Andy Farrell waits on Dan Sheehan as Keith Earls grabs the headlines

The Ireland coach saw his star hooker come off injured. 

FAMILY TIES: Ireland head coach Andy Farrell with Owen Farrell and Manu Tuilagi of England after the game. Picture: INPHO/Dan Sheridan

Injuries are the spectre that haunt every squad in the run-up to a World Cup and Ireland are now left waiting on the well-being of Dan Sheehan after the hooker came off injured shortly before half-time during the team’s defeat of England on Saturday night.

The Leinster man has emerged as a world-class operator but he “lost a bit of power in his foot” here, according to head coach Andy Farrell who is also hoping that Ronan Kelleher can overcome a slight hamstring issue.

Kelleher, who has had a horrible run of injuries in recent years, has yet feature in the two warm-up games to date. That’s two top-class hookers with doubts over them. A concern?

“Possibly,” said Farrell after the team’s comfortable 29-10 win. “Ronan is going to be fine. The extent of Dan, we don’t know. We’ve had Diarmuid Barron in camp as well, Tom Stewart has been going great guns within camp and we’ll be fine.” The game itself can be read in a number of ways.

England, it has to be said, were awful and finished the game with 14 men after Billy Vunipola was shown a yellow card duly upgraded to red by the new ‘bunker’ system after a high no-arms tackle on Andrew Porter.

Ireland hit England for five tries against one at the other end but the world number one side struggled through a fitful first-half which featured a majority of players playing their first game of competitive rugby this side of the summer break.

“It had a bit of everything, good, bad and ugly, really,” said Farrell. “I wasn’t too happy at half time. I thought we had them in a place where we could just try and push a little bit harder and make it a little bit easier for ourselves, but we didn’t.

We didn’t kick on in the first-half, probably because England’s lineout defence was pretty good and we made it a bit scrappy for ourselves. But I was really pleased that we found our rhythm back into the game in the second-half there.” Ireland’s lineout malfunctions were a worry, so too the imperfections at the maul, but Farrell was eager to focus on Keith Earls who came off the bench to win his 100th cap and claimed Ireland’s fifth try to universal acclaim.

“Obviously the story of the day, it’s very fitting that Keith gets his 100th cap and we make sure that he does that with a ‘W’, and also him scoring a try in Keith Earls style in the corner as well just made the day for everybody really.” Earls had led the side out before kick-off accompanied by his three daughters and the reception he received on entering the game in the second-half was electric and yet soon to be eclipsed by the roar as he tumbled head over heels for his score.

“It was a tough week, I suppose, with all the attention on the 100th cap but look, I'm delighted I've done it,” he told RTÉ. “I tried to get my wife and my kids to stay away, to stay in the background, but they told me I'd regret it (if I did).

“I'm happy that I've done it now and it's all worked out well.”