Ringrose targeting Twickenham return from shoulder injury

RETURN FROM INJURY: Garry Ringrose was speaking as ambassador for the National Dairy Council and the NDC Guarantee Mark.

Two is company, three has been anything but a crowd. For Andy Farrell, the more midfield options the better and the Ireland head coach won’t need telling that he has been spoiled rotten with both the quality and the quantity of centres at his disposal.

The sight of Stuart McCloskey, a specialist inside centre, moonlighting on the wing late on against Wales at the weekend highlighted not just the multi-faceted abilities expected of the players now but the ongoing scramble for space closer in to the traffic as well.

McCloskey is a superb player and athlete who has just 17 caps to show for an Ireland career that debuted nine years ago against Ireland’s next opponents in southwest London. He waited 19 months for a second cap and won just four in one four-and-a-half year spell.

The competition is just frightening.

There was a time when Garry Ringrose and Robbie Henshaw were the expected first-choice pairing there. Now Bundee Aki has gravitated towards a position of primacy even while the other two continued to put in world-class performances.

Aki has 54 caps to his name stretching back to a debut against South Africa in November of 2017. Ringrose has 46 appearances in that same span, Henshaw has put together 41 despite a more frequent and frustrating relationship with injury.

It’s Ringrose’s turn to sit it out and stew just now.

A shoulder injury suffered against Leicester Tigers in the last round of Champions Cup fixtures has kept the Leinster co-captain sidelined for the first three rounds of this Six Nations. The aim now is to put his hand up in time for Twickenham on Saturday week.

But that’s still only an aim. Hopes that Ringrose would make it back in time for the second round defeat of Italy three weekends ago ultimately came to naught after the problem proved to be more troublesome than expected.

The green light to return to the park depends on all sorts of signals. Physios and doctors have their say and their metrics, so does the player. Trust goes both ways. He’s 28 now though, the hope being that he knows his body better with every passing year.

“I think so. The more injuries you go through, you pick up bits along the way and learn as to what’s fine and what isn’t. I think it is something I have gotten a little bit better at in terms of listening to what feels right and wrong but it can vary.

“At different times, different parts of the body, different type of injury, it can sometimes feel like nothing and then the more you push it, the worse it gets. You something go into it thinking, ‘Am I on the edge here?’ And then as soon as you start, it just goes.” 

There’s no ‘good time’ to be injured. Going down as the season turns a corner towards the Six Nations is a particularly unfortunate set of events and all the more when a player is in the sort of form that Ringrose had been producing so consistently.

Leinster face Cardiff in the URC this weekend but he won’t be using that as a dry run. The focus remains resolutely on Ireland and being ready for a game which is being talked up as the higher of the two obstacles standing between another title and Grand Slam.

Ireland have won on four of their last 14 visits to Twickenham in a period going back 20 years. It’s not a bad return given England’s traditional strength and home record, and Ringrose has experienced good days and bad.

The worst was a 57-15 World Cup warm-up debacle in 2019. The best was undoubtedly the sublime team effort that clinched a Grand Slam on St Patrick’s Day in 2018. He wore the 13 jerseys both days.

Ask him what a visiting team needs to do to bank a win in London and the answer hits on a roll call of key points: setpiece, discipline, a clinical effort in the 22, ball protection. On it goes, a lengthy to-do list.

“So it's a bit of everything. The pressure at the breakdown, their intensity: they make you work for everything, and it will kill our attack if we overcommit as well, so the breakdown will be huge. The kicking battle as well with George Ford.

“We've seen him rip teams apart with his kicking ability so it's getting the backfield right to deny them access is massive as well. So, like any game, it's a bit of everything, but over in Twickenham they don't give up much so you just need to be unbelievably clinical.” 

Garry Ringrose was speaking as ambassador for the National Dairy Council and the NDC Guarantee Mark