On the face of it playing England, themselves on a mission of self-redemption, at fortress Twickenham in the Six Nations Championship opener would seem one of the least auspicious starts to a championship, especially for an Irish side that is likely to be fairly restructured and remodelled.

However, Warren Gatland yesterday maintained that this was a favourable start on the basis that now was as good a time as any to take on Clive Woodward's team.

Conceivably, England will have as few as six of the XV which beat Ireland with some ease at Lansdowne Road last season, and while the Irish team will probably show a fair degree of change as well, Gatland has intimated that his team will take on England more boldly than was the case a year ago.

"When I first came in, the team was being beaten by 40 points so we had to work hard on our defence," Gatland said.

"Now it's time to move the ball and play attractive rugby, and get away from the reputation of being a spoiling team that can only tackle and kick the ball in the air.

"I think you will see we will pick players with the talent to do that," vowed Gatland, adding: "Our priority is to get pride back in the Irish jersey."

An expanded Test squad of around 25-26 will be announced by the Irish management, along with an A squad for that weekend's round of matches, at some point tomorrow following the squad's injury-disrupted, two-day get-together in Dublin.

Ironically, given that this first post-World Cup get-together began something of a healing process, a catalogue of injuries disrupted much of the planned work, particularly as the sidelining of two of the scrum-halves, Brian O'Meara and Peter Stringer, as well as an out-half, David Humphreys, was compounded by Ronan O'Gara breaking down with a strained knee ligament literally within the first few minutes of Monday morning's opening session.

James Topping, out for four to six weeks with a broken thumb sustained in training on Monday, and Ross Nesdale (who requires a neck operation and is out for the season) are the only serious injuries, although O'Meara is out for three to four weeks with a knee ligament injury sustained while training with Munster last week. Andy Ward's knee ligament strain is likely to sideline him for Ballynahinch this weekend while Alan Quinlan's shoulder injury also makes him doubtful for Shannon this weekend.

Other casualties who arrived with injuries were Humphreys (groin), Justin Fitzpatrick (thumb), Jeremy Davidson (elbow) and Stringer (ankle) while due to a family bereavement Marcus Horan returned home yesterday. Furthermore, Mick Galwey and Bernard Jackman picked up groin injuries from yesterday's concluding, and reportedly very intense, session.

"Other than that, everybody was fine," quipped Donal Lenihan as he put away his notepad. The team manager also pointed out that some of the original 45-man squad picked for this week's get-together, such as Kieran Campbell and Jeremy Staunton, who are eligible for the Irish under-21s, will be re-routed there rather than selected on the bench for the A side. "It isn't as if they're dropped from the squad or anything like that," Lenihan said.

The two double sessions focused on continuity and defence, and broke into forwards and backs to give the newly-appointed assistant and backs' coach Eddie O'Sullivan an opportunity to outline his approach.

Warren Gatland admitted that the enforced disruptions were frustrating. "But in saying that the players we did work with trained very hard and we were pleased with the intensity of the players in the last two days. Normally we wouldn't train twice in two days after some hard games over the weekend and we were delighted with their effort and commitment."

Given only Tom Tierney, Kieran Campbell, Eric Elwood and Jeremy Staunton were still standing amongst the chosen eight half-backs, the frustration would have been particularly acute for Eddie O'Sullivan, who nevertheless detected a healthy hunger within the squad, buoyed by the presence of so many new caps.

"It was an opportunity for me to set out my stall in relation to back play and I was very happy in that respect, but again to have two fly-halves out of the loop was very frustrating. But to be fair they were able to plug into what was going on so they're all pretty much up to speed. Ideally though we'd like to have them all there to go through their paces."

Despite being broached on the subject, Lenihan and Gatland were revealing little about the issue of the captaincy, merely stating that they had "still to pick the team first" and wouldn't be finalising their captain until then. Regarding the selection, this would seem a tougher process than most. Gatland conceded that "we're conscious of trying to get the balance right, particularly in the loose forwards and the balance of the midfield. They're two areas that we're working hard on. In saying that there are other positions all through the team that are not clear-cut selections. There are a lot of open areas in terms of picking the side for that first match against England.

"There's always pressure to perform," added Gatland of the Six Nations, preferring instead to draw a line under the World Cup and move on. "We have addressed the World Cup. We'd like to put that behind us. We were disappointed of course, as everybody was, the players and management as well. We spent a day reviewing that, and for us and for everybody, the occasions and the pressures of the Six Nations will be the same as well."

UCC produced their best performance of the season at the Mardyke last night with a 18-10 win over Loughborough University to qualify for the student European championship final for the second year in succession.

UCC led 8-5 at half-time and the quality of rugby was high. Loughborough opened the scoring after seven minutes when winger Peter Williams scored. Joey Sheehan brought the college back into the game in the 17th minute with a drop goal.

In injury time in the first half UCC's centre Paul Barry popped up on the wing to score. UCC increased their lead after 13 minutes in the second half when out-half Brian O'Mahony scored, the same player adding a penalty seven minutes later to seal the win.