Coach reveals that Irish players made call for

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Best added: “Look, that has all been good and hopefully we’ll get something sorted out in the very near future.”

Meanwhile, Joe Schmidt has ruled Dave Kilcoyne out of the Six Nations opener against France while adding that Sean O’Brien and Garry Ringrose could yet feature in this year’s tournament, which kicks off on Saturday-week.

He expects to have Jacob Stockdale back training in Spain either today or tomorrow.

“Dave won’t make the first match,” he said.

“He may come into contention for the second match, I think. He would be a real outside chance for the first game, but he’d be a potential chance for the second game.”

Ireland have been based in Valencia all week for a warm-weather training camp — a first for the head coach who is in his fifth season in the job.

And he revealed the decision to travel had been the players’ idea.

“Part of it was that the players felt it would be a good idea and I felt it was a good idea as well,” he said.

“We knew this season was going to be particularly tough with two European games, three der- bies, then two more European games, so it’s been seven tough weeks.

“The first thing is to regenerate a bit and then really roll our sleeves up. It means we get into our own little bubble and it also means the conditions we train in are consistent, so we can get a volume of work down.

“In the past, we’ve occasionally had really heavy frosts that have caused the ground to be