JACK CONAN HAS not travelled to Portugal for Ireland’s warm-weather training camp this week after the backrower sustained a foot injury in Saturday’s World Cup warm-up game against Italy.
The Leinster player is the only member of Andy Farrell’s 42-man squad who has not made the trip to The Campus training facility, with defence coach Simon Easterby stating all 41 players who did travel to the Algarve are fit and available to train.
However Conan has remained in Dublin to rehab his injury. The 31-year-old was forced off near the end of the first half against Italy and was later seen wearing a protective moon boot on his right foot. At the 2019 World Cup, Conan returned home from Japan after injuring his foot ahead of Ireland’s second pool game.
“Obviously you would have seen after the game, there were a couple of players carrying bumps,” Easterby said.
The only person who hasn’t travelled with us from the squad is Jack Conan. He has stayed behind to rehab and we hope to get more information on his injury next week.”
Easterby stopped short of ruling Conan out of the second warm-up game against England on 19 August.
“We’ll find out next week (if he’s available to play England). We’re still waiting on an assessment and we decided it was probably best for him to stay back in Dublin and rehab and then we’ll get a better indication on how he is when we arrive back into camp next week.”
Easterby also confirmed that Johnny Sexton is due to take part in a training game against the Portugal national team tomorrow.
Sexton hasn’t played a competitive game since sustaining a groin injury in the Grand Slam-clinching win against England on 18 March. The out-half was ruled out of Ireland’s three World Cup warm-up matches after being handed a three-match ban for his behaviour following Leinster’s Champions Cup final defeat to La Rochelle in May.
“Yeah, he’ll be playing a part in the training session for sure, as will every other player that’s here actually,” Easterby confirmed.
“Every other player is available to train that’s travelled.
“I guess it wouldn’t be the first time it’s (training game) happened and it won’t be the last time it happens. Often teams collaborate with other teams and get the opportunity to do some set-piece against each other and run backline against backline.
“It certainly isn’t a full-blown game, it’s a conditioned training session which has been a collaboration between the Portuguese coaches and ourselves around trying to create a training session which is slightly different from the norm.
“When you know each other so well and you get the opportunity to train against each other for four or five weeks, you often cancel each other out in terms of what you’re trying to do in attack and defence, so this is one of those opportunities we have to connect up with the Portuguese to train against them and to challenge ourselves in a way that you normally wouldn’t do in a normal training week.”
The 42 is on Instagram! Tap the button below on your phone to follow us!
