Ireland defend plan to play suspended Sexton in unofficial match
Ireland back-rower Jack Conan remains an injury concern ahead of the Rugby World Cup after missing his country’s week-long training camp in Portugal. Andy Farrell’s squad flew to the Algarve on Monday but Conan remained in Dublin to rehabilitate the foot problem he sustained in the first half of Saturday’s 33-17 victory over Italy.
Head coach Farrell talked down the severity of the issue in the immediate aftermath of the match but will not discover the full extent of it until next week. Ireland host England at the Aviva Stadium a week on Saturday, with Farrell scheduled to announce his final 33-man squad for France on Monday, August 28, following a final warm-up fixture against Samoa.
Defence coach Simon Easterby said: “You would have seen after the game that there were a couple of players carrying bumps. The only person that hasn’t travelled with us from the squad is Jack Conan.
"He has stayed behind just to rehab and we hope to get more information on his injury next week. We are still waiting on assessment and we decided that it would probably be best for him to stay back in Dublin.”
Leinster player Conan was pictured with his right foot in a protective boot after departing the field just before half-time against the Azzurri. The 31-year-old last week spoke of having unfinished business at the World Cup after his trip to Japan in 2019 was ruined by a stress fracture in his foot.
Full-back Jimmy O’Brien and scrum-half Craig Casey also sustained injuries at the weekend but have travelled with the rest of the squad. Ireland are preparing to play an unofficial training match against Portugal on Wednesday, which should be beneficial for suspended captain Johnny Sexton.
The 38-year-old fly-half, who has not played since sustaining a groin injury at the end of the Six Nations, cannot return to competitive action until his country’s World Cup opener against Romania on September 9 due to a three-match ban. Easterby insisted that the session “isn’t a full-blown game”.
“It wouldn’t be the first time it happened,” said Easterby. “Often teams collaborate with other teams and get the opportunity to do some set-piece against each other and to run some backline against backline.
“It certainly isn’t a full-blown game. It’s a condition 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 get the opportunity to train against each other for four or five weeks, you often cancel each other out in terms of what you try and do in attack and defence.
“I guess it’s one of those opportunities we had to connect up with the Portuguese to train against them and to challenge ourselves in a way you wouldn’t normally do in a normal training week.
“He [Sexton] will be playing a part in the training session, for sure – as will every other player that is here.”
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Some interesting stats that just proved what my first impression of NZ’s drive to speed up Rugby Union would amount to - fine margins here and there to cut a few seconds off the game and nothing else. To do more there would have to be wholesale changes to the game like doing away with scrums, lineouts and bringing back the ELV’s to have free kicks instead of penalties. Very little chance of it happening but, in the end, Ruby Union would be a 15-man version of Rugby League. There are reasons why Rugby Union is globally more popular that Rugby League and what NZ are also not considering is the unintended consequences of what they want to achieve. This will end up turning Rugby Union into a low value product that will not be acceptable to the paying public. If people really wanted a sped-up version of rugby, then why is Rugby Union globally way more popular than Rugby League? Rugby lovers all over the world are also not stupid and have seen through what NZ are trying to achieve here, selfishly to bring back their glory days of dominance over every other nation and compete with Rugby League that is dominant in Australasia. NH countries just don’t have the cattle, or the fantastic weather needed to play like NZ SR franchises do so good luck to whoever has to try and convince the NH to accept going back to the days of NZ dominance and agreeing to wreck the game in the process. I have serious doubts on the validity of the TV stats presented by GP. All they did was expand the broadcasting base by putting it on free to air, not even any indication of arresting the continued drop in viewership. Match day attendance goes hand in hand with broadcast ratings so if there was an increase in the one you should expect to see it with the other. However, the drop in match day attendance is very evident to the casual highlights package viewer. The only club who looks to be getting solid attendance is the Drua. I am calling it now that NZ’s quest to speed up the game will fail and so will the vote on the 20-minute red card.
Go to commentsIt’s a good, timely wake up call for NZ Rugby (seem to be a few of them lately!) - sort out the bureaucratic nonsense at board level. We can’t expect to stay the number one option without keeping fans/players engaged. We’ve obviously been bleeding players to league for years but can’t let the floodgates open (although I think this headline is hyperbolic as it’s a result of a recent Warriors pathways system where they are tracking things more closely) Understand the need to focus boys on rugby if they’re at a proud rugby school too, don’t think it’s harsh at all re Barakat in Hamilton. Reward the committed players with squad positions. An elite 1st XV system in NZ has done more for league than they even realise, think it’s good to protect our game further.
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