Farrell is raring for the start
ANDY FARRELL insists there are no excuses for Ireland in this year’s championship – despite a Covid-hit preparation for his squad.
Many of Farrell’s key figures have not played as many games as they would have liked coming into the championship due to postponements and cancellations since Christmas.
Leinster, for example, didn’t play for five weeks in a row before hammering Montpellier and Bath in the Champions Cup.
“If you asked me do you want most of the guys fit and raring to go and ready to play compared to playing the last eight games and being injured, we’d rather everyone on board,” said head coach Farrell.
“We went through this in the autumn. Everyone was talking about our lack of game time. Some of the Lions guys had only played 20 minutes or one or two games.
“There’s no excuses, you’ve just got to get on with it and we’ve made sure that we ripped into our training and we’ll get everyone up to speed.
“We’ll be raring to go as a group.” Farrell’s skipper Johnny Sexton is one of those who would have liked more games – his first start since he was injured in Ireland’s November win over the All Blacks came last
Saturday at the Rec.
But Sexton echoes Farrell’s words, pointing to other countries in the same position.
“The good thing for us is that we’re in a very similar position to where we were in November,” he stressed.
“Normally when you come into November you’ve played two European games which are of a higher quality. We didn’t have that and I was a bit worried, but the way we trained allowed us to hit the ground running and have a competitive environment like we do here.
“There’s between 35 and 40 players competing for the same positions and training can be as tough as a game.
“You can look at it two ways and say you’re underdone or say you’re really fresh and raring to go, I think we’re in that bracket.
“We’ve had enough rugby, guys have been training hard, certainly in the environment I’ve been in we’ve been training hard, and we’ll get some hit-outs this week that will prepare
us for next week really well.”