Business as usual for Ireland despite Farrell absence, insists forwards coach O'Connell 

The defending champions kick off their championship campaign against England a week on Saturday in Dublin with Farrell having stepped back to begin his temporary tenure as British & Irish Lions head coach for this summer’s tour to Australia.

NO CHANGE: Forwards coach Paul O'Connell during an Ireland Rugby media conference at The Campus in Quinta da Lago. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Paul O’Connell has insisted it is business as usual for Ireland as they prepare for the 2025 Guinness Six Nations in the absence of head coach Andy Farrell with a squad showing a clean bill of health.

The defending champions, seeking a historic first Six Nations three-in-a-row, kick off their championship campaign against England a week on Saturday in Dublin with Farrell having stepped back to begin his temporary tenure as British & Irish Lions head coach for this summer’s tour to Australia.

Defence coach Simon Easterby has stepped up to replace the boss on an interim basis but O’Connell’s role as forwards coach has not changed and with the squad decamping to their warm-weather training base on Portugal’s Algarve this week, the former Ireland captain said on Friday that very little has changed in Ireland’s approach.

Ireland have 36 players training at The Campus in Quinta do Lago, including four development players while four senior squad members, Connacht’s Caolin Blade and Leinster trio James Lowe, Dan Sheehan and the uncapped Jack Boyle will join the group following their respective URC fixtures.

"Everyone's been training. No one is sitting out any training, which is good,” O’Connell said.

"It has been business as usual really. We've a way of doing things before the first game. We know there's generally 12 days before we play and it's always a challenge to be ready to play a big international rugby match with only 12 days of preparation. We have a bit of a formula which we stick to, we tweak it a little bit to keep it fresh. But it's been good."

Coming off what was, by Ireland’s standards a frustrating Autumn Nations Series in November when they kicked off their four-Test homestand with a defeat to New Zealand before beating Argentina, Fiji and Australia, O’Connell said there was no particular focus on specific improvements needed in this first week of training before the opening match.

“I think in the first week you're just trying to reintroduce our way of doing things and reintroduce our language and get players comfortable with that. For us (as coaches), we've probably been living in this game and that's the challenge for us.

“We've been living in this game since the end of the autumn internationals, the players have had a busy period of European games, big inter-provincial games. Sometimes you want to come in as a coach and start working really hard straight away so we've to be a little bit aware of where they're coming from, the language they have in their heads from their provinces, and we have to drip-feed in what we're doing here.

“So that's generally what the first week is for us, it's getting back to our way of doing things, which very often isn't too dissimilar to the provinces but there are subtle differences and differences in the language. So it's about getting the players comfortable with our way of doing things in the first week."