Ireland were dismantled by England in the 2^nd World Cup warm up fixture for Joe Schmidt’s men after a 29-10 win over Italy in Dublin 2 weeks ago. This was meant to be the game where Ireland stepped up preparations after the tough weeks of pre season in Carton House and at the National Sport Campus in Abbotstown.

They certainly didn’t seem to get the memo as they were ruthlessly beaten by an England side that seems hell bent on winning the big prize in Japan in early November. Yes Ireland may be slightly behind England in match terms but they have done similar amounts of training over the past few months.

Being beaten yesterday was one thing but to be dismantled and not really come up with any real answers even when the game was lost will be the most alarming problem for the playing squad and the coaches as they return to base to review and try and pick up the pieces after such an abject showing.

From an England perspective I go back almost 4 years to when Eddie Jones took on the England job and his stated aim was to win the World Cup in Japan he also said he would use the first 2 years to work on forward play and getting his forwards comfortable on the ball that stated aim has been achieved along with his hope to do similar with the backs over the final 2 years of his 4 year deal. This whole approach was scoffed at in some quarters but does now seem to be coming to fruition just as the World Cup comes into sharp focus.

Jones has Manu Tuilagi playing well after so many periods on the sidelines his decision not to put him on the scrap heap is reaping the reward of patience. With other men like Henry Slade and Jonathan Joseph also in good form at the minute in time things do seem to be rosy in the garden for all in the England camp. He got his wish of having Sam Underhill and Tom Curry on the field of play and this combination worked a treat and nullified the trio of O Mahony, Van Der Flier and Stander.

Only 4 members of the Ireland extended squad has yet to see game time and will see game time in two games vs Wales in Cardiff and Dublin. After the defeat yesterday this squad will be shaken and will be looking for reasons for the manner of the defeat, it wasn’t just a defeat it was like a lamb being led to slaughter and can’t be good for confidence or put down as “one of those things”.

We are less than a month out from the opening World Cup game vs Scotland and time is running out for this squad to build up the confidence that is surely waning. The positive attitude that Joe Schmidt usually can muster after a loss was missing in the aftermath yesterday and he will know it is down to his players and coaches to make sure his final few weeks as Ireland head coach don’t end in a whimper.

As I have said several times when writing about this squad time again to circle the wagons and go again but I will honestly say the manner of the loss yesterday has me worried for the first time in Joe Schmidt’s 6 year tenure. I hope I am proven wrong but the signs really don’t look good 4 weeks out.

I will select the side I feel will try and restore lost confidence

15 Andrew Conway

14 Keith Earls

13 Gary Ringrose

12 Chris Farrell

11 Will Addison

10 Ross Byrne

9 Conor Murray

8 Jack Conan

7 Josh Van Der Flier

6 Peter O Mahony

5 James Ryan

4 Tadgh Beirne

3 John Ryan

2 Niall Scannell

1 Dave Kilcoyne

–

16 Sean Cronin

17 Jack Mc Grath

18 Tadgh Furlong

19 Devin Toner

20 Rhys Ruddock

21 Kieran Marmion

22 Jonathan Sexton

23 Robbie Henshaw

Earlier today Ireland kicked off there playing preparations after 6 weeks of pre season training that took in numerous venues like Galway, Limerick and also the new training facility in Abbotstown where the IRFU, FAI and GAA have dedicated training facilities. Looking at those weeks Ireland have put in some hard graft in preparation for the upcoming World Cup.

Italy came to town with a much changed side from last season’s 6 Nations where Conor O Shea wanted a performance and for some of his charges to step up to the mark and put a hand up for team selection heading into the 2019 campaign.

For Joe Schmidt it was a opportunity to test out some new players like Jean Kleyn, Mike Haley and give guys like Dave Kearney a chance to stake a claim for selection for Japan 2019.  The game itself was scrappy from the 1^st minute to 80 minutes and will more than likely be just remembered for the injury to Joey Carbery that saw him leave the field after 49 minutes to be replaced by Jack Carty. Here’s hoping the news of Carbery’s injury will be positive when Ireland gather again in the middle of next week.

Although the performance won’t have any sides quaking it still threw up a number of decent performances from Andrew Conway, Chris Farrell and Joey Carbery before injury forced him to depart to let Jack Carty take his chance for the final 30 minutes. Carty for his part played well in the final 30 minutes even if the game dropped in intensity in that final quarter, he still found touch with two wonderful kicks to push Ireland up field.

Other stand out performers were Tadgh Beirne, Kieran Marmion and Devin Toner who rolled his ankle but should be in contention to face England in two weeks time. The work will need to be put in to see can the level of performance improve before they face England in match two of four.

Ireland will know the performance levels will need to get much better and the supposed heavy hitters will need to hit the ground running when they get back in harness whether that is against England or the two fixtures against Wales home and away. It’s two weeks until England in Twickenham and let’s hope the news on Joey Carbery will be positive later in the week.

