Crowley is optimistic of positive start to tour

Ireland v Canada:CANADA COACH Kieran Crowley yesterday announced what he feels is the squad's strongest team for Saturday's Test against Ireland in Thomond Park. The visitors have gone through something of a crash course under the New Zealand coach as he endeavours to blend his domestic charges with the Canadian professionals under contract with European clubs.

While he admitted the Irish will be heavily favoured to deliver a win in Limerick, he is optimistic the Canadians can also begin their tour on a positive note.

"These are our best players for this particular game so we are pretty happy where we are at," he said at yesterday's announcement in Limerick.

"It is my first experience with some of these guys - we have eight professionals and five of them play division one in England so I had experience with a couple of them in the Churchill Cup but not with the like of Seán Michael Stephen [a lock with Plymouth Albion] and [Bordeaux Begles lock] Josh Jackson, who plays in France. So it will be interesting to see how we go."

Crowley replaced Ric Suggit as Canada's head coach in March of this year and his appointment was something of a coup for the second tier nation. He won 19 Test caps for New Zealand in a six-year career that included the inaugural World Cup triumph of 1987 and scored five tries. His final Test was in Lansdowne Road, in the 1991 World Cup semi-final defeat to Australia.

Crowley's coaching résumé includes nine years in charge of the Taranaki provincial side and a place as a selector for the All-Blacks during John Mitchell's period in charge. He also guided the All-Black under-19 side to the World Championship last year. However, his decision to accept the Canada offer was a step into the unknown. "Unless you know Canadian rugby, you don't know the challenges," he agreed.

"I certainly didn't. For instance, you jump on a plane on the west coast and nine hours later you are at the furthest point away in St John's. You have players in Victoria playing and you have players in the East playing in summer and the West in winter. So there are challenges in bringing a high performance group together."

The evolution of developing rugby nations is painstaking, particularly given the elite nations are reinventing themselves and the demands of the game with each season. As Crowley sees it, the big disadvantage for Canada - its forbidding geographical scale apart - is that traditionally even the best Canadian players have reached their early teens by the time they start playing the game. The structures for underage are only just in place. The elite players - those selected for the senior squad - are working together at the team camp on Vancouver Island but the chief disadvantage is there is not sufficient funding to allow them live as fully-paid professional players.

"They are not professional players but they act and train like that. It is totally amateur in Canada. And in that respect, I have come and checked on the guys who play division one level and a lot of our guys could play at that level but because they haven't secured contracts, they are back home. But the environment is good. Canada has a carding programme, which means that the government will help out with some funding. We train five days a week and they do everything a professional will do - we do skill development and gym work from 7.30am to noon and then they will go on to their jobs or to school. They don't start playing rugby until 14 or 15 so we are a bit behind in the way that we understand the game."

That alone gives the Irish an inestimable advantage when the teams meet in Thomond Park on Saturday. When Crowley wore the All-Black shirt, beating Ireland was regarded as a straightforward task. Now he faces the more complex business of coaching a team through what is likely to be a series of losses against the Celtic Nations.

"Well, you just need to look at it: we are playing an Irish team with 22 full professionals. We have players of differing levels of experience. If you were a betting man, who would you put your money on? But what I expect from our guys, what I find with Canadians is that they will do anything. You ask them to run through a brick wall and they will do it. As long as we can go out there and put a performance in place that we want to and be able to review the game and say yeah, we did this well, then that is what I am expecting - that and a hard game."

CANADA XV

15 JAMES PRITCHARD

14 CIARÁN HEARN

13 BRYN KEYS

12 RYAN SMITH

11 JUSTIN MENSAH-COKER

10 ANDER MONRO

9 ED FAIRHURST

1 KEVIN TKACHUK

2 PAT RIORDAN (capt)

3 JON THIEL

4 MIKE BURAK

5 JOSH JACKSON

6 SEAN MICHAEL STEPHEN

7 ADAM KLEEBERGER

8 AARON CARPENTER

Replacements: 16: Mike Pletch, 17: Frank Walsh, 18: Tyler Hotson, 19: Jebb Sinclair, 20: Morgan Williams, 21: Matt Evans, 22: Phil Mackenzie.