AFTER WHAT WILL have felt like a long wait for Andy Farrell’s squad, it’s finally gameweek as this Saturday, Italy come to Dublin for Ireland’s first World Cup warm-up fixture.
With further warm-up games against England and Samoa in the diary across the month, this weekend represents a big step in Farrell’s preparations as he prepares to cut a 42-man group down to just 33 players. Many will feel they need a couple of big performances to nail down a place on the plane and Ireland forwards coach Paul O’Connell has revealed that he expects all available players to get a run out at some stage over the next month.
Of course, the one player who won’t feature this month is captain Johnny Sexton, as he serves a three-match ban following his behaviour after the Champions Cup final in May.
Naturally, there is some concern that the ban could leave Ireland’s 38-year-old out-half a little rusty heading into the tournament, but O’Connell is confident Sexton will hit the ground running in France, pointing to his track record when returning from injury.
“It’s a big strength of his because he’s had to do it so often. He is very good at being able to come back from injury and hit the ground running,” O’Connell said.
“Out-half, you need to be fit but it’s maybe not the work-rate position that a back three or maybe even some of the forwards is.
You can come in and hit the ground running pretty well and he’s been really good at that. Whenever he’s come back from injuries, he rarely needs a lot of games to get back up and running. It’s a real strength of his.
“He’s trained since the start of pre-season pretty much, he hasn’t missed a training session and the way we’ve trained, a lot of it has been rugby. For sure, you’re missing a bit of the heavier contact part to that week-to-week. We’ve no choice with that. We have to manage them and keep them injury-free, so that’ll be the final piece of the jigsaw for him.
“I would say coming closer to the end of August there will probably be a bit of heavier contact put it into his work in training. I think the way we train suits the scenario he’s in. I think it’s a strength of his to be able to come back as well having been out.
You meet Johnny on a Monday or a Tuesday and he can talk about any match that was on TV. I don’t know how he gets away with it, but he seems to watch an awful lot of rugby. He thinks a lot about rugby. So I think that kind of helps him hit the ground running when he comes back.
“I’d say it’s a worry for him, you know. He wants to finish playing really, really well, and I’d say he’d love to have a few more games under his belt. But it is what it is. And it’s a silver lining for our squad that it allows some guys to take ownership. It’s not something I’m worried about.”
Those guys in question being Munster’s Jack Crowley, Leinster 10 Ross Byrne and the uncapped Ciarán Frawley, who will all hope to get time in the saddle over the next couple of weeks.
“They haven’t been informed ‘this is how we’re selecting for the next four weeks,’ that’s for sure,” O’Connell continued.
“They’re all playing for places, but Johnny’s selection allows those guys own it a little bit.
“It puts us in a good position heading into the World Cup, because those guys get to accumulate more experience; not just of playing on the big day, but of owning it and running the week; driving some of the detail as well.
Johnny’s suspension is unfortunate for us, but there’s a real good silver lining for us as well.”
O’Connell added that for the rest of the squad, the good news is they should all get some time on the pitch before Farrell makes his final decision on the 33 who will travel to France.
“I would imagine (everyone will play). It depends what throws up now in the next few weeks.
“We start games this weekend, we’ll have a big training week where we get a bit of heat stress in Portugal (next week). It’s a very fast track down there which throws up the challenges. The guys want to train fast and that track down there is excellent for us.
“It’s been a great training week for us when we’ve gone down there during the winter but it is a real fast track and it has thrown up a few little niggles. We’ll to manage those. As Andy said, we’ve the best laid plans but we’re aware we’ll have to be adaptable as well.”
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