Ireland call an easy decision for Lorcan Dow

Irish rugby was relatively slow to cotton onto the benefits accrued from assimilating players with southern hemisphere backgrounds into the national team, but that process has belatedly taken hold in recent years.

The 38-man squad Joe Schmidt named for the opening two rounds of this year’s Six Nations contains five players born and bred below the equator while another two have been extracted from roots in Britain.

The wonder is that the ratio isn’t inverted.