BEST: I’D LOVE TO REMAIN AS IRISH CAPTAIN

RORY BEST has revealed he “would love” to captain Ireland in next month’s autumn internationals.

The 35-year-old Ulster skipper took over Irish captaincy from Paul O’connell at the start of 2016 and led the team to wins over New Zealand, South Africa and Australia last year.

He joked that he might ignore any calls from Ireland coach Joe Schmidt ahead of Thursday’s squad announcement for fear of bad news.

“I haven’t heard anything from Joe,” he revealed. “Maybe I’ll turn the phone on, to airplane mode anyway!

“Captaincy is something I love doing and something I would love to continue to do.”

Ireland kick-off their three-game series against South Africa on November 11 before facing Fiji and Argentina.

Best views it as an opportunity and added: “If we want to make a bit of a statement to say where we are and push on and get the Championship back, these are the games that we have to perform really, really well in. If we do that, we can win all three.”

Best made his first appearance of the season off the bench in Sunday’s crunching European Champions Cup loss to La Rochelle in France (below).

He will be involved again in Saturday night’s home inter-pro against Leinster as he continues to nurse his way back from a hamstring injury.

The hooker said: “I always had my own ideas of time frames and knew not to push it and not to risk it for any setbacks. We’ll see how we get through the weekend.”

Meanwhile, Best described Simon Zebo’s decision to quit Munster for a lucrative move to France as “a big loss”.

And he admitted that it has ruled the talented 27-year-old out of the 2019 World Cup with the IRFU unlikely to select him while he is overseas. Best added: “It is really disappointing but Simon is a great character and he’ll do what’s right for him.

“He is probably in a different situation to most Irish players in that his girlfriend, the mother of his children, is from Spain so he has got ties to the continent.”