Simon Easterby: Players will be chosen on form

Class may be permanent but if you’re looking for a place in Ireland’s World Cup squad this September, you better be backing it up with some good form.

That was the message sent by Irish forwards coach Simon Easterby as the back-to-back Six Nations champions prepare for their first serious audition ahead of the 2015 World Cup campaign against Wales in Cardiff this Saturday.

The clock is ticking ahead of the September 6 deadline for head coach Joe Schmidt to name his 31-man squad for the tournament and with four warm-up games to state their case for inclusion, the 46 Ireland players training at Carton House have been told to seize the moment.

Easterby was providing positive assessments of the progress in rehabilitation being made following recent surgery by Cian Healy (neck) and shoulder victims Sean Cronin, Luke Fitzgerald and Marty Moore, but emphasised there are still places up for grabs in the final selection.

“There are certain positions which you would probably say are locked down, but it’s also a case the World Cup comes around once every four years and you’ve got to be on form,” said Easterby, recalling his experience as a player two World Cups ago in France.

“We saw that in 2007, some of us weren’t on form and selection was sometimes, back then, pre-conditioned. World Cup is about the here and the now, not about what went on a year or even six months ago, it’s about the guys who are in the best form at this current time. That’s what we have to be conscious of - yes, there is going to be an element of the group that will have been involved before, but we’ve also got to pick the right team for now, not for six months or a year’s time.

“This isn’t about development, it’s about going to a World Cup and performing to the best of our ability. There might be guys who miss out and there might be guys who come and you might be surprised by their selection.

“It’s about what’s happening over the next four, five weeks and positively into September and October.”

Schmidt and his coaching staff have had the rare luxury of a five-week lead-in to this series of warm-ups, Test matches all, and although there has been a lot of pre-season conditioning built in to that period, Easterby has been grateful of the chance to have so much training-ground time with his players and believes the squad are in a good place heading into tomorrow’s team announcement for a sold-out Millennium Stadium encounter.

“It’s been a really useful and productive period for us,” the forwards coach said. “We’re looking at guys in training and they’re doing really well, but this week obviously is a Test match and it gives us a great opportunity to draw a line in the sand and see where we are, and hopefully build on that throughout August.

“There are going to be borderline guys, and guys in the same position that might play this weekend that are competing for one spot or two spots.

“So it does give you an opportunity as you build up throughout the four games to see some players who might be not playing in the Six Nations, who might not be frontline players, who might not have the same experience.

“But it’s unbelievably competitive at the moment and there’s been plenty of hard work gone in, and it’s interesting to see the different dynamics in how individuals work off each other and how different combinations have been working in the last couple of weeks in the build-up to this game.

“We’re really happy with where the squad is at the moment and each individual has to have the best opportunity to impress, and that doesn’t mean going off on his own. It’s important that we do that as a group.”