Tadhg Furlong appears to remain the only real fitness concern for Ireland ahead of moving on to Paris for Thursday’s 2026 Six Nations opener against France in the Stade de France (kick-off 9.10pm local time/8.10pm Irish), although there are more positive noises about the wellbeing of the three-time Lions tighthead.
Furlong took at least some part in the squad’s session at The Campus in Quinta do Lago on Sunday and afterwards the Ireland defence coach Simon Easterby sounded moderately optimistic that the Leinsterman was recovering well from the calf strain he aggravated in his province’s win in Bayonne a fortnight ago.
“He got through some good work actually. He’s progressed really well and we’ve been happy with the majority of the lads who have been training and some of them have come in with little niggles, but everyone’s progressing really well and we had everyone available to train today.”
As to whether Furlong is considered to be available for selection, Easterby said: “At the moment, yeah. I think today was important and obviously tomorrow will be another important training day, but so far so good.”
Tadhg Beirne also took a full part in training and is “good to go” and with a near full-strength of 38 players in the Algarve the Irish management are releasing Ciarán Frawley, Bryn Ward and Billy Bohan for the Ireland XV game against England ‘A’ next Friday evening in Thomond Park.
Although the Algarve has, along with many other parts of Europe, experienced unseasonal amounts of rainfall of late and the forecast is for the weather to worsen next week, the squad have had a good week on the well-drained pitch at the Campus before moving on to Paris after one more training session here on Monday.
Ireland head coach Andy Farrell. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho
By contrast, the Under-20s have had to train exclusively indoors at the URFU’s HPC in Dublin, ahead of their clash against their French counterparts in Perpignan next Saturday.
“I think we always enjoy coming here, we get the opportunity to reconnect because it’s obviously a time when we’ve been away from each other.
“The provinces have been working away at their games and then we get a chance to come here and get a great chunk of work done in a short space of time.
“We ask a lot of the players when they come in, a lot of demands on them, but they’ve been excellent throughout and the youngsters coming in and really connecting up with some of the more senior players. You feel like you’ve been together for a couple of weeks when it’s only a few days.”
Bohan, Ward and the other uncapped players – Jude Posthelthwaite, Edwin Edogbo and Nathan Doak – have made an impression in this week-long camp and Easterby said: “It’s funny, yeah, we’ve got some young guys in, haven’t got as much experience, there’s many caps, but the training has been excellent.
“The young lads, as I said a little bit earlier, have really stepped up, they’ve connected up. I guess one of the real strengths of this group, and it always has been for the last four or five years, has been guys coming in, we’ll get support from the more experienced players and it’s up to the young guys to step up as well and they’ve done that too.
“But the more experienced players have been excellent in the way that they’ve brought players into the system and that makes it really encouraging, but also makes the training really competitive and it has been.
“Today was a great session. It was, without it being full contact, it was very good, had a good pace to it, a good bit of physicality and yeah, a lot of those youngsters have stepped up in the last week.”