Former England prop Kieran Brookes has been called up for an Ireland XV fixture against Fiji A next month.<\/p>\n
The game for Ireland’s second string will be played in Cork on Friday, 20 November, one day before Andy Farrell’s senior side take on back-to-back world champions South Africa in Dublin. <\/p>\n
Tight-head Brookes has won 16 caps for England but last played Test rugby in 2016, leaving him free to switch his international allegiance under World Rugby laws that require only a 36-month stand-down period. <\/p>\n
The 36-year-old has been impressive since joining Munster during the summer and is eligible for Ireland selection thanks to grandparents born in Belfast and Dublin.<\/p>\n
Brookes made his England debut against New Zealand under Stuart Lancaster in 2014 and appeared three times at the World Cup the following year.<\/p>\n
While all his international appearances came as a player for either Newcastle or Northampton Saints, his switch from Wasps to Toulon in 2021 rendered him unavailable for England selection under RFU [Rugby Football Union] policy.<\/p>\n
The IRFU [Ireland Rugby Football Union] have similar selection rules surrounding home-based players so would not have pursued a reunion with Brookes, who represented Ireland at underage level, until he was playing with a provincial side. <\/p>\n
Brookes is not the only former England international in the 28-man panel with his Munster team-mate Dan Kelly, who was capped once by England in 2021, also included.<\/p>\n
The group will be led by Ulster attack coach Mark Sexton with Leinster fly-half Joey Carbery set to wear a green jersey for the first time in four years.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old, who re-joined Leinster from Bordeaux-Begles this summer, won 37 caps during his first spell in Irish rugby and was part of the squad that won a Six Nations Grand Slam in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former England prop Kieran Brookes has been called up for an Ireland XV fixture against Fiji A next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-818195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818195","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=818195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}