Ireland sweat over Flannery's fitness

RUGBY:Jerry Flannery has emerged as a major concern for the Irish squad despite being named on the bench for Saturday's pivotal World Cup group C clash with Tri Nations champions Australia.

The Munster and Irish hooker, who has missed much of the previous season and a half with persistent calf problems, suffered a fresh injury to his calf in training yesterday morning.

“Jerry Flannery did pull up with a bit of a calf strain this morning,” revealed Declan Kidney on announcing the side to play Australia at their base on the outskirts of Auckland yesterday at 1.15pm local time (2.15am Irish).

“He’s going for a scan later on. Obviously if he’s okay he’ll take his place on the bench, and if he doesn’t his place will be taken by Sean Cronin. We’ll give you an update there was soon as we know anything but I wouldn’t anticipate that we’ll know anything until tonight at the very earliest or tomorrow morning.”

Given Flannery’s heartbreaking misfortune with injuries, it is a very worrying development.

The selection sees Rob Kearney, Eoin Reddan, Cian Healy and Sean O’Brien all recalled to the team, instead of Geordan Murphy, Conor Murray, Tom Court and Shane Jennings, with Murray and Court accommodated on the bench.

The starting XV is the same in all bar two positions from the team which started the stand-out Irish performance of the last year or more, namely the 24-8 win over England last March. It is also the first time since that day that the Leinster half-back pairing of Reddan and Jonathan Sexton have been permed together from the start, although it was the retention of Sexton over Ronan O’Gara which Kidney was initially asked about.

“The ten slot is like a number of other slots, the difficulty is who to pick and who to leave out,” said the Irish coach. “Ronan has been training very well, so has Jonathan, and I just feel the mix is right with the lads that we have playing there.”

Kidney conceded that Ireland will have to lift their performance on recent outings. “When you’re playing the Tri Nations champions, they’re the sort of games that you really look forward to. The trick is not to get too anxious about it, to go out and play your normal game, and that’s what we’re working hard at doing, and finish off more of the chances that we created last Sunday. As the tournament goes on I’m sure we’ll take more and more of those.”

“It’s a very good Australian team,” admitted Brian O’Driscoll. “Any team that wins the Tri Nations has to be reckoned with. As a team you back yourself on the achievements on the medals you have in your pocket, but we have to have big belief in our own quality and we feel that on our day we’re capable of beating anyone and we just have to make sure that our performance is jup with our best in recent years.”

Talking about how “absolutely huge” this game was for him personally knowing that it will be his last World Cup and that his work of the last 10 or 12 weeks culminates in games like this. “It’s a little bit of now or never, and hopefully it’s now.”

Ireland (v Australia):

R Kearney Lansdowne/Leinster); T Bowe (Ospreys), B O’Driscoll (UCD/Leinster, capt), G D’Arcy (Lansdowne/Leinster), K Earls (Young Munster/Munster); J Sexton (St Mary’s College/Leinster), E Reddan (Lansdowne/Leinster); C Healy (Clontarf/Leinster), R Best (Banbridge/Ulster), M Ross (Clontarf/Leinster), D O’Callaghan (Cork Constitution/Munster), P O’Connell (Young Munster/Munster), S Ferris (Dungannon/Ulster), S O’Brien (Clontarf/Leinster), J Heaslip (Naas/Leinster).

Replacements 

J Flannery (Shannon/Munster), T Court (Malone/Ulster), D Ryan (Shannon/Munster), D Leamy (Cork Constitution/Munster), C Murray (Garryowen/Munster), R O’Gara (Cork Constitution/Munster), A Trimble (Ballymena/Ulster).