Chris Henry’s illness and Jared Payne’s foot injury continue to cause the Irish management team and medical staff some concern, with the prognosis on both players and thus their availability for the remainder of the Guinness Series still decidedly unclear.
Irish team manager Mick Kearney said that "Chris Henry is feeling well" today, before adding: "However his condition is continuing to be monitored following an episode on Saturday morning when he wasn't well and experienced weakness. The working diagnosis is a severe migraine."
Kearney added that his Ulster team-mate Payne “had preliminary scans post-game that showed a sprain on his foot”.
“He will undergo further scans and a consultant review tomorrow and will rehab with the national medical team. Jared is going to have further medical assessment and scans tomorrow, we’ll know about that then. There’s no detailed prognosis yet on his chances for Georgia and Australia.
“Looking back over the video it was quite an innocuous incident where he tackled a player. He did try to run it off, but it tightened up and was quite sore. He’s still quite sore but we’ll probably know more tomorrow. The swelling will have gone down, he’ll have another scan and further medical assessment.”
The third Ulster man on the Irish casualty list Rory Best, who was ruled out of the South African game with a calf strain, has resumed light running according to Kearney. "Rory Best's rehab is progressing well and he has commenced light running, he will continue his rehab with the national medical team and the prognosis is positive."
That said, the Irish manager cast doubt on Best coming into the equation this week. “Difficult to say. He has started running, which is a big positive, and he did that yesterday and he’ll probably do a bit more today.
“Really, we’ll have a much better indication later in the week whether he’ll be available for this coming Sunday. Probably a more realistic target might be Australia. But he hasn’t been ruled out of this Sunday, but it might just be more prudent to give him a few more days to recover just to make sure he’s right.”
It seems highly improbable therefore that any of the trio will feature this weekend, with significant doubt still hanging over the availability of Henry and Payne for the Australian game on Saturday week. Everyone else was expected to train on Tuesday afternoon, while four players have been added to the squad, namely Andrew Conway, Tadhg Furlong, Darren Cave and Robin Copeland.
Commenting on his new three-year contract with the IRFU to stay with Leinster, Rob Kearney said: "It was always a case of when, not if. It was actually done three or four weeks ago, wasn't actually signed until last week and they felt that the best time to announce it was this week. It was all done very quickly and was very stress free."
Asked if this showed the IRFU have learned lessons from the past, notably losing Johnny Sexton to Racing Metro, Kearney said: "It probably demonstrates that they have. It's great security going into the November internationals knowing that your future's safe, never mind going into the Six Nations like it was a couple of years ago."
Nor had he any desire to go abroad. “Not for the next three or four years, I’ve no reason to go abroad. I’m very happy here being part of two good teams, playing with all of my friends and we’re still competing in competitions. There was never any need for me to consider moving anywhere else.”
Reflecting on the win over South Africa and the continuing progress of this team, the Irish fullback said that tactical flexibility was critical. “We have an ability as players to play lots of different types of game plans and then we’ve got a fantastic coaching squad who are able to manipulate a specific type of game plan based on the opposition we’re playing. South Africa and Georgia, as you can imagine, are two very different teams so I would imagine our game plan will vary a little bit.”
Under Joe Schmidt, this Irish team is also trying to change its mindset, according to Kearney. "He's trying to make us winners every single week and to improve our performance on a weekly basis, and he's trying to make us that 80 minute-plus team which is something that probably we haven't been a lot over the last, maybe, decade or so.
“I think us as players as well, we’ve learned a huge amount from recent games and that New Zealand game in particular, and we have learned from our mistakes in Paris as well.
“I think it was a great insight of a team who had learned from that mistake against New Zealand and the weekend gives us that confidence to really take on southern hemisphere teams, and that’s huge for our mental ability going into a game knowing that we can genuinely compete and beat the best teams in the world.”
