If your favourite player is not here, commiserations because most of Ireland’s brightest and best are.
Andy Farrell and his coaching panel have called up 45 players for what the IRFU has described as a mid season ‘stock-take’.
The 24-hour gathering will take place at the union’s new High Performance Centre in Dublin across December 22 and 23. Farrell has been around the four provinces ‘watching games and having good conversations with players and the provincial coaches’. The new Ireland head coach comments:
“We have limited opportunities across the busy provincial season to bring a broad group like this together but this 24-hour window will allow us to plant a few seeds. It will also give the coaches a better insight into a few players who been performing consistently well for their provinces.
“The next six weeks is the window for players to put their hands up for selection for our first squad which will be named in late January ahead of the 6 Nations.”
The big omissions are Jack Carty, Jordi Murphy, Sean Cronin, Kieran Marmion and Rob Kearney. The exile of Racing 92’s Simon Zebo also continues. Without further ado, the 45 attendees at the mid-season get-together are:
IRELAND CALL-UPS
Connacht:
Bundee Aki, Caolin Blade, Ultan Dillane, Dave Heffernan, Quinn Roux
Leinster:
Ross Byrne, Will Connors, Max Deegan, Caelan Doris, Tadhg Furlong, Jamison Gibson Park, Cian Healy, Robbie Henshaw, Dave Kearney, Ronan Kelleher, Jordan Larmour, Luke McGrath, Andrew Porter, Garry Ringrose, Rhys Ruddock, James Ryan, Jonathan Sexton, Devin Toner, Josh van der Flier
Munster:
Joey Carbery, Andrew Conway, Keith Earls, Chris Farrell, Mike Haley, Dave Kilcoyne, Jean Kleyn, Conor Murray, Peter O’Mahony, Niall Scannell, Rory Scannell, CJ Stander
Ulster:
Will Addison, Billy Burns, John Cooney, Iain Henderson, Rob Herring, Stuart McCloskey, Marty Moore, Tom O’Toole, Jacob Stockdale
Farrell would be expected to make some amendments to that grouping when announcing his first squad. In 2019, Joe Schmidt named a 38-man Guinness Six Nations panel and then cut it down as the tournament progressed.
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Barry Murphy and Andrew Trimble are joined in the House of Rugby studio by Jerry Flannery to look back on all the Champions Cup action, discuss the Sexton to Lyon story and select a Best XV of foreign players.
