Coach grateful for reduced casualty list

Ireland will go into their final Six Nations game this weekend feeling fortunate to be carrying such a light casualty load from their high-intensity campaign.

After resting sore hamstrings last weekend, Peter O’Mahony looks set to return to the back row for Saturday’s potential championship decider with France, while assistant coach Les Kiss yesterday reported prop Cian Healy had jettisoned the protective boot placed on his ankle following an injury in the 46-7 win over Italy and scrum-half Conor Murray had recovered from the stomach bug that required his early exit at Aviva Stadium.

Quite a turn of events from the 40% injury ratio Ireland had to cope with a year ago heading into their last game in Rome. With only Sean O’Brien and Keith Earls of his front-liners ruled out for the entire campaign this time around — while Tommy Bowe and Donnacha Ryan regained fitness during the championship but have not so far featured — Ireland have lost just Luke Marshall and Dan Tuohy to injury in the last four games.

“Everyone is on deck, which is a real plus, a real bonus for us,” Kiss said. “Worlds apart [from last season], yeah. It is interesting. When those things happen you have to deal with what’s in front of you, clichéd I know. But fair play to the medics, Jason [Cowman] our strength and conditioning guy, with the GPS data and all that and managing workloads, all that sort of stuff. We are in a pretty good place, I must say.”

Defence coach Kiss, a lone coaching survivor from Declan Kidney’s backroom last season, said there was no reason other than bad luck for the higher injury rates in 2013, when Ireland finished fourth.

“We investigated it but I don’t think you could track it back to any trend or any sort of issue. A little bit of hard luck here and there and sometimes with these things, when it rains it pours,” he said. “There was nothing specific that we said, ‘we must shift this type of focus in preparation’, or whatever.

“To not have a lot of injuries is nice, we do have a few sitting around there, Seanie O’Brien etc, but I think being in this position is a nice place to be.”