Brendan Fanning, writing in The Irish Independent, takes a look at the ever-changing academy landscape.
"If you were reading your daily rugby coverage early last week, or tuning into sports broadcasts on tv and radio, the name of Stephen Archer will ring a bell. The 21-year-old prop came off the bench after an hour for his Magners League debut, in Murrayfield on Friday night, and did well. Well enough perhaps to start next weekend, given Darragh Hurley's injury situation, and the fact that currently Munster are in the horrors and Archer is unlikely to make it any worse.
"Perhaps it's the name 'Academy' but every time you hear that one of their number -- especially a front-row forward -- is being called up to the front line you think of schoolboys. And of course that's where their selection process starts now. Earlier and earlier in rugby we are lining up teenagers and hoping they mature into the finished article.
"Twenty one years ago in Belfast, a member of the Australian coaching staff gave a module to aspiring Irish coaches on talent identification and its importance in securing a bright future. He was talking to the wrong people. It was the IRFU he needed to educate first -- they would have run a mile at the time -- and in any case his audience that day thought talent identification was something you might do in a pub of a Saturday night."
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