Hands up for World Cup inclusion

Sometimes being given more questions than answers from an exercise can be a good thing.

Certainly if you are Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt, preparing to begin the process of narrowing his squad from 46 to around 37 this week, having a raft of players raise their hand and scream ‘Pick me! Pick me!’ is a lot more preferable than his opposite number Warren Gatland’s position after a lacklustre and often sloppy Wales performance under the Millennium Stadium roof.

Instead of having decisions made easier this week ahead of the first cut, Schmidt’s task in selecting a final 31-man squad for next month’s World Cup has become a lot more difficult after an encouraging opening to the pre-tournament warm-up campaign. Five Test-match tries in Cardiff are not to be sniffed at in any month of the year, nor a dominant set-piece performance and that it was done in front of a capacity crowd of 74,500 underlined that this was no mere warm-up. Nor too the fact that winning this proper Test match, albeit played out between two largely second-string teams, has elevated Ireland to second in the World Rugby rankings.