Ireland wait on Sam Prendergast's fitness ahead of Argentina November opener

UP IN THE AIR: Sam Prendergast during an Ireland squad training session at the IRFU High Performance Centre in Abbotstown, Dublin last week. Pic: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

Sam Prendergast remains a doubt for Ireland’s opening November Test against Argentina this Friday.

The Leinster back injured a wrist in training, and sat out the URC interpro win over Munster in Dublin eight days ago, before meeting up with the rest of Andy Farrell’s squad for the upcoming Nations Championship window.

An IRFU statement said the management remains "optimistic" that he will be available for selection.

“He's been tracking well and he's been jumping in and out of bits of training, non-contact bits, pretty close to full-contact bits, and he's been very confident and comfortable doing it,” said Paul O’Connell. “So, I'm not 100% sure, but he looks like he could be okay.” Ireland are already operating without Jack Crowley who is out of action until at least Christmas time. Ciaran Frawley, starting at No.10 now for Connacht, and Ulster’s versatile new signing Jamie Benson are back-up for Prendergast.

Jimmy O’Brien has already resumed full training and, all told, Farrell has a decent pool of players to work with even accepting the fact that Jack Crowley, captain Caelan Doris and Jack Conan are unavailable to him for the four games to come.

“It's been great and we probably have a bit of a smaller group here. So we've had very few players on the sideline. They've all been training quite hard and training quite fast and it's been quite physical as well. So it's been good to keep the injury count down,” said O’Connell.

Farrell also has the comfort of welcoming back three specialist Mack Hansen and two key forwards back in to the group after long periods of injury. Ryan Baird and Andrew Porter haven’t worn the green jersey since featuring last November.

PROP FORWARD: Andrew Porter goes through his paces at training last week. Pic: INPHO/Ben Brady

“They’re excellent rugby players and have great experience, but they've great self-belief as well and that's important,” said O’Connell, Ireland’s forwards coach. “It's important you have guys that believe they can get the job done and will find a way to get the job done.

“They have real points of difference. Obviously, Ports is an excellent scrummager, but as a prop forward it's like having an extra back row around the field as well, and that speed of movement piece as a prop forward he's got a real point of difference there.

“Bairdo, I know a lot of people point to his lineout stuff, but his kick-chase has been excellent in the last few weeks. His physicality on both sides of the ball has been excellent. And he brings real leadership to a lot of the setpiece stuff as well.

“He's a good man to put a plan in place and coach it and deliver it. So two great players. It’s great to have them back in there. It's great to have their self-belief back around the place as well.” Kicking coach Johnny Sexton highlighted the focus Ireland are placing on their fitness as they look to regain the level of consistency required in their performances and results and O’Connell doubled down on that at their training centre on Sunday morning.

“It's really important how the lads train when they're back with their provinces, in terms of how they show their character back in their provinces and how they perform, but also week-to-week, how fast they're running, how quick they're moving, how much they're concentrating on that when they're training, and also then when they're playing, so that when they come in here we can hit the ground running.

“We're into a Friday game here [against Argentina], so we've less preparation time than we have had in the past. We get the players, we're training, then we're playing a game 12 days later, so it's really important that they're not coming in here trying to get fit, that they're training fast, consciously trying to train fast when they're in their provinces as well.”