Pack down for long hard rugby road ahead

SO, how was your summer?

That may strike most of us as a tad premature. After all, we’ve yet to bridge July, there hasn’t been a provincial hurling or football final yet played and the annual delights of Wimbledon and the British Open and the likes have yet to smother us in their welcoming embrace and play havoc with our work ethic.

For 45 of our best rugby players, though, that will be the type of question they ask of each other as they assemble in their Carton House base this Sunday evening, because the work that will take 31 of them through to the 2015 Rugby World Cup across the water in England and Wales will get underway the very next day.