An Irish squad for the forthcoming November Tests against South Africa, Fiji and Australia will be named this week and the continuing absence of three ever-presents in the series win away to the All Blacks, namely Hugo Keenan, James Lowe and Jamison Gibson-Park, in the Leinster side to play Munster next Saturday must be a concern for Andy Farrell.
None have played a minute this season but Farrell’s one-time boss with England, Stuart Lancaster, appeared to be cautiously optimistic that one, two or all three might yet feature at some points in the November series.
“Yeah, at some point. I think they’re all getting very close. Now they’ve trained in bits and pieces with the squad but they are moving definitely in the right direction.
“It’s going to be up to Andy as to whether he brings them into the squad and whether he runs them out in November or waits for them to train and get robust enough and confident enough in the training to be able to put them in games or wait until after they’ve come back to play for Leinster. But they’re close.”
Lowe and Gibson-Park have calf and hamstring injuries but Keenan will also step up his rehabilitation this week from abdominal and knee injuries.
However, there is less promising news for the unlucky trio of Will Connors, Rónan Kelleher and Harry Byrne. Connors had a procedure for a bicep injury and will be unavailable for up to 12 weeks, while Kelleher and Byrne both suffered hamstring injuries and will be sidelined for up to eight weeks.
“I don’t think Ronan and Harry are a million miles away from getting back training again, whereas Will’s is going to be longer because he had the operation,” said Lancaster.
“You feel for Will in particular because of the injury profile he has had recently and he had worked so hard in the off-season and preseason, and then played so well.
“But he’ll turn it around, probably by Christmas, and then he’s still got all the interprovincial derbies, the European campaign, the Six Nations. He’s still got a long way to go before the end of the season.
“Harry, we just want to make sure we get him robust enough that he can get a string of games together. I think everyone can see his quality but certainly in the last 12 months he has suffered, really, just by not being able to get that run of training and games together.
“Yeah, you feel for him at the moment but he’s still young, he has got youth on his side. That’s the challenge for him, to be able to string those together.”
Jack Conan (eye), James Ryan (knee) and Josh van der Flier (ankle) require further assessment this week after sustaining those knocks in the 10-0 win over Connacht last Friday.
Dave Kearney is expected to return to full training this week while Luke McGrath, Rhys Ruddock and Ryan Baird will continue to follow the Graduated Return to Play Protocols this week and subject to coming through, will be available for selection. Johnny Sexton is also among those expected to return.
At least Caelan Doris and Ciarán Frawley completed successful returns from injury in the 10-0 win over Connacht, when Leinster found a way to the finishing line which was in stark contrast to their 13-try exchange with the Sharks a week previously.
However this merely highlighted, in Lancaster’s view, the rich variety in the URC compared to the Premiership in playing sides from South Africa, Scotland, Wales and Italy as well as the rival provinces.
“I think if you look at it from Andy’s perspective it’s great really,” he ventured.
“I thought Connacht played really well, but that’s what you expect in an interior derby. You expect the team that you see on the video to be completely different to the team you play, and hence the game I’m looking at for Munster really is the Bulls game,” said Lancaster in reference to their restorative and impressive bonus point win over the Bulls at Thomond Park last Saturday.
“That’s the one that’s going really influence my mindset and the physiology of the team leading into this game, because then you can add another 20 per cent on that as well, because that’s the nature of it, isn’t it?”
Munster’s win will, he agreed, make them more dangerous foes.
“Yeah definitely, because the confidence and the belief, you could see it in the team. They were very good defensively. Denis Leamy has come from a couple of years here, he understands how we defend inside out, so you talk about IP, he’s got it all. I sat next to him for two years and talked to him about it.
“Graham (Rowntree) obviously will make them very competitive at set-piece time, and he’ll pride himself on the breakdown and the lineout and the scrum and the maul,” Lancaster added of another of his one-time English assistants.
“And then Mike Prendergast has come in, from Racing ironically, and you can see the influence he’s starting to bring now. It’s a new coaching team but there’s a lot of familiar faces in there that know a lot about the Leinster lads, and they’ve got that mix of these young players coming through, who I don’t know as well but they seem pretty good to me.
“I thought it clicked, definitely, for them at the weekend, and they beat a team that beat us in the semi-final, so you’ve got to give them credit for that and this weekend all bets are off because it’s Munster.”
On foot of Wasps following Worcester into administration yesterday, Lancaster described these developments as “devastating for the game but also for everyone who works in those two organisations, whether that be a player or the physio or a coach and I know a lot of people at both clubs really well.”
He believes this is an opportunity to reset the English game, perhaps on a model more along Irish lines.
“I’ve got lots of thoughts on what they can do but it’s probably not my position at the moment to give them. Now is the time for England club and country to work together now and not against each other. If they do that, they have a chance to build a model that can be successful for sure.”
