Irish Rugby Squad Announced

Felix Jones’ cruel injury sustained against France this weekend has ruled him out of contention for a place in Declan Kidney’s final thirty-man squad for the World Cup – but Leicester full-back Geordan Murphy is the fortunate beneficiary of this incident and will now be looking to add to his already impressive haul of 69 caps for his country. Those interested in World cup rugby betting may want to take note of this.

There would be some that might suggest Murphy was deserving of a seat on the plane to New Zealand regardless of the injury to Jones, especially given his extraordinary level of experience, but it would seem that the ankle ligament injury sustained by the Munster utility back has made that decision easy for Kidney.

One surprising omission from the Ireland squad is that of winger Luke Fitzgerald, who twelve months ago would have felt confident that he was on track to representing his nation on the biggest stage in world rugby – that is until a dramatic loss of form around the turn of the year saw him drop down the pecking order. Despite being used as a second half substitute to good effect in their most recent defeat at the hands of France this weekend, it was clearly a case of too little, too late. Fans of will greenwood betfair tips should bear this in mind.

Tomas O’Leary has also missed out – apparently paying the price for his part in Ireland’s 22-26 loss in Dublin on Saturday. Somewhat awkwardly for O’Leary, going in his stead will be Munster team-mate Conor Murray who has just one cap to his name.

That most recent loss now means that Ireland will be going into their last warm-up game for the World Cup with three consecutive losses to their name, and defeat against England this coming Saturday would only increase the level of criticism aimed at Kidney for his approach of playing so many matches in close succession. But Ireland’s head coach stands by his decision, saying:

“There was a reason why we went for this number of games. We obviously need to work on the results, there’s no hiding away from that [but] one match is worth about 10 training sessions. We just need more and more of that.”