Ireland forwards coach Paul O’Connell said captain Caelan Doris “feels really good” as his side prepare to face the All Blacks in Chicago on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Leinster back row Doris has not played since his province’s defeat by Northampton Saints in the Champions Cup semi-finals in May.<\/p>\n
He sustained a shoulder problem that required surgery in that game and missed the British and Irish Lions’ series win in Australia during the summer.<\/p>\n
Despite not featuring in Leinster’s first five games of the 2025-26 United Rugby Championship, O’Connell said there has been “very little minding” of Doris in the build-up to Saturday’s contest at Soldier Field (20:10 GMT). <\/p>\n
“He’s been through a very good return to play period now and he’s had a good few weeks,” said the former lock of the side’s skipper.<\/p>\n
“There’s been very little minding of him or anything like that – there hasn’t been any.<\/p>\n
“He’s fine, he’s trained really well, he feels really good, he’s shown no ill-effects whatsoever.”<\/p>\n
Given Doris’ lack of match action, it remains to be seen whether he will face Scott Robertson’s side from the start or make his return from the bench.<\/p>\n
“There’s one train of thought that says you start a guy like that because he could come on after a minute anyway, and there’s another train of thought that says you bring him off the bench,” added O’Connell.<\/p>\n
Ireland have Jack Conan, who himself has not played since the Lions’ third Test against Australia in August, as another option at number eight. <\/p>\n
For what is Andy Farrell’s first game in charge of the side for 11 months after his sabbatical leading the Lions to victory down under, Ireland’s 36-man squad travelled to Chicago last week with the full party taking part in training on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Bundee Aki (hip) and Robbie Henshaw (groin) were among the players who had travelled with knocks but O’Connell confirmed “everyone’s good to go”. <\/p>\n
Back three players Hugo Keenan, Mack Hansen and Calvin Nash, as well as locks Joe McCarthy and Cormac Izuchukwu, did not travel because of injury.<\/p>\n
Saturday’s game is the start of an autumn series that will also see Farrell’s side play Japan, Australia and South Africa in Dublin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland forwards coach Paul O’Connell said captain Caelan Doris “feels really good” as his side prepare to face…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-231195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}