Joey Carbery pumped for Ireland return, says van Graan

Johann van Graan has backed a “pumped” Joey Carbery to make a speedy return to the Ireland fold and book his place in Joe Schmidt’s 31-man World Cup squad for Japan next month.

Munster fly-half Carbery, 23, injured an ankle in the 50th minute of Ireland’s opening Guinness Summer Series fixture against Italy on August 10 and was forced to undergo a minor surgical procedure making him unlikely to be fit before the World Cup pool opener against Scotland on September 22.

Munster boss van Graan, speaking yesterday as the province introduced senior coach Stephen Larkham to the media at their High Performance Centre in Limerick, said he has every faith Carbery has the right attitude to get him to Japan.

“He was in here in the HPC on Friday, I had a chat with him, he’s going to give himself every chance to be ready,” van Graan said.

“He’s under the guidance of the national team’s medical team and I’m sure they’ll make the best decision for them and for him and whatever decision they make, I’m sure it will be the right one.

He’s really pumped to get there. Obviously getting to a World Cup, at that age and in that form...I think he’s been in brilliant form over the last 12 months, so I think he’s looking forward to it very much. But your body’s got to work with you and these things happen.

“We’ve seen all the Test matches and guys get injured, so he’ll give it every shot to be ready.”

Van Graan reminded Irish supporters that there has been an unwanted precedent for rushing Carbery back into service, referring to his decision to start the fly-half in Munster’s European quarter-final at Edinburgh last April following a hamstring injury during the Six Nations clash with Scotland.

“Well I picked him for the Edinburgh game, he started it quite well and then unfortunately got injured again. But no, I’ll use an example, when we were still with the Springboks, Duane Vermeulen came from an ACL injury and we picked him against Argentina and he played 80 minutes, so there’s no way to know.”

Former Australia fly-half and attack coach Larkham said he is excited by the prospect of working with Carbery.

“Yeah, plenty of potential, super-skilful, reads the game really well, attacks the line... he’s probably only one of the few five-eights in world rugby who attacks the line; Beauden Barrett is another one.

He actually came in the other day — as you know, he’s out with a minor injury — and he said ‘g’day’ to everyone, so that was good.

“I had a bit of a chat with him then and I’m really looking forward to working with him, but there are plenty of other good five-eighths here at the moment.

“JJ (Hanrahan) is a real talent, so is Tyler (Bleyendaal), and Ben Healy from the U20s programme as well, so working with those three at the moment and it’s been really enjoyable. But yeah, no doubt about it, I’d love to work with Joey as soon as possible.”