Eight players in particular will have extra motivation to start the season with a bang.
Joe Schmidt had to make some uncomfortable calls on Sunday afternoon as he trimmed his World Cup squad down to 31.
Some of his most trusted players have not made the cut and Ireland’s head coach said the calls were “emotional”.
Schmidt, however, is a meticulous planner so many of the disappointed players will have been told to stay fit and to start 2015/16 well with their provinces.
Asked if he had a back-up list, Schmidt commented, ‘We do, and we have quite a wide number of players. Some players would be closer to being involved than others.
‘But certainly the back-three with Felix Jones, who has that utter reliability in what’s in his locker. With Andrew Trimble, Felix and Fergus McFadden, so we’ll probably adapt with that [in our backline].’
Michael Bent, as he covers both sides of the front row, will be on the back-up list, as will Jack Conan and Dan Tuohy.
Schmidt praised Kieran Marmion and Isaac Boss but would lean towards the latter if either Conor Murray or Eoin Reddan were injured.
‘I said, last week, that there was a degree of risk, no matter what you do,’ he reasoned.
‘We just feel that it’s something we can manage with the coverage we have got. We feel we’ve got some super [scrum-half] resources here.’
The New Zealander was keen to stress that Ireland will use the injury call-up option. By this, players can appear in games once they are called up 48 hours in advance.
Schmidt also revealed that he first raised the idea of Ian Madigan covering scrum-half last season.
He said, ‘It was in the back of our minds, probably not the forefront, but it was in the back of our minds. I spoke to Ian about it last season, so it’s not suddenly something.
‘Ian’s done some work on it in the off-season, so he’s been quietly preparing himself for that potentially to happen.
‘I’ve got to say, honestly, it’s probably not what we were going to do, but there’s a few players we had discussions with about potentially covering different positions because we knew we couldn’t have total coverage with 31 players.’
As for the final warm-up game against England, Keith Earls will not feature as he is still recovering from the concussion he sustained against Wales, on Saturday.
Cian Healy is ‘cleared to play’ but Schmidt may prefer to keep his powder dry on that one.
‘Cian has acquitted himself well on his first two days, so we thought we’d have a look at how that goes and confirm that on Thursday,’ said Schmidt.
