Flannery, Kearney looking good, D'Arcy, Ferris . . .

RUGBY:ALTHOUGH THE doubts persist concerning the prospects of Gordon D'Arcy and Stephen Ferris partaking in any of Ireland's World Cup warm-up matches, and making the tournament itself, other longer-term casualties have made good progress.

Indeed, in the case of Jerry Flannery and Rob Kearney, they may even feature in the first of those games against Scotland at Murrayfield on Saturday.

Those two, along with Geordan Murphy, have recovered from calf, knee and ankle operations respectively to return to full contact training, and all three were pronounced “ready to go” by team manager Paul McNaughton at the squad’s Carton House base in Maynooth yesterday.

Flannery has been cruelly plagued by injuries ever since rupturing his shoulder in training with the Lions’ squad for the tour to South Africa two summers ago – when he was assuredly the best hooker in Ireland and Britain – and won the most recent of his 32 caps in the defeat in Paris 18 months ago.

But a sequence of injuries, mostly to his calves, restricted him to just five starts for Munster that season and then, after a fleeting appearance in the pre-tour friendly against the Barbarians, he was limited to just two more abortive comeback games, at Thomond Park last season against Toulon and Ulster, the latter on New Year’s Day.

The Irish squad have been in pre-season with the national or provincial set-ups for the last five or six weeks, depending on when different individuals returned, and Flannery has been training fully for the last two of them, having undergone specialist rehab on a one-to-one basis over the summer.

Given his latest absence of seven months, Flannery’s need for rugby matches is arguably the most acute of the 46 players currently in camp. Next in that category is probably Kearney, who has been sidelined since last November when suffering his knee injury against the All Blacks.

Kearney is believed to be slightly ahead of Murphy, though the management will be keen to see him return to action sooner rather than later after his recovery from the ankle ligament damage and broken bone in a foot he sustained when stretchered off in Leicester’s Premiership win over Northampton last January.

While all of this represented a turn for the better in terms of injuries over the last few weeks, McNaughton admitted: “Now we need to give these guys game-time.”

In addition, McNaughton confirmed Shane Jennings has resumed contact work since recovering from the broken arm sustained in the Magners League final last May. “The plate is out and he has been doing a lot of work,” said the Irish manager.

Brian O’Driscoll (shoulder/neck) “has been doing 80 per cent of the work over the last two weeks; we’re not too concerned about him”.

However, the Irish skipper is unlikely to feature against Scotland or perhaps even the ensuing warm-up game on Saturday week against France in Bordeaux.

The management appear at best moderately hopeful D’Arcy and/or Ferris might come into the reckoning for the last two warm-up Tests at home to France and England.

Although D’Arcy “made a lot of progress last week”, and McNaughton expressed the hope he and Ferris might yet return in time for the latter warm-up games, he admitted they were in a “a race against time”.

D’Arcy “is tight, very, very tight” according to McNaughton. The centre has been running on a weightless treadmill in Kildare rugby club before resuming full weight-bearing running this week, and with this type of injuries “a week can tell us a lot”.

McNaughton maintained there was no frustration on the part of the player or the management that the need for an operation on his ankle (on June 20th) was not detected until after D’Arcy’s summer holidays.

“No. The medics looked at it and with that type of injury they felt they wouldn’t recommend an operation and they’d let it settle down. That’s what their procedure would have been (but) it didn’t settle down and then we needed to get the operation done as quickly as possible.”

While the management’s preference would be for every player to play at least some rugby before the squad is finalised after the third warm-up game at home to France, they would “never say never” with regard to any individual, least of all one imagines, a centre with the CV of the 57-times capped centre.

The increase in warm-up Tests prior to this World Cup compared to four years ago, when the Battle of Bayonne was belatedly added to the Tests against Scotland and Italy, is to make the squad more battle hardened for their arrival in New Zealand at the start of September – the notional plan being to give all members of the squad two and a half to three games.

To that end, McNaughton stressed the provinces will be asked to give some of the 46-man squad game-time in their pre-season friendlies.

The word “Bordeaux” still sends a shiver down Irish spines and another of the lessons learned from four years ago, on foot of discussions with the players on last summer’s tour to New Zealand, is to vary their bases, starting with their build-up in Queenstown.