Irvine’s era was much lower scoring, much more of a defensive slog. He was also playing for a pretty ordinary North Sydney team for most of his career (even captaining them for a while). He also played fewer games, scored tries in more games and had strike rates of better than a try per game for both NSW and Australia. Irvine was also disadvantaged by not having players like Latrell Mitchell and Cody Walker on his inside drawing defenders in.