Cian Tracey
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And there's 10 players officially listed.
You've named a couple of them there, Joe, but there's 10 players listed as being unavailable through injury.
And yeah, there's guys in there who have injury doubts over them at the moment.
The likes of Tadhg Furlong, who you mentioned, Finlay Beelham, who isn't going to play against Leinster this weekend.
And I was down in Connacht yesterday and Stuart Lancaster was confused.
sort of saying that he'd be touch and go really kind of paraphrasing for Paris so I think in that regard it's no surprise that Ireland have named four tight heads which they wouldn't normally do Tom O'Toole and Tom Clarkson are both there I would imagine that that is for cover for both Beelum and Furlong Hugo Keenan obviously hasn't played since the Lions tour Jamie Osborne hasn't played since he dislocated his shoulder against Japan
in November so yeah you definitely have a couple of doubts over players but Ireland are heading to Portugal next week I'd imagine that Farrell is confident that if they're named in the squad this week they're going to be fit to go for Paris Yeah Dogbo no surprises and Doken as well
Yeah, I think Edwin Adogbo would probably have been capped in November if he hadn't have picked up the head injury against Leinster in Crowe Park.
If you remember himself and Brian Gleeson, his Munster teammate, were both named to travel to Chicago for the All Blacks game, but he couldn't obviously due to the injury.
And rather than bring him back into the squad, Andy Farrell decided to let him off at Munster for the month.
So I think if he hadn't picked up that injury,
He probably would have been capped maybe against, in that Japan game that I mentioned, that Osborne picked up the injury.
And yeah, I think there's a good chance that Adogbo could force his way into the 23 in Paris and maybe a massive ask of him.
But you look at the impact that he made off the bench, like you mentioned, Joe, against Kass last weekend.
The previous week in Toulon, he was one of Munster's best players.
Now, I think the caveat to Adogbo is he's missed...
two and a half years or something like that two years of rugby due to back to back Achilles injuries and that's why you're seeing his minutes really managed by Munster so it'll be interesting to see how much Farrell looks to use him but if he doesn't get on the bench at least in that Paris game I would fully expect him to make his debut against Italy the following week Nathan Doak is in ahead of Caelan Blade who was the third scrum half in November
I think at this stage Andy Farrell probably knows what he gets from Blade.
Doak is an interesting one, Joe.
He was one of, I think, three players who didn't get capped on the summer tour to Georgia and Portugal last year.