Schmidt set to recall Furlong and Henderson
GREGOR TOWNSEND has warned his Scotland players they are facing one of the ‘toughest challenges in world rugby’ as they prepare to face an Ireland team boosted by the return of two Lions on Saturday. Joe Schmidt announces his team at lunchtime today and it is expected to show three changes from the starting 15 against Wales, with Tadhg Furlong and Iain Henderson returning to the side after injury. They will replace Andrew Porter and Devin Toner, while Garry Ringrose should make his first appearance of the championship instead of the injured Chris Farrell. The Irish pack will be bolstered by the return of the two Lions tourists, while the class of Ringrose will be expected to complement the power of Bundee Aki. Jordan Larmour could return to the match-day 23 instead of Fergus McFadden. Even before those changes, Townsend was yesterday predicting a major test for his visiting team. He is giving a first start to Blair Kinghorn, who replaces injured winger Tommy Seymour, and he admitted his team face a daunting task, not least because of their terrible away record in the Six Nations. Since 2000, when Italy were
‘It’s a case of my body getting used to this level’
YOU don’t stay tender long when your business is Test rugby. James Ryan, wunderkind, rubs a right ear well on the way to becoming thickly cauliflowered, after six caps and at just 21 years of age.
His left eye is deeply bloodshot, too, vivid legacies of his first Six Nations.
‘I got it drained. It’s much better than it was,’ he says, rubbing the ear, a fact that might trouble the squeamish.
It is one of the gritty little realities of the rugby forward’s life, but a swollen ear or sore-looking eye have not checked Ryan’s extraordinary progress.
He is the second row who was capped by Joe Schmidt before he had played a senior game for Leinster, but that will not be the enduring achievement of his career. Listening to this big, serious man talk, the impression quickly forms that this is a future Ireland captain speaking. It’s only a question of when it happens, but it would be a surprise if he does not lead Ireland at the 2023 World Cup.
Fitness-permitting is the caveat usually applied when discussing what shape a young career might take, and it is a phrase that might seem particularly apt when discussing Ryan.
His one weakness is seen as a susceptibility to injury, but he admits this frustrates him.
Schmidt did not pick him for the match against Italy, a week after his brilliant Six Nations debut against France, because he had a groin complaint.
It added to the impression of fragility that sounds counterintuitive when discussing a man who is 6f 8ins tall and 17 stone.
Last season would have brought his Leinster breakthrough but for a serious hamstring injury, while his time as an inspirational captain of the national Under 20 teams also featured injury absences.
One of his Leinster coaches, John Fogarty, talked earlier this season about Ryan’s need to change how he entered contact in matches, now that he was playing against hardened, bigger men every week.
‘From our point of view as coaches, we try to manage his contacts and see if we can make little changes to help him stay on the field for longer and be better in every contact,’ said Fogarty last November.
‘It does frustrate me a bit,’ says Ryan, his long frame folded into a chair in the Ireland team hotel this week.
‘Most of the injuries I’ve had this year have been impact injuries. It’s more of a case of my body getting used to this level; they are all niggles. I just have to come to terms with that.’
Coming through a bruising Six Nations debut in Paris showed that he can survive and thrive at the elite level of the game.
This was always expected of him, but even his most ardent supporters would have been taken aback by how comfortable he looked against France and Wales.
The French are nothing like the force of old, but they remain an enormous, aggressive team. They were not, it turns out, the biggest side Ryan has played against so far. ‘Yeah, I think Montpellier were bigger in Europe,’ he says of Leinster’s Champions Cup pool opponents. That was certainly an eye-opener, the first game against them.’
Ryan is a Dubliner whose father, Mark, played for Lansdowne and Leinster. From his mid-teenage years, Ryan the younger was getting attention.
He excelled in schools rugby for St Michael’s in south Dublin, and captained Leinster and Ireland schools’ sides.
Greatness has been predicted as his fate for years, and he has met the expectations so far.
He remains a young man in his early 20s, too, and like his peers he is a student, working towards a degree in history and politics in UCD.
‘I take a reduced workload, three modules when it’s normally six or seven,’ he explains. ‘I love history so when I sit down and study, it is a release, yeah, to get the mind off rugby.’
Modern Irish history is an area of particular interest for him, and leaves him vulnerable to the inevitable clichés about being a history-maker himself.
Winning a Grand Slam at the age of 21 would be exceptional, but this should only be the start.
‘To be honest, that’s way down the line,’ he says when asked about the possibility of captaining his country.
‘I’m just thinking about this week and next week to be honest; well, this week really.’
To declare any larger ambition would go against the safety-first code that instructs all players in all codes nowadays. But he doesn’t need to say it.
It looks destined to happen.