Ireland will receive a medical report on Robbie Henshaw at 6am (Irish time) but the 26-year-old's participation in this World Cup remains under serious threat.
Irish coach Joe Schmidt refused to speculate on the seriousness of the injury at a press conference on Sunday morning until he has received the results of a scan this afternoon.
"Robbie pulled up with a bit of tightness in his hamstring," said Schmidt. "He has a scan at 2pm (Japan time). That will give us more information.
“When he pulled up he wasn’t accelerating. We’d be hopeful it is not be too bad. It is likely to rule him out of this week? Yeah, you would have to say it is likely, the fact that he did pull up but we’d be hopefully it is not too bad. I don’t want to guess until we get the scan.”
As of yet, Ireland have not called up Will Addison despite the versatile back being pulled from Ulster's preseason match in Glasgow on Saturday.
“No, he is not on his way over,” said Schmidt. “That was precautionary just to make sure that we had fit and able cover should we need a replacement for Robbie.”
This could change in the coming hours.
In a cruel repeat of history, Henshaw also missed the tournament opener against Canada in 2015.
Schmidt denied Henshaw and Bundee Aki were certain to continue the midfield pairing that performed so well against Wales in the final warm-up game but Garry Ringrose is now expected to wear the number 13 against Scotland. However, Chris Farrell remains in contention.
“As much as people wrote it into their reports we have made no decision on who was going to play anywhere for this week. There are obviously people better informed than I am about who was going to play and where! I can assure you we had made no decisions. It is still quite open.
“We will see what happens with Robbie, because if it was just a tightening, it could be cramp, we have travelled a lot. We have tried to be fully re-hydrated, fully recovered but if we do have to leave him out this week we do have good cover.”
The upcoming information vacuum guarantees there will be more to follow on the state of Henshaw’s hamstring.
It currently appears that neither Schmidt nor any other member of the Ireland management will be available for comment in the next 24 hours so they may update the public on Henshaw’s condition via their social channels.
Meanwhile, the 54 year old confirmed that he will continue to live in Dublin after stepping down as national coach after the World Cup.
“We will probably stay in Ireland for some time. We have become pretty settled there. A big motivator for me to get back (to New Zealand) was family and unfortunately we lost our mum recently. On the back of that we’ll take a bit of a breath and make some decisions beyond that.”
