Northern Edition

Select Edition

Northern Northern
Southern Southern
Global Global
New Zealand New Zealand
France France

Gibson-Park and Healy withdrawn from Ireland line-up

Conor Murray should become a Test centurion against the Springboks (Photo By Brendan Moran/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

Ireland scrum-half Jamison Gibson-Park has been ruled out with a hamstring injury with Ireland forced into making a late change for their Guinness Six Nations Championship clash against Wales in Cardiff.

ADVERTISEMENT

Conor Murray is now due to start and win his 101st cap, with Craig Casey coming onto the bench. Ireland were already without Tadhg Furlong and Robbie Henshaw.

Cian Healy was also a late withdrawal, with Munster’s David Kilcoyne called up to the bench as loosehead cover.

Video Spacer

Video Spacer

Meanwhile head coach Andy Farrell says Ireland’s preparation for a shot at Guinness Six Nations glory is the best he has ever seen as his side bid to begin the championship with a bang.

With plenty of expectation on his players and a World Cup on the horizon, head coach Farrell believes solid foundations have been laid.

Yet the Englishman insists he is not looking beyond Warren Gatland’s men and a tricky Cardiff opener at the start of a monumental year.

“We judge ourselves on our preparation and our preparation has been top-drawer,” he said.

“It’s been as good as I’ve seen it in regards to getting ready for any type of competition.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Hopefully that continues and it can translate into a performance. It doesn’t really get any tougher than Wales first up.”

Asked what message he had given his players going into 2023, he replied: “Honestly? Just Wales. Just Wales. It’s a tough old game, you know?

“We’d love to start this tournament off with a bang but we know how difficult that is. We’ve full concentration on this game.”

Ireland won nine of 11 fixtures in 2022, including clinching a Triple Crown, registering a historic series success in New Zealand and toppling world champions South Africa.

ADVERTISEMENT

additional reporting PA

ADVERTISEMENT

LIVE

{{item.title}}

Trending on RugbyPass

Comments

0 Comments
Be the first to comment...

Join free and tell us what you really think!

Sign up for free
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest Features

Comments on RugbyPass

J
JW 6 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

146 Go to comments
LONG READ
LONG READ Will Bristol's daredevil 'Bears-ball' deliver the trophy they crave? Will Bristol's daredevil 'Bears-ball' deliver the trophy they crave?
Search