Ireland suffered a major injury setback yesterday when Dublin's Ciarβn Whelan badly pulled a hamstring at the team's first training session in Adelaide. The incident occurred towards the end of the evening in St Mary's Park.

Team manager Brian McEniff said that the prognosis was gloomy. "It looked very bad. Ciarβn's to go for a scan tomorrow (today) but I can't see the point of it. From what I could see he won't make it. This is bad news, as we were hoping to use him at centre forward on Friday."

For team captain Anthony Tohill the news completed a day to forget. "We'd a couple of good days after the game but it's back down to earth with a bang today. First there's the Paddy (Clarke) thing and now with Ciarβn it looks as if he's done his hamstring. Without reading too much into it, he looks like he's a big doubt for Friday night.

"That's a massive loss to us, given the way he's performed over the past few years. Hopefully we can get things turned around for Friday."

Whelan, who had largely covered the full-back position in the first Test, isn't the only injury worry for the second Test. Neither Niall Buckley nor Dermot McCabe trained with the team last night. Buckley is suffering from a strained hamstring while McCabe is still recovering from an ankle injury.