevailing view of him as a conservative selector. "I may have been moving slowly, but steadily; it's like the water dripping on the stone. I think we've gone a good bit down the track."
He probably is more radical than we give him credit for, although the surprisingly high rate of debutants in his tenure can in part be attributed to the increased volume of Tests in modern day rugby. All told, 13 of the previous 29 debutants have largely been confined to bit parts in autumnal or end-of-season tours against what might be categorised as B-list opposition. Put another way, those 13 players have never started a game against one of the world's top 10.
Interestingly, a dozen of the debutants have been Ulster players, seven from Munster, five from Leinster, three were based cross channel and two in Connacht. Of the Leinster quintet, three are no longer there, and the two who had anything like extended stays, Keith Gleeson and Leo Cullen, appear to have fallen out of favour, although Gleeson at least played for the A side last week. Fitzgerald and Heaslip should buck that trend.
