Hickie joins the long list of wounded

The maxim goes that bad things come in threes, it is one to which Denis Hickie would subscribe. The Ireland winger yesterday became the latest casualty of Ireland's tour to Australia, Tonga and Samoa, forced to withdraw with a groin injury.

It will be the third time that Hickie has been forced to miss an Ireland tour through a last minute injury, the others being last year's summer expedition to New Zealand and a previous trip to the Americas and Canada.

The groin problem denied him the opportunity to train all week and given the fact that the first tranche of players jetting out for Australia are due at Dublin airport today - the second group depart tomorrow - a decision on the player's fitness had to be addressed.

Despite intensive physiotherapy, it was considered inappropriate to risk further damaging the problem and potentially risking his World Cup preparations.

Hickie was philosophical about missing out - he would only have been there for the Australia leg anyway - but did concede that it would be nice if he could add to his record of just a single tour (South Africa, 1998) with Ireland.

He will receive physiotherapy for the next two weeks.

Eddie O'Sullivan has decided that the St Mary's College wing would not be replaced as he feels that there is adequate cover, thereby reducing a travelling party that originally numbered 42 down to 40.

"No we have sufficient cover in our squad especially going to the islands (Tonga and Samoa) so there was no need to bring anyone else into the squad," said the Irish boss.

The announcement on Hickie comes just 24 hours after Rob Henderson hobbled out of contention, the latest and the Ireland team management will hope last, in a litany of players succumbing to injury.

O'Sullivan had already to plan without Brian O'Driscoll, Shane Horgan, John Hayes, Anthony Foley, Neil Doak and Jeremy Staunton.

There was better news in that Gary Longwell (virus) and Peter Stringer (knee) are both on the mend.

There was no suggestion of cossetting the players at yesterday's training session at Wanderers ground, Merrion Road with the squad enjoying a rigorous 90 minute work-out.