INTERNATIONAL NEWS:DECLAN KIDNEY has a list of 60 players. Next week the Ireland coach will reveal who will attend a 30-man training camp ahead of the Six Nations. Kidney will also select the 22-man Irish Wolfhounds squad to face Scotland A on January 28th, and the England Saxons on February 4th.
Then comes the Six Nations, before the season gets even more interesting as the 2009 Grand Slammers seek to have their already high-achieving career paths peak at the World Cup in New Zealand next September.
“Obviously there will be a few bangs and knocks, so we will have a panel of about 60 players to choose from,” Kidney explained yesterday. “We’ll have to choose 50 of those in June for an initial World Cup squad, and then 30 of those in August for the tournament.”
One player Kidney doesn’t expect to have available for the start of the Six Nations is Geordan Murphy, after he dislocated his ankle at the weekend. The full extent of the injury should be known later today.
The national squad gathering in Enfield two years ago is cemented in Irish rugby folklore. There were only two hours of rugby, but many inside and outside the camp believe the seeds of the Grand Slam were planted in those few days.
Much has been made of a young Rob Kearney being nudged, by Marcus Horan and Ronan O’Gara, to offer his opinion on Leinster/ Munster relations, but it proved a breakthrough that has benefited the game here since.
Two seasons on and Kidney again mustered as many front-liners as possible for a pre-Six Nations camp over Christmas. Naturally, we asked him about it.
“What you’re trying to do is get a balance between the whole season. If you look at the whole 12 months, we had guys on tour in June and a lot of guys who were off, so they filter into the season then. They missed the pre-season games and the first one or two Magners League games.
“You can’t ask the players to play 40 games in the year, because they’d all be getting injured this time of the year.
“It was probably a (positions) 1-10 gathering, we had quite a few knocks in the 11-15 category so we agreed that it probably wasn’t worth assembling everybody there. We just took a look at the November series, put about 20 hours into it, and at the same time we tried to make sure they were available to appear with their provinces, because it’s important that they get game time.
“Game time was the priority, and make them available to the provinces if they want to select them – but also to plant a few seeds, so it was more a forward orientated session because of who was available.”
It is hoped the shoots of these seeds will be visible next month.
