There are lots of things about being an international coach which seem complicated, but not picking a squad, right? Surely you just pick the best available players and sit back and see what unfolds. Unfortunately not. Picking a squad isn’t just about performing now, it’s about performing next year and the year after that and the year after that. In this article, with the help of a sports scientist working in the professional game, we will examine squad profiles and how much they matter.
Firstly, what is a squad profile. It’s simply the age and number of caps spread through a squad. If you want to win now, you might aim for an experienced squad with plenty of international experience. That’s probably also going to be an old squad and if those older players have soaked up all the international experience, they may well retire exposing a younger generation ill-suited to the highest level. Yet, pick an inexperienced team with the hope that they grow together and you might end up with a deflated side battered by relentless losses and struggling for direction without those leaders.
Thankfully, we can see these challenges in the data. The below shows us the average number of caps each team possessed in their squads over the last three years. These are box and whisker graphs and without diving into a GCSE maths lesson too much, the box shows us where 50% of all players sit and the horizontal line marks the average.
Let’s look at Ireland and Wales first. Ireland have gradually increased their caps since 2023. This is a sign of Andy Farrell sticking with a core group of players and giving them the experience of regular International rugby. Wales on the other side have dropped experience since that last hurrah of the Gatland era in 2023. They have gone from one of the most experienced sides in 2023 to the least in 2025.
There are negative consequences to Ireland’s approach. They are an ageing team. In 2023 they were already one of the oldest of the 18 sides we are looking at but they are of course older now in 2025. The risk is that they retire, or fall out of form, en masse and a group of inexperienced players are left to pick up the pieces and keep things moving forward. You can see elements of this with Italy. They decided to clear the decks and start afresh with a very young and very inexperienced squad. That paid dividends in 2024 as that new look team lost just two matches. The first time ever they’d lost just twice and the first time since 2013 they’d won twice.
It’s not been so successful for Wales who saw their experience chopped down but are still almost as old as they were in 2023. England have pulled off the trick of getting more experience while also getting younger. Partly that’s caused by a conscious effort to blood in young players they trusted to make a significant impact. In 2023 they had a great block of players with fewer than 20 caps. That block are largely still there but have been gifted experience and are now part of a team which appears to have a clear plan of succession. Players in 2023 who fit that bill would be Marcus Smith, Alex Mitchell, Ben Earl, Ben Curry, and Freddie Steward. Steward, Earl, and Smith now have 30+ caps and Mitchell and Curry look set to close in on that total in the next few years. England had 14 uncapped players in 2023 and 2024, Ireland had just one. Among those uncapped players were Fin Smith, Cadan Murley, and Chandler Cunningham-South all feature this weekend.
France are deserving of their own mention because of just how internationally inexperienced they are. England, Ireland, and Wales have all had at least one 100 capper in their squads since 2023. France haven’t had any and only Gael Fickou and Uini Atonio have had more than 60 caps. It seems they don’t need to play by the same squad planning rules of the other sides, and there’s a good reason for that.
The France squad of 2023 included uncapped players like Leo Coly, Julien Delbouis, and Alexandre Roumat. Coly had played 90 club games prior to that tournament, Delbouis 79, and Roumat 156. Dan Edwards and Ellis Mee, the Welsh uncapped players this year, have played a combined 76, including at Championship level. The French club system allows players the opportunity to bag plenty of elite level action at a young age and before you’ve trotted out for France. This year the French have selected uncapped players like lock Matthias Halagahu who has appeared 59 times for Toulon. Only 20-year-old centre Noah Nene bucks the trend, he’s had just 17 appearances prior to this tournament.
The importance of this is impossible to overlook. The likes of Wales, Scotland, and to a certain extent Ireland, must focus on that planned succession. That means identifying early the person who will takeover from your older experienced player. Then giving them starts against weaker opponents and meaningful gametime off the bench. Once the older player is gone you then hope the next in line will thrive. The risks of this are enormous though. Your young talent might not thrive or injuries might jump in the way of progress. Then you need to scramble to find someone who can fill the gap. France can employ that approach as well, but if it doesn’t work they have a boatload of players in the Top14 who can at least fill the gap during injury or when development time is needed.
We can look at the specifics of this year’s squads in the above graphic. Notice the conveyor belt style patterns for both Ireland and England. Those show the three groups; old and experienced, younger with mid-levels of experience, and young with little to no experience. Over time you expect the top group to retire and be replaced by the middle group who are themselves replaced by the young group. Italy are in the early stages of building, or rebuilding, that process. France as we have discussed are an outlier. Scotland however have some cause for concern.
Scotland’s 2025 squad are interesting because they have a lot of people with some experience, but few with lots of experience. This is perhaps caused by the famous “Toonie Tombola” where regular chopping and changing means that a lot of players have been given gametime and there’s a wide base of talent they can choose from. However, look at the number of players who are over 30 but with fewer than 40 caps. That includes almost the entire front row. Players of course develop at different rates and things like injury or a lack of opportunities can mean someone has to wait until later in their career to make their debut. All of these Scottish players are deserving of their call-ups. The concern is that your older but less experienced players give way to another generation of older but less experienced players who give way to another group like that. You might then miss out on giving experience to the younger players, who perhaps aren’t quite match ready, in pursuit of prioritising immediate success.
This is caused by a relatively small player pool, as we can see with Italy and Wales. With a small player pool there is a lower chance that each generation will throw up a test worthy player in each position. If your young intake doesn’t have that elite fly-half then you had better keep your older fly-half in action and hope he can go long enough for a young talent to emerge. That’s not the case for England and Ireland. It’s almost certain that each generation will have each position covered. If you have a fly-half you rate 7/10 who is 22 and another 7/10 who is 33, it might be pertinent to begin giving experience to the 22-year-old with a view to four years down the line when your 33-year-old is long retired.
As fans we talk a lot about team and squad selections. Intuitively we know that it’s important to have a plan for the future. But this is critical for team bosses who need to balance winning now and winning later. Nail that and you’ll have a long future and happy fans. But it’s all too easy to fall short thanks to the unpredictability of the sport and factors outside of your control. Looking ahead to this year, if you’re in the England or Italy camp you’ll be feeling pretty buoyed that you’re on the right track.
Thank you to Jake Gillies for pulling together the stats and graphs we’ve used in this article.
