{"id":275710,"date":"2026-02-01T18:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T18:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/275710\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T18:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T18:03:11","slug":"irelands-tadhg-furlong-could-be-available-to-play-france-in-six-nations-opener-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/275710\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s Tadhg Furlong could be available to play France in Six Nations opener \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tadhg Furlong<\/a> appears to remain the only real fitness concern for Ireland<\/a> ahead of moving on to Paris for Thursday\u2019s 2026 Six Nations<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Furlong took at least some part in the squad\u2019s 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\u2019s win in Bayonne a fortnight ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe got through some good work actually. He\u2019s progressed really well and we\u2019ve been happy with the majority of the lads who have been training and some of them have come in with little niggles, but everyone\u2019s progressing really well and we had everyone available to train today.\u201d<\/p>\n

As to whether Furlong is considered to be available for selection, Easterby said: \u201cAt the moment, yeah. I think today was important and obviously tomorrow will be another important training day, but so far so good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tadhg Beirne also took a full part in training and is \u201cgood to go\u201d and with a near full-strength of 38 players in the Algarve the Irish management are releasing Ciar\u00e1n Frawley, Bryn Ward and Billy Bohan for the Ireland XV game against England \u2018A\u2019 next Friday evening in Thomond Park.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"IrelandIreland head coach Andy Farrell. Photograph: Ben Brady\/Inpho <\/p>\n

By contrast, the Under-20s have had to train exclusively indoors at the URFU\u2019s HPC in Dublin, ahead of their clash against their French counterparts in Perpignan next Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we always enjoy coming here, we get the opportunity to reconnect because it\u2019s obviously a time when we\u2019ve been away from each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe ask a lot of the players when they come in, a lot of demands on them, but they\u2019ve been excellent throughout and the youngsters coming in and really connecting up with some of the more senior players. You feel like you\u2019ve been together for a couple of weeks when it\u2019s only a few days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bohan, Ward and the other uncapped players \u2013 Jude Posthelthwaite, Edwin Edogbo and Nathan Doak \u2013 have made an impression in this week-long camp and Easterby said: \u201cIt\u2019s funny, yeah, we\u2019ve got some young guys in, haven\u2019t got as much experience, there\u2019s many caps, but the training has been excellent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe young lads, as I said a little bit earlier, have really stepped up, they\u2019ve 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\u2019ll get support from the more experienced players and it\u2019s up to the young guys to step up as well and they\u2019ve done that too.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the more experienced players have been excellent in the way that they\u2019ve brought players into the system and that makes it really encouraging, but also makes the training really competitive and it has been.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tadhg Furlong appears to remain the only real fitness concern for Ireland ahead of moving on to Paris…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,15551],"class_list":["post-275710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-six-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}