OPINION: The NPC Division Two selection which awaits Ireland in their tour opener on Saturday week are already in camp and will have two preparatory games before having a go at the tourists.
The All Blacks squad for a game the same day against Italy and the two Tests against Ireland will be announced today. And whereas they are fresh and buoyed by the Canterbury Crusaders' Super 12 final win over the ACT Brumbies on Saturday, a chunk of the Irish squad have to pick themselves up at the end of a nine or 10-month season from possibly the biggest disappointment of their sporting lives.
The ripple effect of Munster's second Heineken Cup final defeat in Cardiff on Saturday will be immediate as well as long-term, for this was surely the worst possible scenario for Eddie O'Sullivan, not to mention Declan Kidney and Niall O'Donovan. They wouldn't be human if they weren't weary of it all by now.
After an utterly anti-climactic journey, mentally and emotionally draining as well as energy sapping, most of the Irish squad now need the impending trip to New Zealand for a three-match, two Test tour like a proverbial hole in the head.
Remembering the hangover on the tour to the Americas two summers ago, it will be a monumental task for O'Sullivan, the Irish management and Keith Wood to lift everyone. Munster also backboned that tour opener in Buenos Aires as well as the finale against Canada, and it was no coincidence the best performance came without them in the record 83-3 win over the USA. Warren Gatland since admitted he made a mistake in not resting most of the Munster players against Canada as well.
That tour was simply a tour too far, in every sense. The odds are this will be as well. A tour to face the mighty All Blacks in New Zealand, the spiritual home of the game perhaps, should be looked on as one of the chances of a lifetime.
Instead it is being spoken of with dread. It is surely a similar story in Wales and England, who must view their tours to South Africa and Argentina in a similar light.
The lead should be coming from the International Board, who instead insist countries play the same number of away Tests as home Tests, and then try to foist a vacuous Northern Hemisphere v Southern Hemisphere international on an over-bloated Test market. In this year of all years, between a Lions tour and a World Cup year, the arguments for a free summer are compelling.
At least Leicester could rotate their squad, and England, with their greater pool of players, can afford to rest those still suffering from post-Lions fatigue. But the Irish squad is effectively drawn from two or three teams. Ireland can ill afford to take on the All Blacks on successive Saturdays in Dunedin and Auckland with an under-strength team.
Their mood has to be affected by Saturday's outcome. Had Munster won, they'd have travelled to New Zealand tired but buoyant. As one of their contingent said on the night of the defeat to Argentina in Buenos Aires two years ago, admittedly only a week after losing to Northampton, "sure it would take you a lifetime to get over a defeat like that".
Nine of this Munster squad, not to mention Kidney and O'Donovan, had barely time to say hello to friends and loved ones before reassembling in Dublin today for a week's training in readiness for Saturday's departure.
They spend too much time travelling and in hotels. They must have spent half the season in hotels. Scarcely a month after returning from New Zealand they have to go to Poland for over a fortnight of pre-season training, facilitated by an ice chamber. They go back to Poland for a week in December.
All this on top of the customary demands from the provinces (who could be the real losers next season) in terms of the Heineken Cup and the Celtic League, which the international players are likely to miss anyhow. But they have 16 internationals between now and the World Cup. It's too much. They're being flogged.
Another month of travelling and living in hotels. Yippee they cry. Or maybe they just cry.
