{"id":277381,"date":"2026-02-02T20:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T20:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/277381\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T20:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T20:37:07","slug":"cian-prendergast-in-line-to-join-brother-sam-in-ireland-side-to-play-france-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/277381\/","title":{"rendered":"Cian Prendergast in line to join brother Sam in Ireland side to play France \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Prendergast brothers, Cian and Sam, could be in line to start together in an Ireland<\/a> team for the first time when the side to face France<\/a> in Thursday\u2019s Six Nations<\/a> opener at the Stade de France is unveiled on Tuesday morning in Paris at 9am local time\/8am Irish.<\/p>\n

In addition to younger brother Sam retaining his place at outhalf, which on balance had been expected despite the strong competition from Jack Crowley and Harry Byrne, the signs are that his older brother Cian is also set to start. <\/p>\n

The Connacht captain could feature in a backrow alongside Josh van der Flier and skipper Caelan Doris, with Tadhg Beirne reverting to secondrow alongside Joe McCarthy and James Ryan among a 6-2 split on a bench also featuring Nick Timoney rather than Edwin Edogbo.<\/p>\n

Not unsurprisingly, it looks as if this game has come too soon for Tadhg Furlong, meaning Thomas Clarkson will start at tighthead while Jeremy Loughman seemingly starting at loosehead.<\/p>\n

There could be a few other surprises as well, with Jacob Stockdale possibly starting ahead of James Lowe in a back three also featuring Tommy O\u2019Brien and Jamie Osborne, in his first outing since injuring his shoulder against Japan.<\/p>\n

IRELAND (possible v France): J Osborne; T O\u2019Brien, G Ringrose, S McCloskey, J Stockdale; S Prendergast, J Gibson-Park; J Loughman, D Sheehan, T Clarkson; J McCarthy, T Beirne; C Prendergast, J van der Flier, C Doris (capt). <\/p>\n

Replacements: R Kelleher, M Milne, F Bealham, J Ryan, J Conan, N Timoney, C Casey, J Crowley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Prendergast brothers, Cian and Sam, could be in line to start together in an Ireland team for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1452,61,60,1449,43,15551],"class_list":["post-277381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-france-rugby","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ireland-rugby","tag-news","tag-six-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277381","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=277381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}