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Conversation picked up on camera suggests James Ryan out of World Cup
By Ian Cameron
An on-field camera that passed Ireland second row James Ryan after the final whistle was blown at the Stade de France last night appeared to pick up the forward delivering a grim prognosis for his wrist injury.
Ireland came away comfortable 36-14 win against Scotland in Pool B in the French capital but are now counting the injury costs of what was a feisty affair with the Scots.
Ryan, who started on the bench due to the wrist injury, appeared to aggravate the problem after he came onto the pitch halfway through the second half. He received treatment from the medics, although he played on until the full 80 minutes was up.
Head coach Andy Farrell said after the game: "Obviously we will see how they pull up in the morning but Mack [Hansen] went off with a HIA and felt his calf straight away so we got him off. James Ryan has a bit of a knock on his wrist that we need to assess more, so we will see how he is.
"James Lowe got a bang in the eye, it shut and he couldn't see much, his vision was coming back towards the end of the game, which is good. A few more bangs and bruises that will need to be assessed tomorrow."
However footage of Ryan suggests his Rugby World Cup could be over, with the camera clearly picking up Ryan telling Ireland No.8 Caelan Doris and hooker Ronan Kelleher: 'Think I broke my hand'.
If Ryan has broken his hand then his tournament is almost certainly over. Question marks may be raised as to why Ryan was risked given Ireland had such an able stand-in in the form of British & Irish Lions lock Iain Henderson, with Ryan Baird and Joe McCarthy also available.
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Latest Comments
Well that sux.
Go to commentsLike I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
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