Uncapped Casey a major injury worry for opener

It's a disparate Irish team, it's an experimental and hence exciting looking team, and by Monday evening in the Woy Woy Oval, or around midday back home, we'll know whether it's a winning team.

The make-up of Ireland's opening gambit on this four-match tour of Oz, which begins against New South Wales Country on Monday, could hardly have been guessed at a month or two ago. As Irish sides go, it's an unusually polyglot mixture, and as expected features five uncapped players.

The quintet in question are the 20-year-old pair of Robert Casey and Brian O'Driscoll, 22-year-old Garryowen scrum-half Tom Tierney, as well as the anti-podeans Matt Mostyn and Mike Mullins.

As of a week or two ago, this team would have been drawn from 15 different clubs. Admittedly, the exact location of some of the transferring members of the squad is, as usual at this time of year, a grey area. Technically, O'Driscoll might now be considered a team-mate of Casey's again at Blackrock, with whom he has signed from UCD, while Mullins might also be considered a teammate of Peter Clohessy's at Young Munster, where the dyed blonde, tattooed, ear-ringed, guitar playing Kiwi centre has retraced his roots by signing for the club of his father's parish. It'll be interesting to see what the cookies make of all that baggage.

Alas, Casey's impending debut for the senior Irish team could be put on hold for the prodigious under-21 lock turned his ankle toward the end of another lengthy session yesterday when attempting to skip over Andy Ward and the tackle bag. Conducted in still and sun-kissed conditions with a dry ball on a green top at the Shore School Playing Fields, this was the only damp squib in the first week so far. The exact nature of his injury won't be known until later today, but Casey himself looked in some pain and the management and medical staff are in some doubt as to his fitness. Though the swelling had gone down by last night, he's rated a 50-50 chance.

Given the demanding nature of the tour's other three games, and the presence of three quality international locks in the squad, it would be a cruel break for the young fellow. The replacements won't be finalised until tomorrow or Sunday, but the indications are that Paddy Johns would come in to partner another new member of the dyed blond brigade, Jeremy Davidson. Rugby must be going soft.

With Dion O'Cuinneagain amongst the big guns held in reserve, the effervescent Keith Wood, whose loss of the captaincy must have hurt even if he had to wear the mantle heavily in the troubled Ashton-Whelan era, is reinstalled as leader and it's hard not to be pleased for him.

After a trying 12 months ever since he was injured in the opening tour match a year ago in Boland, Reggie Corrigan (like Clohessy a minor injury doubt) returns to the fold, as does another forgotten man of the last year, David Corkery.

There are a number of new combinations in the backs. The refreshed and eager David Humprheys returns after his finger operation, while Mostyn's emergence permits Girvan Dempsey a run-out in his original position of full back.

In many respects then, this is an untried and unproven Irish lineup, especially in the backs, but even Donal Lenihan could scarcely conceal his sense of anticipation. "We're all excited about the match given the amount of players we have in the squad for the first time. But for the first game on tour there's going to be a little bit of edginess, and it's a very important game to get the tour off on a right note."

New South Wales Country are something of an unknown quantity to the Irish management, and even the Aussie media corps. Effectively a fringe New South Wales selection, and drawn from this vast state, they only play three or four games a season. Even the little video evidence which the Irish management possesses, namely Scotland's scratchy win over them a year ago, is largely meaningless.

The only two names likely to mean anything to a wider audience are scrum-half Steve Merrick and centre James Grant. Hailed as the heir apparent to Nick Farr-Jones when he won his two caps against the All Blacks in 1995, the gifted ("he's a gun" - ie terrific) if quirkily, independent-minded Merrick decided he didn't fancy it. So, he returned to playing local club rugby and driving a coal truck. Grant is another, more experienced and venerable exWallaby.

They will be up for it however, we are assured, and the cramped, picturesque Woy Woy Oval is expected to host a noisy 5,000 or so crowd.

This game is the standard-bearer for the tour. Defeat will make the month seem a whole lot longer. A win, all the more so with a little elan, will set things up nicely. Ireland are about to go forth boldly, if gingerly.

Ireland: G Dempsey (Terenure College); J Bishop (London Irish), B O'Driscoll (UCD), M Mullins (West Hartlepool), M Mostyn (Begles Bordeaux); D Humphreys (Dungannon), T Tierney (Garryowen); R Corrigan (Lansdowne), K Wood (Harlequins, capt), P Clohessy (Young Munster), R Casey (Blackrock), J Davidson (Castres), D Corkery (Cork Constitution), V Costello (St Mary's College), A Ward (Ballynahinch).

New South Wales Country: J Moreton; E Needham, J Grant, M Alexander, L Job; J Lancaster, S Merrick; D Nowlan, G Koerstz, W Petty, J Nowlan, M Mitchell, J Quinn, J Whittle (capt), S Fava.

After much soul-searching, the Irish number eight Victor Costello has decided to remain with St Mary's despite overtures from his former club Blackrock. "It has been one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make, but ultimately I thought it wouldn't be right to desert St Mary's without giving it at least another year because I've always wanted to work with Brent Pope."