Ireland have reported a clean bill of health as they begin their final preparation for their first game of the Six Nations Championship against England next weekend (February 1st) in Dublin. Speaking from their training base at The Campus in Quinta do Lago, Portugal, coach Paul O’Connell said all in camp are healthy.
“No, everyone’s been training. No one is sitting out any training, which is good,” said O’Connell. There are four players, Jack Boyle, Caolin Blade, Dan Sheehan, who will captain Leinster against the Stormers in Dublin on Saturday, and James Lowe involved in United Rugby Championship matches this week in Ireland and who are expected to arrive in camp over the coming days.
“Yeah, I’d say it has been business as usual really,” added O’Connell. “We’ve a way of doing things before the first game. We know there’s generally 12 days before we play and it’s always a challenge to be ready to play a big international rugby match with only 12 days of preparation. We have a bit of a formula which we stick to, we tweak it a little bit to keep it fresh. But it’s been good.”
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Ireland will not be training with the Portuguese team, which they have done in the past and on Friday had just a light day with full training expected to begin on Saturday.
“I think in the first week you’re just trying to reintroduce our way of doing things and reintroduce our language and get players comfortable with that,” said O’Connell. “For us, we’ve probably been living in this game and that’s the challenge for us. We’ve been living in this game since the end of the autumn internationals, the players have had a busy period of European games, big interprovincial games.
“Sometimes you want to come in as a coach and start working really hard straight away so we’ve to be a little bit aware of where they’re coming from, the language they have in their heads from their provinces, and we have to drip-feed in what we’re doing here. So that’s generally what the first week is for us, it’s getting back to our way of doing things, which very often isn’t too dissimilar to the provinces but there are subtle differences and differences in the language. So, it’s about getting the players comfortable with our way of doing things in the first week.”
Simon Easterby is in charge of the squad of 36 players, including four development players.
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