In his previous 69 selections as Ireland coach, Eddie O'Sullivan can rarely have announced a couple of bombshells quite like yesterday when he unveiled his hand for the critical Pool D encounter with France in Paris on Friday night.

For only the second time in his eight-year, 79-test career, Peter Stringer has paid the price for an unusually wayward performance against Namibia and the intercepted pass for Georgia's last try. He's even been dropped from the 22, with Eoin Reddan leapfrogging Isaac Boss into the starting line-up.

Andrew Trimble returns from injury to left wing to the exclusion of a devastated Denis Hickie, whose career may have been ended given he hasn't even made the bench despite being the more experienced player, better footballer and superior finisher.

Nor, perplexingly, has Geordan Murphy, who has been dropped from the 22 in favour of Gavin Duffy.

Presumably, given he saw about 30 seconds of action in the games against Namibia and Georgia combined, it was for not sitting on the bench properly.

In the third enforced but welcome change to the starting line-up, Jerry Flannery returns at hooker instead of the injured Rory Best (dislocated finger), with Frankie Sheahan promoted to the bench.

"It's a tough one, because Peter has been a stalwart on the team. But his form recently hasn't been his best, he hasn't been on top of his game. He's suffering a wee bit," said O'Sullivan of Stringer's exclusion.

"I picked Eoin straight through on to the team in terms of the game we're trying to play, he's capable of playing that game. To be fair, his form has been good at the tail end of the season with Wasps."

To be even fairer, his form has been good for two seasons with Wasps, and taking a punt on Reddan would have been worth it long before. But Reddan sat on the bench for eight Six Nations games over the last two years and was given the princely total of one minute on the wing in Paris two seasons ago.

Having played in the second Test in Argentina, he has since been given only 26 minutes as a replacement in Bayonne in three warm-up games and the two World Cup matches. Thus, after two years in the squad, he will make his first competitive pass to Ronan O'Gara in an Ireland shirt on Friday night.

On the only other occasion Stringer was dropped for a frontline Test match, Ireland lost 32-10 to Scotland in the foot-and-mouth rearranged game of September 2001. As to why Boss is rated above Stringer, O'Sullivan explained, in a verdict one ventures few coaches would share: "He's a different type of player and we've used him as an impact player to change things around the base. And he always covers a number of positions, he's played at a high level, played for us on the wing and played fullback as well."

So Springer partially misses out because he doesn't also cover wing and fullback.

"I think historically Geordan's last two games haven't been a hunting ground for him. He (Duffy) also fills the centre for us and it's a bench that gives us more options."

The logic of that is curious, given in his 51 Tests Murphy has played fullback, wing, centre and outhalf, thereby giving Ireland more options than any other player around.

Furthermore, Ireland have two converted centres on the wing. When pressed, O'Sullivan rowed back on the options theory. "It's part of it as well - and it's not a major part, it's a minor part, I threw it in at the end - is that he covers centre as well as back-three. The underpinning issue is the last couple of occasions he's (Murphy) played against France have not been good days for him all right. That's my decision, I stand over that and someone has to make that decision. You might disagree with it, as you possibly do, but that's the way it is."

You wish Duffy nothing but the best if he is pitched into the fray, but none of his seven caps were starts in competitive internationals. Murphy has played under Bob Dwyer, Dean Richards and Pat Howard at Leicester, where he has won four Premierships and two European Cup medals, and has been regularly employed as one of their main strike runners and creators. One would venture no other coach in the Northern Hemisphere would make the same choice.

His exclusion, after two non-appearances from the bench in malfunctioning wins, will undoubtedly have sent shock waves through the squad, and it seems he may as well join Bob Casey and others in exile.

This certainly isn't a form selection, as Duffy hasn't played since injury curtailed his involvement to 26 minutes in the first warm-up game in Murrayfield fully six weeks ago, when Murphy was excellent for 80 minutes at fullback. And Murphy's potential as an impact replacement was underlined in the win over Wales in Cardiff last season.

Donncha O'Callaghan and Simon Easterby are among the luckier ones, as otherwise the pack and the forward replacements remain unaltered, for at least there were viable options there. Malcolm O'Kelly, yet to see a minute of action, is on the bench and Alan Quinlan remains in the stands, even though there must have been a compelling case for freshening up the back five of the pack.