Here is the side I would select to face England :

15 Will Addison

14 Keith Earls

13 Chris Farrell

12 Robbie Henshaw

11 Andrew Conway

10 Ross Byrne

9 John Cooney

8 Jack Conan

7 Peter O Mahony

6 CJ Stander

5 Iain Henderson

4 Tadgh Beirne

3 John Ryan

2 Sean Cronin

1 Dave Kilcoyne

–

16 Niall Scannell

17 Jack Mc Grath

18 Andrew Porter

19 Devin Toner

20 Jordi Murphy

21 Kieran Marmion

22 Jonathan Sexton

23 Jacob Stockdale

15 Andrew Conway

14 Jordan Larmour

13 Chris Farrell

12 Robbie Henshaw

11 Will Addison

10 Joey Carbery

9 John Cooney

8 Jack Conan

7 Tommy O Donnell

6 Tadgh Beirne

5 Iain Henderson

4 Jean Kleyn

3 John Ryan

2 Rob Herring

1 Dave Kilcoyne

–

16 Sean Cronin

17 Cian Healy

18 Finlay Bealham

19 Devin Toner

20 CJ Stander

21 Luke Mc Grath

22 Ross Byrne

23 Mike Haley

Here is the team I would select to take Italy on Saturday at 2pm in the opening game of the World Cup warm up fixtures….. Ireland will then face England home and away while taking on Wales in Dublin on September 7^th.

The IRFU have today given a much needed boost to the women’s game after they revealed a plan to try and help Ireland gain qualification for the 2021 World Cup. They will have two Internationals in November 2019. They will have a National camp in August. This will hopefully set them up for the games that will come in November and the 6 Nations of 2020.

It is good to see the IRFU put this together and Adam Griggs and his coaching staff can now put a plan together as they will have much needed time together in August and again in November. This plan is 2 years in the making after a poor showing at a home World Cup alongside some poor displays in the last two 6 Nations under Adam Griggs.

Yes there has been a large turn over in players in the past few seasons with some really experienced players making way for less experienced players but you still have a core group of leaders like Claire Molloy, Lindsey Peat and Ciara Griffin. These are the players that will hopefully lead Ireland to the 2021 World Cup.

The games are against Italy and Scotland and an as yet unnamed opponent. Ireland will know that the performances of the past few months just won’t cut it at the very top level. They will have 9 training camps before the serious stuff of qualifying will kick off.

The hope with this plan is that it won’t just be a flash in the pan situation where these games have only been put into the schedule for this season. There has to be room for this set up to continue beyond the qualifying campaign of late 2020. The IRFU have committed to this plan and the appetite is there from the players to try and get to the 2021 World Cup.

With the positive impact that we have seen from the recent Women’s World Cup in France, let’s hope that the appetite for women’s sport will continue into the future. I am not trying to compare like for like because rugby still has some distance to go to gain the same recognition as Football.

The coverage of women’s sport is beginning to gain real momentum and will only get stronger as the years roll on. I have been a strong supporter of the Irish women’s rugby side since 2013 and I can now count a number of that grand slam winning side as friends. Let’s hope that this 13 month plan for World Cup qualification is a permanent fixture. Roll on the camp in August and the pair of games set for November….

As the 2019 World Cup roars into view for all 20 competing nations who are beginning to sharpen up their preparations with Fiji beating the Maori All Blacks in Suva last night other sides like the Rugby Championship sides will commence a shortened version of the annual championship with all teams playing only 3 rounds before the 2019 World Cup in Japan.

Ireland for their part are in camp in Limerick from Monday based in Munster’s high performance centre in UL. They will hold an open training session in Thomond Park next Friday. They have just spent the last few days in Galway while also holding two earlier camps in Carton House. They will face Italy, England and Wales in World Cup warm up games before departing for Japan to begin against Scotland on September 22^nd.

Jonathan Sexton sustained a thumb last week injury that will see him on reduced training for between 4 and 6 weeks. This will give men like Joey Carbery, Jack Carty and Ross Byrne the chance to shine to push their selection prospects. It will be very interesting to see what way Schmidt will break his 45 man squad down to 31 where he will cut 14 names in the coming weeks but many will get the chance to shine against Italy on August 10^th in Dublin.

This for most will be there one real shot unless Schmidt decides to delay naming his 31 man squad until closer to departure time. The addition of Will Addison after only a few weeks of pre season with Ulster says that Addison is in a strong position to travel like Conor Murray in 2011 and Tadgh Furlong in 2015.

The breakdown of the squad may only see two out halves named with three scrum halves or flip that on its head where Joey Carbery could easily cover the 9 shirt if Schmidt and his coaches went slightly differently in terms of selection. The time is now for all 45 players because all 45 will feel they can break into the final 31.

