Barbarians rugby clash is a chance for Ireland to experiment

Ireland’s World Cup to do list:

Match fitness

With the World Cup starting mid September our front line players will need to get match hard and match fit in the national rather than their provincial jerseys. Ireland have organised a comprehensive pre-World Cup fixture list and we play four quality opponents before the competition starts. We are also fortunate in that our World Cup campaign starts with the easier fixtures (on paper) against Canada, Romania and Italy. Hopefully that means we have seven matches to get us locked and loaded for the key pool clash against the French in Cardiff. Ireland have a date against the Barbarians in Thomond Park in May and I think that tie should be used to have a look at some of fringe players. After that it is all about building momentum and getting players into familiar combinations.