When you take out the students and teachers from the hurling and football All Star line up there are very few actually working as most are still in college.

Of the hurling lads, Waterford hurler Jamie Barron working with Dawn Meats in Grannagh is as close as it gets to working in farming circles.

Seamus Callanan’s father is a tillage farmer at the Ragg, near Thurles and Seamus gets dragged out into fields every now and again, while Padraig Maher has milked a few cows in his time but has moved on to greener fields.

After that the farming links are tenuous to say the least.

Of the football 15 most are from Dublin, which, after all, is not a farming stronghold, and there are no strong links to farming circles I’m aware of for those representing counties outside the pale.

Saturday night in Chicago

On the Soldier Field in Chicago on Saturday night, where history was made when Ireland sailed to their first ever victory over the powerful All-Blacks, the gem in the front row is Rory Best who is steeped in farming. When he is not man handling All Blacks on the pitch he is pushing Black Angus cattle around his family farm near Poyntzpass, Co Tyrone.

Behind him in the scrum Donnacha Ryan is son to Tipperary based Agri Consultant Matt Ryan. As he said himself last weekend at the Macra rally, in his late teens he was sent to work on Bakers dairy farm in Cloughjordan to toughen up.

The back row brings the international dairy experience and CJ Stander's home business in South Africa is dairy farming where they employ over 60 people to look after their 600 plus milking herd down near Port Elizabeth.

In the back line Rob Kearney is the farming representative as the National Dairy Council front man given his farming roots in County Louth.

Irish-New Zealand farming links

On the opposite side of the pitch there are plenty of New Zealand farming links but the one Irish-New Zealand farming link were the Barrett brothers Beauden and Scott (who scored a try on Debut last night).

Kevin ‘Smiley’ Barrett worked for almost two years as farm manager at Oldcastle, Co Meath for Cork dairy farmer Michael Murphy over 17 years ago. The young Barrett boys enrolled at St Fiach’s National School in Ballinacree, where nine-year-old Kane and eight-year-old Beauden took to GAA impressively, as well as with the St Brigid’s club.

Meanwhile Dad Smiley played with Buccaneers Rugby club, Athlone. Imagine if some of those young Barrett’s were togging out in a green shirt.

Watch: The Kearney brothers, coming to a bus near you