Finlay Bealham: Getting hot under collar in Portugal will stand to Ireland

Finlay Bealham at the Ireland Rugby Press Conference, IRFU High Performance Centre, Sport Ireland Campus, Blanchardstown, Dublin 

Finlay Bealham believes a week of warm-weather training may have brought out the worst in some of his squad-mates but can be invaluable to Ireland’s World Cup cause in France next month.

Tighthead prop Bealham looks set to be included when head coach Andy Farrell unveils his matchday 23 for this Saturday’s Aviva Stadium clash with England, the second of three pre-World Cup tune-ups ahead of an opening Pool B game against minnows Romania three weeks later on September 9.

Ireland-England Tests always have the capacity to reach boiling point and this Saturday’s pre-World Cup meeting will be no exception but it is the actual temperatures Farrell’s men are likely to face in the coming weeks for which Bealham thinks last week’s camp in Portugal will stand them in good stead.

"Yeah, definitely the heat plays a big factor in fatigue levels, you get fatigued a lot quicker and I suppose some people do better in the heat than others,” Bealham said. “I won't say names but definitely for some of the bigger boys running around in 35 degrees of heat, it takes it out of you.

"So it's good to prepare in that way so you can keep yourself mentally fresh while your body and lungs may be under fatigue. I really enjoyed it, it was a really good challenge.” 

It might not have felt that way at the time with flanker Josh van der Flier admitting: “Towards the end of the week I was looking forward to 15 degrees and cloudy days.

Speaking back at the IRFU High Performance Centre on Tuesday, the world player of the year added: “It was a good mental break in that it was somewhere different, but it was very hard work.

“We got one of the toughest weeks we've had in pre-season, so it made the most of it. It was a good mix, some people had families out there and it made it quite a nice place to be. We'll take a lot from that and also getting a bit of heat exposure, it's possible against Samoa in Biarritz and into the World Cup that there might be a few warmer games.” 

With the possibility that final warm-up game against the Samoans on August 26 could be played in at least 25C and Bordeaux currently even hotter than the more southern French city, both the Irish management and players feel they reaped the rewards of similarly high temperatures on the Algarve last week.

Scrum coach John Fogarty was delighted with the stress test imposed on the training squad at Quinta do Lago.

“It was good, it was tough. It was tough for the bigger men like myself, it was hot,” Fogarty said. “That brought its own stresses, you know, players getting a little bit more irate because their rest is shortened or the heat is at them. It’s really good for us mentally, so in terms of physically preparing there was benefits but the mental preparation, dealing with that extra added pressure of heat was excellent for the group.

“We got through a lot of work and I would like to think the squad was in a better place for it.”