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Ireland have 'been living in this game since the end of the autumn'
By PA
Forwards coach Paul O’Connell said it is “business as usual” for Ireland in the absence of Andy Farrell as he reported a clean bill of health ahead of their Guinness Six Nations title defence.
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The back-to-back reigning champions, who are at a warm-weather training camp in Portugal, launch their championship campaign next Saturday when England visit the Aviva Stadium in Dublin.
With head coach Farrell having temporarily stepped aside to focus on leading this summer’s British and Irish Lions tour of Australia, defence coach Simon Easterby has taken over on an interim basis.
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Ireland have 32 of their 36-man squad in Quinta do Lago, in addition to development players Hugh Cooney, Cathal Forde, James McNabney and Ben Murphy.
Connacht scrum-half Caolin Blade and Leinster trio James Lowe, Dan Sheehan and Jack Boyle are set to join the group following this weekend’s United Rugby Championship fixtures.
“Everyone’s been training. No one is sitting out any training, which is good,” O’Connell told reporters on Friday.
“It has been business as usual really. 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.
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“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.”
Ireland are bidding to become the first country to win the Six Nations three years in a row and are regarded as marginal title favourites by bookmakers.
Yet performances during the autumn, which brought wins over Argentina, Fiji and Australia following an opening defeat to New Zealand, were inconsistent.
O’Connell said players are being eased back into camp before beginning to focus on specific areas of improvement.
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“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,” he said.
“For us (as coaches), 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 inter-provincial games.
“Sometimes you want to come in as a coach and start working really hard straight away so we’ve got 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.”
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