Next week in another chance for the whole squad to show what they can do in the surroundings of UL and Thomond Park. It will be an interesting few days in Limerick. They is only 69 days between now and the kick off of the World Cup for Ireland in Japan and we can finally see can Ireland break the quarter final hoodoo… 69 days and counting…..

This week, we have confirmation of two significant coaching appointments with La Rochelle confirming Ronan O Gara to their Head Coach role under Jonno Gibbs who is there Director of Rugby.

He will return to France after 2 seasons in New Zealand as part of the Crusaders coaching ticket alongside Scott Robinson that won a Super Rugby title in 2018 and are still on course to secure another title in 2019 but only time will tell about the destination of the 2019 Super Rugby campaign.

He was part of the Racing 92 coaching team under Lauren Travers and Lauren Labit for 4 years before making his move to New Zealand to continue his apprenticeship in coaching. He has been very clear that although he has been linked to any job that has come up in Ireland since retiring he will return to Ireland to coach one day soon but for now he will continue to ply his trade elsewhere.

This will be his first head coach role as he has only be an assistant since he started out including a short stint with Ireland under Joe Schmidt in 2017 when Ireland went to the USA and Japan for three Tests during the 2017 Lions Tour of New Zealand.

You can be sure he was in the frame to take up a role with Munster when Felix Jones left his position as backs coach but he will instead take up a role in the Top 14 with La Rochelle.

Moving to Munster who yesterday announced the arrival of Stephen Larkham as a senior coach to complete the Munster coaching team for the 2019/2020 season. There is a rumour that another coach may be added to the coaching team before the new season begins.

Larkham will join Munster in August just in time for the pre season matches but you can be sure that he will have certain plans in place and will have forwarded on stuff he will want done before he arrives in the scene to try and hit the ground running.

The hope now will be that the arrival of Graham Rowntree and Stephen Larkham may be the missing pieces of the puzzle after so many near misses in the Pro 14 and Champions Cup in the last few years.

The Munster squad will only have one new name in Nick Mc Carthy and a few players stepping up from the academy like Shane Daly, Gavin Coombes and Sean O Connor who has already played many times for Munster and they will step up to the senior squad and will feel that with the new coaching set up that they will get chances to show what they can do in the new year where you will be short of some Irish Internationals during the World Cup period.

Munster have now put a coaching team in place that they will hope will be there for the long term after Larkham signed on until 2022 and Rowntree did likewise recently. The back room staff is in place now it is over the players to go out and thrive because the focus will be on from week 1. The heavy investment will hopefully reap rewards from early next year. All the clubs who will play in Europe next year will find out who they will face in Europe next week…..

Ireland Under 20s began their World Championship campaign in Argentina with an impressive 42-26 win over England. Like the opening game of the Six Nations it was an extremely open affair with England racing into a 10-0 lead with scores from Ollie Sleightholme with Manu Vunipola adding a conversions and a penalty. Then Ireland found a rapid response with David Mc Cann getting over for the first of his two tries, Jake Flannery added the extra 2 to bring the contest close to 10-7.

England were full of very familiar names like Vunipola , Manu is a 1^st cousin of the senior Internationals Billy and Mako , you had Tom De Glanville whose father Phil played for England and won a Heineken Cup with Bath in 1998. This group is not the strongest group that England has sent to the Under 20 World Cup in recent times but they will look to bounce back against Italy on match day 2.

Back to the game, England will look back on their indispline where they had two players sent to the sin bin and had replacement hooker Alfie Barbery red carded for a tip tackle on John Hodnett which led to the number 7 having to go off for a head injury assessment.

They will know that they had to play 35 minutes of the games with only 14 players on the field after the two yellow cards and the red card late on. They will also need to sharpen up at the break down where starting scrum half Ollie Fox was caught at the base of a number of rucks and his slow presentation directly affected two of Ireland’s tries where inside centre Stewart Moore used his knowledge of the laws at ruck time to snipe in and score a clever try.

Ireland will need to tighten up in defence because just thinking they will out score teams at will won’t sustain as we go on in this Championship. They play a very open style that also includes some elements that the senior men’s team also do well like the pick and go and also some line out drills that the senior team use. It has been great to see the linkup between the senior men’s team and the 20s that has seen a number of training sessions take place involving both squads.

Ireland went to this Championship shorn of guys like Scott Penny, Harry Byrne and captain David Hawkshaw who were all ruled out of the campaign for varying reasons over the past few months. But Ireland can still call on live wire scrum half Craig Casey who has recently signed a development deal with his home province Munster, others like John Hodnett, Dylan Tierney-Martin, Charlie Ryan and Ryan Baird have plenty of experience at this level.

They will know after a successful opening day that if they can beat Australia at 2pm this Saturday live on Eir Sport that they will be well on the way to qualifying for the play off section of this Championship. They have started this campaign is good fashion and will be keen to continue the good form on Saturday afternoon.