Farrell was announced as Schmidt's successor in November 2018 after Farrell having a massively successful coaching stint over the previous 3 years with Ireland and the Lions. If you say that's too early to make that decision I'd agree with you. Clear succession planning is important and avoiding the media circus of who the next coach will be is useful but doing it a full year before your HC finishes up is probably a bit much. Of course Lancaster had at this point also successfully resurrected his reputation being a big part in Leinster's 2018 double.
I'd be doubtful that they did talk to Lancaster but who's to say they didn't or that he would have taken them up on it.
Lancaster has been connected with a number of big roles since his resurgence with Leinster and he's still at Leinster. By all accounts he really likes the position he's in and is being very choice about taking any other jobs. All the things he seems to like about his job with Leinster such as not being the main focus of the press and getting to develop the young lads I think international coaching is the last thing he wants now and certainly back then when the scars were still relatively fresh from 2015.
I don't want to sound like I'm defending Farrell completely, I'm trying to keep an open mind until the end of the 6N as I think is fair for any first year head coach let alone one dealing with completely unprecedented circumstances. He's done a few things I like and plenty I don't like. Case in point, Thornley's rumoured team is fairly as expected but overall meh. You just seem to already be equating him to he who must not be named.
IRELAND (possible) v WALES: Hugo Keenan,
Keith Earls, Garry Ringrose, Robbie Henshaw, James Lowe; Johnny Sexton (capt), Conor Murray; Cian Healy, Rob Herring, Andrew Porter, Tadhg Beirne, James Ryan, Peter O'Mahony, Josh van der Flier, CJ Stander.
Replacements: Rónan Kelleher, Dave Kilcoyne, Tadhg Furlong, Iain Henderson, Will Connors, Jamison Gibson-Park, Billy Burns, Jordan Larmour.
Think that team is able to beat the Wales side their fans are predicting but the pack is massively lacking in attacking threat overall. There's probably more attacking threat on the bench than the starting team which given the likes of Eddie Jones' recent comments, might be on purpose. It's interesting that VDF started both games last year against Wales and seems to be in line for this one even though Connors seemed to be preferred against France and England
