Ireland head-coach Joe Schmidt has confirmed that Johnny Sexton will start at out-half in Saturday's final World Cup warm-up game against Wales at the Aviva Stadium.
It'll be the first time the world player of the year has played this pre-season and the Leinster captain says he's looking forward to getting a run out against the Grand Slam champions.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Sexton, who had also been held back due to a bit of ‘stiffness and soreness’ last week, said at Carton House this afternoon.
“It has been a good pre-season, frustrating obviously, picking up the knock at a bad time but looking forward to it now."
Cian Healy, Robbie Henshaw, and Keith Earls are also in contention to play this weekend while Schmidt revealed that Joey Carbery could make the bench if he trains fully on Thursday.
“Cian, Robbie and Keith, they have trained the last couple of days and have looked sharp, the only one who is still in doubt is Joey really. He’d have to train fully on Thursday to be included in the match squad. He won’t start. Johnny will start at 10 so we’ll see how he goes.
“He’s going to do a little bit tomorrow and that will lead into training on Thursday and if he can’t train on Thursday he won’t be involved. That would be an unnecessary risk.”
Kieran Marmion, Will Addison, and Jordi Murphy are remained in training with the squad, despite being left out of the 31-man squad for the World Cup yesterday.
Schmidt says the trio missed out by "narrow margins" and that they could be called up if injuries occur ahead of the tournament.
"I spoke to them on the phone, I said 'look, this is not the phone call you want to get, you have fallen outside the squad and there's some narrow margins'.
"We discussed a few game-related things with them. Those three guys as young men would be brilliant in the squad, they would contribute without a doubt, but we can only have 31.
"It's very easy for some people on the sidelines to throw barbs on who missed out, you can only find 31 spots, three guys, unbelievably good.
"We asked them 'would you come in train Monday, Tuesday, potentially later in week?'
"They replied 'be there, no problem'.
"It gives us confidence as well that if we lose someone Saturday, we could definitely lose someone in the tournament, to have them training and up to speed would be profitable for us."
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